Theatre Journal Special Issue for December 2026 

For this special issue on “Staying Put,” Theatre Journal invites submissions that engage with “staying put” as a conceptual framework and/or as a foundational aspect of theatre, dance, and performance studies scholarship. This theme is inspired by the resilience performance groups have historically exhibited—and continue to exhibit—in response to challenges such as the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising rents, lack of funding, and political instability. Many practitioners and companies have resisted displacement, remaining in the spaces where they cultivate their craft, generate new artistic possibilities, and engage with their communities. A notable example is Su Teatro in Denver, Colorado. By mobilizing community support, in 2024 the Latine theatre company successfully paid off its mortgage and even expanded its space in the face of rapid gentrification. In cases such as this, the act of staying put not only ensures the continued presence of the embodied arts in a given locality but also asserts social and cultural significance. Given the increasing presence of conservative discourses across the globe, that any company or artistic collective chooses to stay put is a political and radical act. By choosing to remain, preserving physical and artistic footholds, groups and practitioners reinforce the vital role of the arts in the community.

At the same time, “staying put” invites expansive interpretation, encompassing both durational and ephemeral interventions as strategies of resistance and refusal. Protest actions such as sit-ins, die-ins, and teach-ins exemplify how physical presence can operate as a performative tactic— disrupting dominant narratives and drawing attention to urgent sociopolitical issues. Beyond overt protest, performance artists, dancers, and theatremakers have long explored the concept of staying put through site-specific works, endurance-based practices, and installations that reclaim or reimagine contested spaces. Performances foregrounding slowness, stillness, or repetition often function as aesthetic and political acts of persistence, challenging systems that valorize mobility, speed, and displacement.

“Staying put” also evokes ideas of rootedness or plantedness, inviting reflection on nonhuman agents and their relationship to place and acts of resistance. Additionally, archival and dramaturgical interventions, along with performance practices grounded in ghostly or reenactment-based encounters, offer alternative ways of “staying put”—resurrecting marginalized histories, reclaiming cultural memory, and insisting on the presence of voices that institutions or dominant discourses have attempted to erase. Ultimately, “staying put” invites us to consider what it means to perform remains: to examine the who, what, and where of remaining.

Overarching questions of this special issue include: How does the act of “staying put” function as a form of artistic and political resistance in the face of displacement, gentrification, or systemic oppression? In what ways does “staying put” challenge dominant notions of time, movement, and progress in theatre, dance, and performance? How do theatre, dance, and performance groups sustain themselves in contested or precarious spaces?

This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal Coeditor Christina Baker. We will consider both full-length essays for the print edition (6,000-9,000 words) as well as proposals for short provocations, video and/or photo essays, and other creative, multimedia material for our online platform (500-2,000 words). For information about submission, visit: https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/author-guidelines.

Article submissions (6,000-9,000 words) should reach us by February 1, 2026. If this deadline is not possible for you due to extenuating circumstances, please contact Christina Baker to inquire about a possible extension. She welcomes questions and inquiries at christina.baker0001@temple.edu. 

The deadline for submissions to the online platform (500-2,000 words) is June 1, 2026. Online Editor Tarryn Chun welcomes questions and inquiries regarding submissions to the online platform at tchun@nd.edu. 

Submit via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatrejournal.

ATDS Call for Nominations - Co-Conference Planner

ATDS is holding an election in 2026 for the following position:

• Co-Conference Planner: The term of office for the co-conference planner is two (2) years. During the first year, the newly elected co-conference planner will work with the current conference planner. During the second year, the elected conference planner will work with the newly-elected associate conference planner.

The Co-Conference Planner’s term will begin following the annual ATDS meeting at the 2026 Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference. You can find information about the Co-Conference position in Article 5, section 13 of the organizational bylaws, available on the ATDS website (https://www.atds.org/bylaws).

Open Nominations 

Nominations are open until February 15, 2026. You may nominate yourself or others. In accordance with the bylaws, the ATDS Nominating Committee will prepare a slate of candidates. Nominees will be contacted by the Nominating Committee and must confirm their willingness to serve prior to finalization of the election slate. The election will be held the last week of February via anonymous online polling and will be open to all ATDS members.

Please send nominations and self-nominations to atds2026nominatingcommittee@gmail.com.

ATDS is committed to growing our programming centered on anti-racist efforts as well as professionalization workshops and seminars for our members and we welcome nominations of scholars at all stages of their careers. Keep in mind that ATDS is currently offering pay-what-you-can membership, which can be found here. The committee especially encourages nominations of BIPOC scholars and artists who work in and/or on theatre of the Americas.

Please send questions and concerns to atds2026nominatingcommittee@gmail.com.

Thank you,

Jocelyn L. Buckner, Heidi Nees, Bryan M. Vandevender

ATDS Nominating Committee

Deadline: February 15, 2026

THEATRE ANNUAL
A Journal of Theatre and Performance of the Americas
Call for Articles, 2026 Issue

Theatre Annual is the oldest theatre periodical continuously published in the United States. It is dedicated to examiningtheatre and performance of the Americas. We construe “America” broadly to include North, Central, and South America and the Caribbean Islands. Articles may treat work in these geographic areas or work from these areas that is presented elsewhere in the world. We welcome articles on the history and ethnography of performance, drawing from such areas as theatre studies, performance studies, popular culture, music, anthropology, dance, communication, philosophy, folklore, history, and areas of interest that cross disciplinary lines.

Submissions should follow the guidelines in The Chicago Manual of Style, 17th edition  (endnotes, no Works Cited list). Authors should submit articles as Word attachments to the editor, Dr. Jonathan Shandell (shandelj@arcadia.edu). In order to assist in the anonymous peer review process, the author’s identity should not be revealed in the manuscript except on a separate title page that should also include full contact information (academic affiliation, mailing address, home, cell, and work telephone numbers, and email address).  Articles should be 5,000 to 6,500 words long including  notes.  Illustrations  are  highly  desirable; authors are  responsible  for  securing  rights.  Our  submission  deadline  is February 15, 2026. Please allow at least eight weeks after the deadline for a response.

Scholars wishing to write book reviews for Theatre Annual are invited to send an inquiry to the book review editor, Michael Lueger (mlueger@gmail.com). If accepted, reviewers are asked to prepare their manuscripts in conformity with the guidelines in The Chicago Manual of Style without footnotes and submit them as a Word attachment.  Reviews should be 750 to 800 words for a review of a single book, 1,000 to 1,200 words for a two-book review, and 2,500 words for a five- or six-book review essay. Submission deadline for book reviews is April 1, 2026.  If  publishers  would  like  to  send  review  copies, they should contact the book review editor via email to make arrangements.

Theatre Annual, founded in 1942 by the Theatre Library Association, is now published in the fall of each year by The College of William and Mary in Virginia, in association with the American Theatre and Drama Society. For more information on TA, see http://theatreannual.atds.org/

Theatre Journal Special Issue for September 2026

In her introduction to a special section in a 2002 issue of Dance Chronicle, Sally Banes called for attention to an emerging subfield in dance studies that she dubbed “critical institutional studies.”[1] Distinct from what were established discourses of institutional critique in art history and visual and media studies, critical institutional studies would align more directly with critical museum studies, new materialisms, and Marxist criticism in its focus on material structures of support for dance creation, presentation, and reception. Since Banes’s 2002 call, predominant strands of “critical institutional studies” have emerged in relation to theatre, dance, and performance studies. These include scholarship in critical university studies that is more broadly concerned with how the arts function (or don’t) in “the” university[2] as well as more discipline specific investigation into what Sarah Wilbur calls an “infrastructural approach” investigating “cultures of support,” such as Hillary Miller’s 2016 book Drop Dead: Performance in Crisis, 1970s New York. [3] We could also consider recent works like Lisa Biggs’s The Healing Stage: Black Women, Incarceration, and the Art of Transformation (2022) and her analysis of the prison as an institution under the umbrella of critical institutional studies. Administrative and editorial labor are also matters of critical institutional studies, as Olive Demar makes clear in her incisive introduction to a recent special issue of Dance Chronicle on “critical institutional research.”[4]

Another angle on critical institutional studies, that of “institutionality,” “suggests that institutional characteristics can be regarded as a general condition of modern societies.”[5] Analyses of institutionality, the editors of a 2022 volume in political theory and ethnography claim, attend to the “heterogeneous, dynamic, and contingent” qualities of institutions and their histories, qualities that also might characterize the work of theatre, dance, and performance studies.[6] For this special issue on “Institutionality,” Theatre Journal invites submissions that consider “institutionality” as a keyword for histories and theories of performance across temporalities and geographies.

Submissions might address:

• Precarities of state institutional support for theatre, dance, and performance underhistorical, ongoing, and increasing authoritarianism

• Counter- or anti-institutional performance formations

• Institution-building efforts and their commitments to and refutations of culturalimperialism, colonialism, and white supremacy

• Figures, collectives, and performance works that advance institutional critiques (of arts presenting spaces but also of institutional spaces like schools, hospitals, parks, and prisons)

• Limits and affordances of institutionality for performance cultures, practices, and values often considered peripheral to the political economic work of institutions in modernity.

This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal Editor Ariel Nereson. We will consider both full-length essays for the print edition (6,000-9,000 words) as well as proposals for short provocations, video and/or photo essays, and other creative, multimedia material for our online platform (500-2,000 words). For information about submission, visit: https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/author-guidelines.

Article submissions (6,000-9,000 words) should reach us by January 1, 2026. If this deadline is not possible for you due to extenuating circumstances, please contact Ariel Nereson to inquire about a possible extension. She welcomes questions and inquiries at anereson@buffalo.edu.

The deadline for submissions to the online platform (500-2,000 words) is April 1, 2026. Online Editor Tarryn Chun welcomes questions and inquiries regarding submissions to the online platform at tchun@nd.edu.

Submit via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatrejournal.

[1] Sally Banes, “Introduction,” Dance Chronicle 25, no. 1 (2002): 95.

[2] See, for example, Kandice Chuh, The Difference Aesthetics Makes: On the Humanities “After Man,” (Duke University Press, 2019); Ben Spatz, Race and the Forms of Knowledge: Technique, Identity, and Place inArtistic Research (Northwestern University Press, 2024).

[3] Sarah Wilbur, “Who Makes a Dance?: Studying Infrastructure Through a Dance Lens,” in Futures of Dance Studies, ed. Susan Manning, Janice Ross, and Rebecca Schneider (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020), 362, 361. Shannon Jackson’s Social Works: Performing Art, Supporting Publics (Routledge, 2011) nuances art historical accounts of institutional critique (as a genre) through discussion of theatricality as an aesthetic value and stage management as a labor practice therein.

[4] Olive Demar, “More Than Meets the Eye: Towards Critical Institutional Research in Dance Studies,” Dance Chronicle 45, no. 1 (2022): 1-6.

[5] Yannick Porsché, Ronny Scholz, and Jaspal Naveel Singh, eds., Institutionality: Studies of Discursive andMaterial (Re-)ordering (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 2.6 Ibid., 3.

From Michael Bennett:

Dear colleagues/friends,

(Please forgive the cross-posting and feel free to distribute this CFP.) 

I am guest editing a Special Issue of Modern Drama on Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to mark Albee's Centenary celebration in 2028. Entitled "New Ways of Looking at Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in Honor of the Edward Albee Centenary," this special issue of Modern Drama is planned for Summer 2028. I believe that the title of the special issue is more than self-explanatory. 

While final essays of 6-9k words will not be due until May 2027, I kindly ask potential contributors to email me an abstract of up to 250 words at bennettm@uww.edu by June 1, 2026. You may also feel free to email me to informally discuss a potential idea for an article for the special issue.

Thanks and take care,

Michael

Michael Y. Bennett, Ph.D.

Professor of English

Affiliated Faculty in Theatre

Affiliated Faculty in Philosophy

University of Wisconsin-Whitewater

Life Member and Visiting Fellow (’22)

Clare Hall, University of Cambridge

President, The Edward Albee Society

Editor, Theatre and Performance Notes and Counternotes

Editor, Routledge Studies on Edward Albee and American Theatre

http://michaelybennett.com

Theatre Journal Special Issue for December 2026 

For this special issue on “Staying Put,” Theatre Journal invites submissions that engage with “staying put” as a conceptual framework and/or as a foundational aspect of theatre, dance, and performance studies scholarship. This theme is inspired by the resilience performance groups have historically exhibited—and continue to exhibit—in response to challenges such as the pressures of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising rents, lack of funding, and political instability. Many practitioners and companies have resisted displacement, remaining in the spaces where they cultivate their craft, generate new artistic possibilities, and engage with their communities. A notable example is Su Teatro in Denver, Colorado. By mobilizing community support, in 2024 the Latine theatre company successfully paid off its mortgage and even expanded its space in the face of rapid gentrification. In cases such as this, the act of staying put not only ensures the continued presence of the embodied arts in a given locality but also asserts social and cultural significance. Given the increasing presence of conservative discourses across the globe, that any company or artistic collective chooses to stay put is a political and radical act. By choosing to remain, preserving physical and artistic footholds, groups and practitioners reinforce the vital role of the arts in the community.

At the same time, “staying put” invites expansive interpretation, encompassing both durational and ephemeral interventions as strategies of resistance and refusal. Protest actions such as sit-ins, die-ins, and teach-ins exemplify how physical presence can operate as a performative tactic— disrupting dominant narratives and drawing attention to urgent sociopolitical issues. Beyond overt protest, performance artists, dancers, and theatremakers have long explored the concept of staying put through site-specific works, endurance-based practices, and installations that reclaim or reimagine contested spaces. Performances foregrounding slowness, stillness, or repetition often function as aesthetic and political acts of persistence, challenging systems that valorize mobility, speed, and displacement.

“Staying put” also evokes ideas of rootedness or plantedness, inviting reflection on nonhuman agents and their relationship to place and acts of resistance. Additionally, archival and dramaturgical interventions, along with performance practices grounded in ghostly or reenactment-based encounters, offer alternative ways of “staying put”—resurrecting marginalized histories, reclaiming cultural memory, and insisting on the presence of voices that institutions or dominant discourses have attempted to erase. Ultimately, “staying put” invites us to consider what it means to perform remains: to examine the who, what, and where of remaining.

Overarching questions of this special issue include: How does the act of “staying put” function as a form of artistic and political resistance in the face of displacement, gentrification, or systemic oppression? In what ways does “staying put” challenge dominant notions of time, movement, and progress in theatre, dance, and performance? How do theatre, dance, and performance groups sustain themselves in contested or precarious spaces?

This special issue will be edited by Theatre Journal Coeditor Christina Baker. We will consider both full-length essays for the print edition (6,000-9,000 words) as well as proposals for short provocations, video and/or photo essays, and other creative, multimedia material for our online platform (500-2,000 words). For information about submission, visit: https://jhuptheatre.org/theatre-journal/author-guidelines.

Article submissions (6,000-9,000 words) should reach us by February 1, 2026. If this deadline is not possible for you due to extenuating circumstances, please contact Christina Baker to inquire about a possible extension. She welcomes questions and inquiries at christina.baker0001@temple.edu. 

The deadline for submissions to the online platform (500-2,000 words) is June 1, 2026. Online Editor Tarryn Chun welcomes questions and inquiries regarding submissions to the online platform at tchun@nd.edu. 

Submit via ScholarOne: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/theatrejournal.

ROLLING SUBMISSIONS

From Heather Barfield:

Dear colleagues,

I am currently seeking submissions for the Theatre Topics Online section, for which I serve as Online Editor. If you have an article that is nearing completion—or an idea you would like to develop—I would be glad to consider it. We welcome a wide range of topics and formats.

At this time, I am particularly interested in work that critically interrogates theatre practices and performances through reflexive auto-ethnographic analysis, including approaches informed by affect theory, ritual theory, play, and vulnerability. I also welcome submissions that engage with professional development, especially those emerging from pedagogical exercises, assessment strategies, or classroom-based inquiry.

In addition, I am eager to broaden the scope of what this online platform can showcase. Theatre Topics Online is a space uniquely suited to innovative digital formats, and I encourage contributors to explore the possibilities listed below.

Submission Details

Online Articles

• 1,000–4,000 words

• May connect to a special issue or stand alone, particularly if supported by audiovisual material

• Must offer a clear argument supported by evidence and referenced using MLA style

• Reviewed by editorial staff rather than through double-blind peer review

• Multimedia (video, images, etc.) may be included with proper copyright permissions secured by the author

• Innovative digital formats include:

  • Blog or vlog posts

  • Video essays

  • Video interviews or conversations

  • Video playlists or short documentaries

  • Teaching resource videos

  • Interactive or augmented video content

  • Photo essays

  • Podcasts

  • Other multimedia-based explorations of practice or pedagogy

Additional Formats

• Notes from the Field (3,000–4,000 words):
  First-person accounts of teaching, rehearsal processes, production work, or other aspects of theatre-making.

• Big Interviews (2,000–3,000 words):
  Conversations with notable practitioners, accompanied by images and/or video.

• My 10 Top Tips (≤1,500 words):
  Short, practical contributions offering advice on any relevant facet of theatre practice or instruction.

If you would like to discuss an idea or explore whether your project is a good fit, please feel free to contact me at heather.barfield@austincc.edu

Warm regards,
Heather Barfield
Online Editor, Theatre Topics