SCALE--Special Issue of Imagined Theatres
CFP: SCALE
Imagined Theatres
Physical Scale - Conceptual Scale - Relational Scale - Collaborative Scale - Cultural Scale - Historical Scale - Performance Scale - Spatial Scale - Durational Scale
Imagined Theatres is interested in work for a special issue “On Scale” for a forthcoming issue of the journal that will be published in late 2025. As an art form that is notoriously resistant to reproduction or replication, performance is similarly resistant to scaling. Often considered in terms that are hyper-local, ephemeral, and live, performance appears to not scale as readily as some communities, goods, services, or even other forms of art. And yet, performance often requires us to think beyond its own spatial and temporal immediacy. That is, we often proceed as if performance will have an impact beyond the immediate and apparent scale of its “ontology.” Additionally, performance is often indexed to a scale that can only be described as “human,” with subjects and objects viewed, heard, and experienced by senses at the human scale. We are interested in work that pushes the limits and boundaries of these performance scales and reconsiders the ways we think in and across the scales of performance—from the micro to the macro, the nano to the planetary, the particular to the universal.
Scale is not only size, of course. Scale is a relation across two points. Perhaps like theatre and performance, which needs a performer and a witness or audience (even as these roles are not strictly fixed), scale describes a way of relating, a connection, a comparative possibility between or among distinct positions. For instance, Sarah Ruhl notes that “an audience of one is not really an audience but instead a form of intimacy, a form of listening” (Ruhl 2014: 134). If the relation between one audience and one performer is intimacy, what is the relation between a performer and one hundred people, or a million or a billion or everyone who has ever lived and will live? Thinking in scales moves us quickly across possibilities and stretches us to think towards impossibilities. That is, even in starting with a basic theatrical equation (audience plus performer), we begin to see the limitations of theatre and performance in terms of duration and space.
We are already familiar with some things that exist on scales that elude our ability to fully comprehend, let alone articulate, from the climate crisis to pandemics to war and political upheavals. Performance can seem inconsequential in terms of its ephemerality and reach—what can a local performance even do in face of such profound, existential problems? Writing about performance can similarly seem to speak to a niche audience too small for the activism required. Yet, thinking with scale and at scale with scholars and artists across the planet, we might reimagine the limits of performance and the possibilities for experimental collaboration.
About the Journal
Imagined Theatres gathers hypothetical performances that explore the limits of what is possible and impossible in the theatre. The project began as a book (published with Routledge in 2017) and now exists as a peer-reviewed open-access journal and archive of scripts, scores, poems, and occasionally non-textual objects, describing or invoking an imaginary event. We publish material by people working in performance as makers and theorists, but also welcome propositions from non-theatrical artists and thinkers.
Here are some examples from the site that show the range of work we publish:
- Mwenya B. Kabwe: http://imaginedtheatres.com/prompts-for-future-africa/
- Andrew Sofer: http://imaginedtheatres.com/private-language-argument-ii/
- Sonia Teuben (of Back to Back Theatre): http://imaginedtheatres.com/this-is-me-draft/
- Harvey Young: http://imaginedtheatres.com/in-character/
- More here: https://imaginedtheatres.com/
Each “theatre” proposes a conceptual event that puts pressure on the expectations and limit cases of performance, whether those bounds are defined by political, financial, ethical, or traditional structures—or the very physical dimensions of time and space. They may be staged in some future theatre or they may exist solely as theoretical provocations. Each piece is set in dialogue with at least one “gloss” that resonates, extends, illuminates, or distorts its host theatre, embracing in the fullest sense of the word “gloss” as an explanation, a concealment, and as a lustrous surface. These responses, too, take on many formal guises, playing at more conventional exegesis or setting off on their own lines of escape: they, too, may be scripts or scores, poems or manifestos, private essays that take up some aspect of the host and move it elsewhere.
Submissions of written texts or in other media are welcome. The journal typically emphasizes short work, ideally under 500 words or 5 minutes of time-based media, but this is not a fixed limit and given the theme of the issue we welcome proposals that defy such guidance. We especially welcome contributions that stretch the theme in both form and content and provoke reconsideration of the possibilities of collaborative authorship.
Please forward submissions of “Theatres” and expressions of interest in writing a “Gloss” to the Issue Editors:
Adelina Ong: onelab2010@gmail.com
Eero Laine: eero.email@gmail.com
Sozita Goudouna: sozita@gmail.com
Deadline for first draft of “Theatres”: February 20, 2025
Anticipated publication: late-2025
About the Issue Editors
Our work on the notion of scale emerges from research conducted through the Ends Network and a forthcoming book on performance amidst what often feels like end times that was co-authored by fifteen performance scholars and artists from across the planet.
Sozita Goudouna (she/her) is visiting professor at Goldsmiths where she initiated the MA on “Breath Studies” and the author of Beckett's Breath published by Edinburgh University Press.
Eero Laine (he/him) is associate professor and chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance at the University at Buffalo, State University of New York.
Adelina Ong (she/they) is an independent applied performance researcher who works with young people from low-income families in Singapore and London (2003 - present).