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CDE 2025

New Stages for Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Theatre

New Stages for Sex, Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Theatre

Programme

You can download the programme here.

 

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: Intersections Between Queer Theory and Leftist Politics in Anglophone Drama”

Karaköse, Onur:Dramatizing Mass Shootings on the Contemporary American Stage: Theater and the Public – Negotiation of a Nation in Crisis

Knijff, Alba:Feminist Ontologies in 21st Century British Theatre”

Manzella, Charlotte: “Temporalities in Contemporary British Climate Change Theatre”

Polák, Ondřej: Animatedness in  Contemporary American Drama”

Sutherland, Andrew:The Virus as Future’s Ghost: Performing the undetectable status as hauntology of possible futures

Thomas, Jade: The Playtext as (In)Visible Mediator: How Metadrama Negotiates Dramatic Representations of Blackness

Vass, Eszter: “Trauma and Metatheatre in Contemporary Anglophone Drama”

Welton, Emma: “Camp Re/production: Queer-Feminist Performance in Austerity London (2014-2024)”

Ye Chengyao: “Staging Real-Life Nazi Perpetrators: The Dramaturgies and Ethics of Holocaust Theatre”

14.00–18.00

Arrival and registration

 

18:00-19:00

Dinner

 

19.00–21.00

Welcome (Kerstin Schmidt, President of CDE) and “Charting New Stages: An Introduction” (Christina Wald & Leila Michelle Vaziri)

 

 

Keynote

Lynette “Lennox” Goddard: “Acting Against Homophobia and Transphobia: Activism, Human Rights, and Solidarity in Black British LGBTIQ+ Performance”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

20.00–21.00

Playwright in Conversation

Charlie Josephine

 

Saturday, 21 June

09.00–10.00

Keynote

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* (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

 

13.00–14.30

Assembly of members

 

 

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 Town)

17.30–18:30

Dinner (Konstanz)

 

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)

 

 

Sunday, 22 June

09.00–10.00

Playwright in Conversation

Stef Smith

10.00–10.30

Coffee Break

 

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

 

12.30–13.30

Lunch

 

13.30

Departure