33th 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 and Martin Middeke) |
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14.00–16.00 | Board meeting |
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14.00–18.00 | Arrival and registration |
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18:00-19:00 | Dinner |
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19.00–21.00 | Welcome |
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| Keynote | Lynette “Lennox” Goddard: “Acting Against Homophobia and Transphobia: Activism, Human Rights, |
| Friday, 20 June | |
09.00–10.30 | Panel I – Staging Queerness (chair: Ralph Poole) | Stephen Greer: “Trigger Warnings, Self-Care and New Writing on the British Stage” 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” |
10.30–10.45 | Coffee Break |
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10.45–12.15 | 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” Aloysia Rousseau: “’There’s nothing but delight and desire’: The Poetics and Politics of Pleasure in Charlie Josephine’s Cowbois” Benjamin Poore: “Exploding History: Queer Temporalities and Forging Queer Connections in Contemporary Playwriting” |
12.30–13.30 | Lunch |
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14.00–15.30 | Panel III – Bodies and Sexuality (chair: tba) | Ellen Grünkemeier: “Matthew Lopez’s The Inheritance (2018): Performing an Intergenerational Dialogue About (Homo)Sexuality” Edyta Lorek-Jezinska: “‘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 |
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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 Workshop Play #JustMen” |
18.00–19.00 | Dinner |
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20.00–21.00 | Playwright in Conversation | Charlie Josephine |
| Saturday, 21 June | |
09.00–10.00 | Keynote | Fintan Walsh: “Stages of Grief in (Post) Pandemic Times” |
10.00–10.30 | Coffee Break |
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10.30–12.00 | Panel V – Theatre and Trans* (chair: tba) | 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 |
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13.00–14.30 | Assembly of Members
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15:00 | Departure Hegne | Train Departure 15.22 (arrival 15.35) |
15.45–17.15 | Roundtable “New Stages for Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Theatre: Practical Perspectives” (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 and Mark Fleishman, Artistic Directors of Magnet Theatre (Cape |
17.30–18:30 | Dinner (Konstanz) |
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19.00–c. 21.00
| Theatre performance (Konstanz, Münsterplatz)
| Open-air production of Brecht and Weill’s The Threepenny Opera by Theater Konstanz in cooperation with Bodensee Philharmonie (in German)
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| Sunday, 22 June | ||||
| 09.00–10.00 | Playwright in Conversation | Stef Smith | ||
| 10.00–10.30 | Coffee Break |
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| 10.30–12.00 | Panel VI – Feminist Stages (chair: tba) | Hannah Greenstreet: “Staging the Politics of Desire in Ella Hickson’s 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 |
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| 12.30–13.30 | Lunch |
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| 13.30 | Departure |
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