Call for Participation, second round: 

Practising Shakespeare: new collaborations, expanding horizons

British Shakespeare Association Conference

Wednesday 25 – Saturday 28 June 2025

School of Arts and Creative Technologies, University of York

Any BSA member in good standing can submit a proposal. To join the BSA, please visit Join the BSA.

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So we grew together,

Like to a double cherry, seeming parted,

But yet an union in partition,

Two lovely berries moulded on one stem;

So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart

A Midsummer Night’s Dream 3.2

The complex relationship between text and performance is uniquely felt in Shakespeare Studies, and has been continuously reconstituted and reframed. Meanwhile, academic study and practice (both professional and amateur) often run in parallel but separate streams – a phenomenon often reinforced by handbooks on how to ‘do’ Shakespeare. These advocate resisting ‘academic analysis’ in favour of ‘exercises and approaches that can aid the acting and directing process’, a position which risks placing the two into an antagonistic relationship. Yet despite this apparent impasse, explorations which move across and between the spheres of research, practice and pedagogy have demonstrated the rich potential of collaboration and sharing approaches to early modern drama. As Shakespeare and his contemporaries continue to be explored and reinvented on stage, screen and new media, we ask what new horizons might Shakespeare Studies look towards in performance and practice? What challenges, by placing practice and performance as a central focus, must we confront, problematise, or solve when working with Shakespeare and his contemporaries? How might we continue and develop productive conversations and collaborations between teaching, practice and research?

Keynote Speakers include: Emma Whipday (University of Newcastle), Abigail Rokinson-Woodall (Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham), and theatre director Amy Leach (Leeds Playhouse)

And a special performance by Edward’s Boys

Topics

We invite proposals to consider topics which include (but are not limited to):

• Shakespeare in practice
• Shakespeare’s (British and European) contemporaries in practice
• intersections of the practical and theoretical
• models of cross-collaboration and exploration
• practice-as-research / practice-led-research
• practical approaches to early modern texts in the classroom, the university, the conservatoire
• the relationship between text /print, and performance in practice
• practice and/ in the past
• practice and performance as modes of historical investigation and interpretation
• new modes of practice and reception offered by new technologies (including AR/XR/VR)
• interdisciplinary conversations around practice
• practice, cross-sector collaboration and the impact agenda
• Shakespeare, practice and the health of the humanities and arts – implications for schools, universities and the cultural industries
• editing for performance
• education and performance
• rhetoric
• embodiment
• voice
• approaches to gender in performance
• approaches to race in performance
• approaches to transgender and nonbinary identities and representations in scholarship and performance
• ethics of practice
• practice and community; amateur Shakespeare practice

We also welcome proposals for topics outside the conference’s central theme.

Format

We wish to offer a wide range of possible formats, and encourage proposals to think creatively. The venue facilities include seminar rooms, lecture halls, rehearsal rooms, theatre spaces, screening rooms and a cinema, virtual reality systems and a 360° video projection demonstration space. 

Proposals are invited to consider a range of formats, including those below. 

We are dividing the call in two stages:

The Stage 1 call, for seminars, workshops etc has closed.

Stage 2 – deadline Friday 14th February 2025

• Panel (15–20-minute paper presentations + discussion, c.3 presenters)
• Poster
• Roundtable conversation 
• Seminar enrolment

Seminars include:

• “Original Practices”: Pasts, Presents, and Futures (Dr Benjamin Blyth, University of Calgary)
• Coordinated Casting in Shakespeare: Matchmaking and Pragmatism (Dr Jakub Boguszak, University of Southampton)
• Shakespeare and Gesture (Prof Brian Cummings, University of York, and Prof Tiffany Stern, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham)
• Practicing Shakespeare: Using Autotheory to Decolonialise Shakespeare Studies (Dr Koel Chatterjee, Trinity Laban)
• Elizabethan Paratextual Documents and Performance Creation (Lizzie Conrad Hughes, Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham and Valentina Vinci, Shake-Scene Shakespeare)
• Shakespeare in Theory, Theory in Practice (Dr Alexander Thom, University of Leeds)
• Practising Methodologies (Ann-Sophie Bosshard, Lukas Arnold, Timothy Holden, and Jifeng Huang, University of Zurich)

Full details of seminars can be found here.

Informal enquiries are encouraged, particularly concerning proposals exploring formats beyond more traditional panel/seminar/roundtable offers – contact Ollie Jones at oliver.jones@york.ac.uk

Downloadable version of the CfP.

Any BSA member in good standing can submit a proposal. To join the BSA, please visit Join the BSA.