Call for Papers: Peripeti #42 Lively Words: Contemporary Intersections of Text and Performance

Call for Papers
Peripeti #42 Lively Words: Contemporary Intersections of Text and Performance

With this issue, we wish to explore the state of the text in theatre and the performing arts as well as
performative and gestural interventions into text-based art and literature. This includes both the
range of contemporary playwriting practices and more diverse modes of creating and employing
text in the performing arts, including performative forms of writing and the performative use of
different types of text, whether occurring in visual, performative, or literary culture.
The postdramatic turn at the end of the 20th century, along with an even longer avant-garde
tradition, has challenged the primacy of the dramatic text in Western theatre, but also considerably
expanded the role, shape, and function of text in the theatre, opening up new dramaturgical models
beyond the dramatic form. Further, the cultural primacy of the printed text as a disembodied,
monological production of linguistic meaning to be decoded by a silent, solitary reader is being
contested in new ways within a post-digital media landscape.
While the historical primacy of the text in the theatre can be considered an extension of
Gutenbergian print culture’s instating of Eurocentric, capitalist and patriarchal hierarchies, we wish
to propose, in current and historical renegotiations between textual and performative strategies, a
critical potential against such cultural hegemony.
In recent years, we have seen a myriad of new genres and formats of theatre and performance art –
as well as book art, artist’s books and performance writing – some of which have rejected the idea
of the dramatic text, while at the same time developing new ways of working with text in
performance. We have seen collectively devised texts and visual storyboards; we have seen all sorts
of non-dramatic texts – novels, philosophy, statistics, personal papers, etc. – brought to the stage;
we have seen choreographers working with dialogue and writers exploring performance as part of
their literary practice, etc. And across the realm of performance, literary and visual arts, we have
seen paraphernalia and paratext, e.g. texts and material used to frame or advertise a work, become
increasingly integral to the performative event itself.
This means that text in the performing arts today is so much more than a written play or a
manuscript. In a performance like The Gaza Mono-Logues by ASHTAR Theatre a script functions
both as a site of and a tool for trans-national psycho-social work, when young people in Palestine
share their testimonies in the form of monologues that are later echoed on theatre stages all over the
world in multiple translations and interpretations. Meanwhile the calls to action and online
campaigns surrounding the performance raise both funds and awareness while building a long-term
global community between theatre and activism. A performance like Rimini Protokoll’s Home Visit
Europe involves written directions, instructions, game rules, questions, and tasks for the
participants that are printed as part of the performance, as well as maps and statistical results
generated during the performance. Many types of texts played a part in the development,
production, and performance of this piece – not least the pre-performance advertisement, so
essential for the recruitment of hosts and participants that it seems difficult to separate it from the
piece itself. When dealing with performances like these, we may need to extend our understanding
of text in performance: which texts should be included in the aesthetic analysis of the works?
With this issue of Peripeti, we wish to discuss the implications of an extended notion of text and
textualities in theatre and the performing arts, while also suggesting a heightened awareness of the
intersections and interferences between the performing arts and related forms of art and culture,
often mediated through performative interaction with text. When Asta Olivia Nordenhof ends her
poetry reading with an invitation to meet her at the very bar in which she is reading the poem, is it a
performance or a poem? When a young playwright like Regina Rex works with bodies and objects
in physical space rather than words, is she still (play)writing?
After years of questioning the rules and format of the drama, we sense a new interest in both the
classics and new dramatic writing in Danish theatre. If this is indeed so, how may the conventions
of written drama have been affected by the complexities of more experimental approaches? And
what is the role and impact of the relevant educational programmes in the field?
We invite both academic articles for peer review, as well as non-peer-reviewed essays, artistic
research and artistic contributions. Unfortunately, we cannot offer fees for contributions. While we
wish to focus on the 21st century, we also welcome historical perspectives that point to current
issues and practices at the intersection of text and performance. And while we as editors are
physically situated in a Danish and a European context and our outlook starts from there, we are
equally interested in contributions that move beyond this specific context. We specifically invite
critical perspectives, e.g. feminist, queer, decolonial, and others, as well as contributions invested in
a trans-national or even planetary outlook.

Suggested topics
- New modes of writing and working with text in the theatre
- Contemporary practices of playwriting, dialogue, and text production
- Expanded understandings of text in theatre, dance, and performance
- New literary formats and genres in writing for the performing arts
- Considerations of the expansion of media-specific concepts across their boundaries (i.e.
expanded notions of textuality, curating, choreography, etc.)
- The impact of new media ecologies on performative and literary practices
- How digital culture affects the distinction and relationship between text and performance
– potentially destabilising texts and increasing performativity, for example
- Intersections, frictions, and exchanges between text and performance across the arts
- Theatrical adaptations of novels, poetry, philosophy, documents, and other non-dramatic
genres
- How new discursive forms affect acting, rehearsal and other practices involved in the
development and production of a performance

Deadlines (Preliminary)
Abstracts* of max 300 words: 9 October 2026
Articles, first version: 1 December 2026
Articles revised: 1 February 2027
Publication: 1 April 2027
Please find our guidelines for authors here (Danish):
https://tidsskrift.dk/index.php/peripeti/about/submissions#authorGuidelines
and here (English): https://www.peripeti.dk/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/Author-guidelines-
Peripeti-2026.pdf
*For artistic contributions, send a pitch and a small excerpt of the suggested work. The final length
of artistic contributions selected for the publication will be decided in collaboration between the
artist and the editors.

Send to: laura@hum.ku.dk and sd@cc.au.dk

Language: English or Danish/Scandinavian languages
Editors: Laura Luise Schultz, Solveig Daugaard, Mads Thygesen, Sandra Theresa Buch, Sara
Hamming, Monia Sander, Mette Garfield

Suggested readings
Bergvall, Caroline: “Keynote: What do we mean by performance writing” (1995), in Andrea
Andersson, Postscript. Writing After Conceptual Art, University of Toronto Press 2018
Crombez, Thomas, and Edith Cassiers. “Postdramatic Methods of Adaptation in the Age of Digital
Collaborative Writing.” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities [OXFORD], vol. 32, no. 1, April
2017, pp. 17–35, https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqv054.
Boyle, Michael Shane, et al., editors. Postdramatic Theatre and Form. First edition., Methuen
Drama, 2019, https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350043190.
Buuck, David: “What is performance writing?” Jacket2, February 7th, 2013, accessed August 14th,
2026 https://jacket2.org/commentary/what-performance-writing
Freeman, John. New Performance/New Writing. Second edition., Methuen Drama, 2016,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-46809-3.
Gade, Solveig: “Udvidelse af kampzonen – dramaets forandrede rolle I dansk teater i 00’erne og
10’erne” in Helle Eego og Tanja Diers (eds): Antologi. Drama 2008-2013, Kronstork og Forlaget
Drama 2014.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies: Postdramatic Theatre, Routledge 2006.
Næss, Tale (ed.) and Michael Duch (co-ed.): VIS – Nordic Journal for Artistic Research #15 –
Theme: Language / Languaged / Languaging https://www.en.visjournal.nu/vis-15-languagelanguaged-
languaging
Poschmann, Gerda: Der nicht mehr dramatische Theatertext. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag,
1997.
Rabkin, Gerald: “Is There a Text on This Stage? Theatre/Authorship/Interpretation” in Performing
Arts Journal, Vol. 9, No. 2/3, 10th Anniversary Issue: The AmericanTheatre Condition (1985), pp.
142-159.
Radosavljević, Duška: Theatre-Making: Interplay Between Text and Performance in the 21st
Century, PalgraveMacmillan 2013.
Schultz, Laura Luise et al. (eds): Nyt Teater, Legenda 10, Forfatterskolen og Forlaget Basilisk 2016.
Silkeberg, Tom: Tørklædet og puden. Kronstork 2026.
Sirett, Paul. The Playwright’s Manifesto : How to Write Intrinsically Theatrical Plays. First
edition., Methuen Drama, 2021, https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350204324.
SUGIERA, MAŁGORZATA. “Beyond Drama: Writing for Postdramatic Theatre.” Theatre
Research International [Cambridge, UK], vol. 29, no. 1, March 2004, pp. 6–28,
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0307883303001226.
Thygesen, Mads: Traces of Dialogue. Language, Identity and Form in European Postdramatic
Theatre, Methuen drama 2025.
Worthen, William B.: “Disciplines of the Text/Sites of Performance” in TDR Vol. 39, No. 1
(Spring, 1995), pp. 13-28.
Worthen, William B.: Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge
University Press, 2006.