In the wake of global movements like Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, questions around the inclusion of oppressed voices and whose body is ‘allowed’ to perform what role sit at the heart of the performing arts community (including poetry, theatre, music and dance). Whether in discussions about colour-blind casting in Hollywood or major opera houses deciding if canonical stage works that problematically depict marginalised people should still be performed, the cultural implications of giving voice to marginalised experiences and ideas through performance are more important now than ever. To date these issues have remained largely untouched by philosophy, yet philosophy can bring important and distinctive understanding to the debate through ethical and aesthetic analysis of performance and embodied voice: What happens when artists invoke other voices in their work, and how does this shape the work’s reception? What are the implications of performing someone else’s lived experience, such as a work that refer to another’s body?

Keynote speakers

• Jeanette Bicknell (Philosopher of Aesthetics, Toronto)
• Ann Cahill (Professor of Philosophy, Elon University) with Christine Hamel (actor, voice and text specialist, scholar and director, Boston University)
• David Davies (Professor of Philosophy, McGill University)
• Jenny Sealey (theatre director, actor and artistic director of Graeae Theatre Company)

Call for Abstracts

The organisers invite abstracts of 500-1000 words on the topic of Embodied Voices for a 20 minute presentation. They welcome presentations from both philosophers and practitioners of the performing arts that address the ethics and politics of voice and body in performance such as:

1. What do we mean by the ‘authentic voice/performance’?
2. Are some works restricted to certain performers (in virtue of the contribution their body makes to the work)? Are there cases in which reperformance of a work by another causes harm?
3. Who ought to have ownership of a particular work? Whose permission is needed to re-perform a particular work?
4. To what extent do the performing arts contribute to moral and political education?
5. Does an audience have a responsibility to listen in a particular way, and what would this entail? Can an artist demand this?
6. How do bodies mean and how do audiences ‘read’ them? Can words and actions be disentangled from one’s voice and body (for instance, can another achieve the same meaning by imitating the gestures of another?) 

Abstracts should be sent to k.d.simecek@warwick.ac.uk by 10^th January 2025. Speakers will be notified of decisions by 31^st January 2025. There will be no conference fee.

Organisers: Toby Young (Guildhall School of Music and Drama) and Karen Simecek (University of Warwick)

The British Society for Aesthetics conference, Philosophy of Performance: Beyond the Continental/Analytic Divide, took place on Friday 24 May 2019 at the University of Kent in Canterbury. It was generously supported by the ������Ƶ, with additional support from the Aesthetics Research Centre at the University of Kent and the Centre for Performance Philosophy at the University of Surrey.  The central aim was to bring together scholars working within analytic philosophy of theatre with scholars working on the more continental-influenced field of Performance Philosophy. We were pleased to find that the conference also drew together a previously somewhat hidden constituency of performance scholars who in different ways were already working across analytic and continental traditions as ordinarily conceived.

The conference was opened by a keynote discussion between Dr Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca (Surrey), founding convenor of the Performance Philosophy organisation, and Dr Tom Stern (UCL) author of Philosophy and Theatre: An Introduction. This discussion outlined how both viewed their work as connecting with the continental/analytic divide, how they viewed the relationship between performance and philosophy, and the question of whether performance can be understood as doing philosophy. After lunch, a panel discussion between Dr Dieter Declercq (Kent) and Athanassia Williamson (NYU) looked at connections between satire and cynicism, and was followed by another panel dialogue between Dr Anna Petronella Foultier (Stockholm) and Dr Anthony Gritten (Royal Academy of Music). This looked at examples of dance and music to tease out connections between creativity and decision-making. The closing keynote was given by Dr Aili Bresnahan (Dayton), which made the case for “multi-methodological competency” (MMC) in philosophy of theatre, arguing that it is both desirable for its own sake, and crucial in order for philosophy of theatre to grow and thrive.

Edited by Daniel Watt

Deadline for submissions: 30th November 2015

This is an open call for submissions to Volume 2 of the online journal, Performance Philosophy.

Performance Philosophy is an emerging interdisciplinary field of thought, creative practice and scholarship, supported by an international network of nearly 2000 scholars and artists. As an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal, Performance Philosophy publishes articles that interrogate what this field might be and that test the relationship between performance and philosophy in all its possible configurations, including the philosophy of performance as well as performance-as-philosophy and philosophy-as-performance.

This is not a themed issue therefore your submission may cover any of the broad range of topics covered by the journal. Volume 1 provides an indication of the potential breadth of subjects addressed by .

Selected articles in Volume 1 also provide initial examples of the possibilities of publishing in this form in terms of the use of images, diagrams, embedded video and sound files. We are interested in scholarship and practice research that draws on a broad range of philosophical traditions, concerned with any aspect of philosophy, whether from Continental or Analytic traditions or beyond, and with any discipline or definition of performance, including but not limited to drama, theatre, dance, music, performance art, live art, screen performance and performance/performativity in everyday life. Published annually, Performance Philosophy showcases the best original research in this emerging field.

Complete submissions of 6-8000 words, including max. 200-word biographies, should be sent to the editor, Dan Watt by 30th November 2015 via the online submission portal at Publication of Performance Philosophy, Volume 2 will be in April 2016. For full details regarding submission and review policy, please refer to the website.

Please send any queries to Dan Watt at d.p.watt@lboro.ac.uk

The editors seek contributions from scholars and practitioners to a volume that will  form the first comprehensive book on phenomenology and performance.  Contributed work should aim to fit into one of three broad categories:

1. General concerns (histories, genealogies, principles, etc.) regarding phenomenology and performance;
2. Phenomenological approaches to and analyses of major categories in the study of performance (embodiment, place, time, language/text, object, audience);
3. Examples, critiques, and analyses of applied phenomenology (creative work which the practitioners considered to be ‘enacted, embodied phenomenology’, or work on and in the field of performative phenomenological writing).

While the above categories reflect the interests and structure of the book, work that combines or cuts across these would of course also be welcome. Specifically, some of the key questions that contributions might address include:

• How might the history and development of the relationship between phenomenology and performance be productively charted and analysed?
• How do we account for the recent resurgence in phenomenological approaches to theatre and performance? How might we most productively consider the relationship between this resurgence – and phenomenology in general – with the theoretical and philosophical paradigms that dominated the latter part of the 20th century?
• What constitutes a phenomenological approach to the study of performance?
• Is ‘approach’ a fitting term, or is it more apt to speak of phenomenological method(s)? If so, what defines such method(s), and how
malleable might these methods be?
• In what ways is the term phenomenology being deployed currently, and what case might be made for greater rigour and definition in the use of the term?
• How might phenomenology account for what we might term the fundamental ‘things’ of performance (body, space, time, language, object, audience)? Does phenomenology offer a justification for considering performance in terms of ‘fundamental things’ (a consideration which might readily be branded as essentialism)?
• What impact has phenomenology had on performance practitioners?
• Can performance itself be explicitly ‘phenomenological’? If so, what hallmark traits does a phenomenological performance bear? And are there tools or methods for effectively creating phenomenological performance?
• How might phenomenology bridge what has long been perceived as a gap between performance and its (written) reception/critique/analysis? Does phenomenological writing bring us ‘closer’ to the performance(s) that for its subject?

Please submit abstracts of 500 words along with a cv to both editors – Dr. Stuart Grant (stuart.grant@monash.edu) and Dr. Matt Wagner (m.wagner@surrey.ac.uk) – by 31 March 2014. If accepted, full contributions will be expected by 31 October 2014; conventional essays should be between 6000-8000 words, and the length and format of contributions from practitioners will be determined in negotiation with the editors at the point of accepting the abstract.
Visit Phenomenology of Performance at:

Stuart Grant
Director Performance Research Unit
Coordinator Graduate Research Program in Theatre Performance and Music
Centre for Theatre and Performance
Room 216, Building 68 (PAC)
Monash University Clayton VIC 3800 Australia
Ph: +613 9905 2133 M: +614 0312 0740 F: +613 9904 4209