Programme
33rd Annual CDE Conference, Konstanz (Germany), 19-22
June 2025
New Stages for Sex, Gender and Sexuality in
Contemporary Theatre
| Thursday, 19 June | ||
09.00–16.00 | PhD forum (led by Clare Wallace & Chris Megson) | Eštok, Tomáš: Karaköse, Onur: Knijff, Alba: Manzella, Charlotte: Polák, Ondřej: Sutherland, Andrew: Thomas, Jade: Vass, Eszter: Welton, Emma: Ye Chengyao: | |
16.00–18.00 | Arrival and registration |
| |
18:00-19:00 | Dinner |
| |
19.00–21.00 | Welcome (Kerstin Schmidt, President of CDE) and |
| |
| Keynote (chair: Leila Michelle Vaziri) | Lynette “Lennox” Goddard: “Performing Black Queer Joy as Activist Resistance” | |
| Friday, 20 June | ||
09.00–10.30 | Panel I – Staging Queerness | Amy Terry: “Where Are All the Butches? The Liberating Potential of Illegibility in Queer Performance” Heidi Liedke & Sarah Busch: “’The system is failing, all of us’: Queering as (Re)directing in I, Joan (2022) and Birds and Bees (2023) by Charlie Josephine” Aloysia Rousseau: “There’s nothing but delight and desire’: The Poetics and Politics of Pleasure in Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois” | |
10.30–11.00 | Coffee Break |
| |
11.00–12.00 | Panel II – Queer Temporalities and Spaces (chair: Ondřej Pilný) | Eva-Maria Windberger: “Complicating Queer Singaporean Theatre History: Ng Yi-Sheng’s Desert Blooms as Documentary Theatre” Benjamin Poore: “Exploding History: Queer Temporalities and Forging Queer Connections in Contemporary Playwriting” | |
12.30–13.30 | Lunch |
| |
14.00–15.30 | Panel III – Bodies and Sexuality (chair: Gemma Edwards) | Ellen Grünkemeier: “Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance (2018): Performing an Intergenerational Dialogue About (Homo)Sexuality” Edyta Lorek-Jezińska: “‘Delicate, honest and raw’: Reclaiming Sexuality in the 2020s Plays by Disabled Playwrights” Sara Reimers: “Authentic Casting: Gender, Sexuality and Representation in Contemporary UK Theatre” | |
15.30–16.00 | Coffee Break |
| |
16.00–17.30 | Panel IV – Gender, Violence and Censorship (chair: Janine Hauthal) | Lesego Chauke: “Of Dogs that Bark in the Night: Dramaturgies of Queering in Qondiswa James’ A Faint Patch of Light” Alex Watson & Kit Narey: “‘be it on the street or on the stage’: Situating the Politics of ‘the Stage’ in Recent Trans Performance” Elisabeth Knittelfelder: “Shifting the Conversation: Testifying Perpetrators in the | |
18.00–19.00 | Dinner |
| |
19.30–20.30 | Playwright in Conversation (chair: Christina Wald) | Charlie Josephine | |
| Saturday, 21 June | |
09.00–10.00 | Keynote (chair: Christina Wald) | Fintan Walsh: “Dances with Death: Grief as a Kind of Movement” |
10.00–10.30 | Coffee Break |
|
10.30–12.00 | Panel V – Theatre and Trans* | Dorothee Birke & Sarah Back: „Transcending Gender, Transcending Genre: Embodied Selves in the Performances of Travis Alabanza and Kama La Mackerel” Elisabeth Massana: “’Dysphoria Mundi’: Raving Against Time in Charlie Josephine’s I, Joan.” Xavier Lemoine: “Trans Intersectional Poetics: Firebird Tattoo by Ty Defoe” |
12.00–13.00 | Lunch |
|
13.00–14.30 | Assembly of members
|
|
14.50 | Departure from Hegne | Train Departure: 15.22 (arrival at Konstanz: 15.35) |
15.45–17.15 | Roundtable “New Stages for Sex, Gender and Sexuality (chair: Christina Wald; Spiegelhalle, Theater Konstanz) | Lea Seiz, dramaturgical team Theater Konstanz Rachel Hann, Associate Professor of Performance and Design and Expert on Scenographics, Transness and Costume (Newcastle) Jennie Reznek & Mark Fleishman, Artistic Directors of Magnet Theatre (Cape |
17.30–18.30 | Dinner (self-paid and pre-booked) | Restaurant Wessenberg |
19.00–c. 21.30
| Theatre performance (Konstanz, Münsterplatz)
| Open-air production of Brecht and
|
| Sunday, 22 June | |
09.00–10.00 | Playwright in Conversation (chair: Leila Michelle Vaziri) | Stef Smith |
10.00–10.30 | Coffee Break |
|
10.30–12.00 | Panel VI – Feminist Stages (chair: Anja Hartl) | Hannah Greenstreet: “Staging desire in Ella Hickson’s Oil (2016), The Writer (2018), Swive [Elizabeth] (2019) and [Anna] (2019)” Clare Wallace: “Feminist Interventions: Gender Politics at the Abbey Theatre since 2016” Trish Reid: “Zinnie Harris: Disrupting the Inevitable Flow of Tragic Time” |
12.00–12.30 | Closing Remarks: Chris Megson, Kerstin Schmidt, Merle Tönnies, Anette Pankratz, Martin Riedelsheimer & Eckart Voigts |
|
12.30–13.30 | Lunch |
|
13.30 | Departure |
|