Open research questions in Theatre and Performance Studies
84 unresolved questions extracted from the limitations and future-work sections of 5,890 Theatre and Performance Studies papers in our library. Each links back to the study that raised it.
What the literature leaves open
Second, the codification offered here provides a documentary template, namely the six-element and five-part vocabulary used throughout this article, that could inform how the Tiboaar and similar rituals are catalogued within national and UNESCO intangible cultural heritage frameworks, which currently have no standard means of registering dramaturgical structure as a heritage attribute distinct from a ritual's religious or social function.
Few studies have examined how actors describe and experience performance anxiety and its consequences for their professional prac- tice (Goodman and Kaufman, 2014; Kumar, 2019; Meyer-Dinkgräfe et al.
Hidden struggles: professional Norwegian actors’ experiences with performance anxiety and its consequences in their daily work · 2026 · DOIDrawing on Miranda Fricker’s theoretical framework of epistemic injustice, the study investigates both testimonial injustices, when a speaker’s credibility is deflated through prejudice, and hermeneutical injustice, when interpretative resources needed to make sense of certain experiences are lacking in a collective.
<b>From Verbatim Illusion to Epistemic Collapse: Knowledge, Authority, and Testimonial Injustice in</b> <b>Dennis Kelly's</b><b> </b><b><i>Taking Care of Baby</i></b> · 2026 · DOIFuture research could examine how similar spatial and 90 Hambuwali, Dwimarwati, Listiani: Hybrid Culture and Digital Innovation in Contemporary Performing Arts technological negotiations operate across Performance Arts and Digital Media, different cities, communities, and 19(3), 395–415. The study is limited to a single case and therefore does not seek to generalize all forms of Indonesian digital theatre.
Hybrid Culture and Digital Innovation in Contemporary Performing Arts: A Case Study of Enda Walsh’s Disco Pig Performance at Brotherhood Bunker Bandung · 2026 · DOInet ISSN 2709-2607 Finally, the study recommends further research into the concepts of dual reflective demand and reflection- beyond-action in other African and international applied theatre contexts.
The reflective facilitator: Navigating practice, ethics, and community in theatre for development (TfD) in Ghana · 2026 · DOII believe sociodramas that invite diverse groups to co-create and enact shared dreams could yield quite positive results. Well-conceived and directed exercises that bring together ethnically heterogeneous groups could reveal our shared human aspirations as participants contribute to fashioning and enacting their common dream. The shared dream process can also help unearth underlying biases, misunderstandings, and antagonisms that can be addressed honestly and respectfully through action and reflection within the context of how the group might actualize its common vision of possible futures. I have directed this drama with individual groups whose members’ ages have ranged from their late teens to early 80s as well as with groups of Christians, Jews, and adherents of both faiths. While I most often work with faith-based or spiritually oriented groups, I believe this drama could be successfully adapted for a wide range of audiences. In communal, civic, or even business settings, the warmup could be focused more intentionally toward nontheistic selections similar to ‘‘The Merger Poem’’ and ‘‘Imagine’’ or toward articulated visions of hopeful futures particularly germane to the specific group. As we know, the participants are ultimately the ones who fashion, enact, and reflect upon the vision they cocreate. In 1969 the noted dream researcher, Jeremey Taylor, developed a volunteer retraining exercise to overcome ‘‘liberal racism’’ as part of his work with Unitarian Universalist Project East Bay. He offers the following reflection on the program of projective group dream sharing he introduced into that Northern California training: as soon as sharing dreams became a focus of our shared attention, people suddenly became much more interested in, and respectful of each other. (Taylor, 1989) His observation parallels my own experience when directing Enacting God’s Dream. The drama amplifies the interest participants have in what prompted their fellow enactors’ behaviors and their own characters’ responses. It also heightens their respect for the host of apparent and underlying factors that help to fashion our aspirations and interactions. As one enactor during the above described drama l D o w n o a d e d f r o m h t t p: / / m e r i d a n a. i l l e n p r e s s. c o m / j / p s g p a r t i c e - p d l f / / / / 6 6 1 1 0 5 2 4 7 3 3 3 0 1 8 - 0 0 0 1 5 _ 1 p d. / f b y a s g p p @ a s g p p o r g o n 2 4 A p r i l. 2 0 2 4 Enacting God’s Dream 111 observed, Enacting God’s Dream reminds us that the inclusive circle of our common humanity ‘‘needs to continually grow.’’ REFERENCES Garcia, A. (2010). Healing with action methods on the world stage. In E. Leveton, Healing collective trauma using sociodrama and drama therapy. New York, NY: Springer. Garcia, A. (2017, August 4–5). Sociodrama directing skills: A two-day intensive. Monroe Township, NJ.
The dramatic legacy of Mykola Chyrskyi is scarce and consists of several texts, among which the most famous are the plays “Otaman Pisnya” (1936), “Andriy Karabut” (1936) and “Drunken Raid” (1938).
THE POETICS OF THE DRAMATIC MINIATURE “THE WAY FROM KRUTY” BY MYKOLA CHYRSKYI (VISNYKIVETS’ EXPERIENCE) · 2022 · DOIThe author argues that far from being limited to the sounds of speech and language in general, musicality also encompasses a variety of non-musical sounds, the unravelling of the play’s narrative and the psychological makeup of its characters; it also penetrates deeply into the structure of the text.
Theatre for Early Years (TEY) has grown in popularity in recent years, but while diverse practices have emerged around the world, coherent and robust theory concerning this challenging field is lacking.
Toward a grounded dramaturgy, part 2: Equality and artistic integrity in Theatre for Early Years · 2018 · DOIRobinson cautions that without a clear organizational model, “devising can be a long, turbulent process with conflicting artistic opinions and no agreement on how decisions get made” (97).
Guest Editors Kathryn Ricketts and Patrick Lewis, University of Regina, Education Johan Huizinga (1944) reminds us that, “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing” (1950, p.
Originality/value – The paper sheds light on distinctive albeit poorly studied aspects of tools and ICT within organizations, namely their capacity to reconfigure meaning, which more empirical studies could further investigate.
“‘Event’ is when the link to the next phrase has not yet been determined, when it remains contingent: it is…the question ‘Arrive-t-il?’” (27–28; quoted from Lyotard 1988: 70).
1 In its essence, the play is a tragic epic that unfolds as part collective ritual—an Oberammergau for the CNN generation—and part crash-course in the complexities of a land whose past has been little known by those eager to shape its future.
Staging the Catastrophe: The Tricycle Theatre's The Great Game: Afghanistan and Its Diplomatic Journey from London to the Pentagon, 2010-11 · 2011 · DOIA collaboration between universities and ASSITEJ international to further research on theatre for young audiences (TYA) coordinated by University of Agder (Norway), the University of Hildesheim (Ge.
Although I remain uncertain of how and or to what degree the work of the afore-mentioned groups have been influential on the current theatrical scene in the United States, it is certainly true that many of the tools and approaches of these and other pioneering groups and individuals have been widely adopted in the academic, amateur, and professional theatres.
Cummings's conception of experimental theatre as it informs his understudied play Him, which the Provincetown Players produced in 1928 under the direction of James Light but which critics have dismissed alternately as a distraction from Cummings's poetry or as an example of a failed closet drama.
The Space Stage and the Circus: E.E. Cummings's <i>Him</i> and Frederick Kiesler's <i>Raumbühne</i> · 2008 · DOIThis article examines two little known early plays by Vladimir Nabokov, "Tragediia Gospodina Morna" (written 1923-24) and "Chelovek iz SSSR" (written 1926).
Exile in Theatre/Theatre in Exile: Nabokov's Early Plays, "Tragediia Gospodina Morna" and "Chelovek iz SSSR" · 2007 · DOIAll Theater Is Revolutionary Theater is not concerned with actual performance; rather, it makes use of the notion of "performance as such," the fact that "the specific philosophical and social effect of drama requires that it be performed but implies no standards for, or limits upon, how or how well it is performed" (5).
Susana Bloch, having conducted lectures and workshops at conferences of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education since 1991, was presenting her work to the larger community of American theatre artists; I wrote as a novice who had experimented with a portion of the technique, my familiarity with it limited to attendance at ATHE sessions and a review of articles written by Bloch and her colleagues.
Definitions and assessments of dramatic realism have varied widely over the years, but recently a kind of negative consensus has emerged, gathered around several interrelated nodes in the network of theatre, theory, and culture: realism stands in opposition of current experimentalism in the theatre, to the reading strategies of many current literary theories, and to the cultural milieu of the time of the sign.
" Originating each impulse from center needs to be rehearsed even when the combatants are just marking the fight; whenever the movement is limited to arms and legs and heads and centered breathing is not behind it, any urge to make sound will not be organic and whatever sounds are produced may appear phony and unconvincing.
In order to move beyond such a position to anything resembling textual and critical analysis, it seems to me that three closely related questions need to be explored: I Is the iUocutionary level of the dialogue always and uniformly dominant in the drama: are there not, that is, other strata of linguistic activities or other modes of language-games (especially global.
theatre groups, a puppet There is an outstanding theatre program con- sisting of a three year school of Theatre Art, community theatre with performances for the children and classes in puppetry for teachers and normal school stu- dents, and a Children's Theatre which has been limited to a two-month season but which ex- pects to operate on a yearlong basis beginning in 1952.
Conflicting findings were obtained in the relationship between speech proficiency and scholastic ability, and between speech proficien- cy and ability in English (silent reading, me- chanics, etc. While findings in regard the incom- group study approach are necessarily plete, the quality of the research projects in pro- gress indicates that such a plan offers sufficient possibilities to justify further investigation of this approach to research at the graduate level.
Most-cited papers in Theatre and Performance Studies
- Attending live theatre improves empathy, changes attitudes, and leads to pro-social behavior · Journal of Experimental Social Psychology · 2021 · 53 citations
- Creativity and craft: the information‐seeking behavior of theatre artists · Journal of Documentation · 2010 · 50 citations
- The Spectacle and Organization Studies · Organization Studies · 2017 · 47 citations
- 'Putting Yourself in Other People's Shoes': The use of Forum theatre to explore refugee and homeless issues in schools · Journal of Moral Education · 2002 · 44 citations
- Audience Agency in Social Performance · Cultural Sociology · 2021 · 39 citations
- ‘We set up a small world’: preschool teachers’ involvement in children’s imaginative play · International Journal of Early Years Education · 2018 · 39 citations
- Creating dialogue by storytelling · Journal of Workplace Learning · 2013 · 21 citations
- Changing identities through collective performance at events: the case of the Redhead Days · Leisure Studies · 2020 · 17 citations
- Remote rituals in virtual courts · Journal of Law and Society · 2021 · 17 citations
- Contentious Tactics as Jazz Performances: A Pragmatist Approach to the Study of Repertoire Change · Sociological Theory · 2022 · 17 citations
Most recent work
- On action type labels: Can enactments in theater rehearsals be understood as proposals? · Research on Language and Social Interaction · 2026
- From Three Acts to Bedroom Minutes: Micro-Theatre Compression and Bedroom Theatre as a Micro-Spatial Method of Intimate Performance · International Journal of Music and Performing Arts · 2026
- Cosmo-modernism and theater in India: writing and staging multilingual modernisms · Studies in Theatre and Performance · 2026
- Posthuman Ethical Aesthetics: An Applied Theatre Case · Journal of Aesthetic Education · 2026
- SCENOGRAPHY AND SYMBOLIC MINIMALISM IN SWINGS OF LOVE: A PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF STAGE SPACE, OBJECT AND VISUAL MEANING · ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts · 2026
- Manipulation and Animation: Theatrical Construction of the Relationship Between "Self" and "Other" in Puppetry Performance · Scientific Journal Of Humanities and Social Sciences · 2026
- A Comparative Study of Dejiang Nuo Xi, Youyang Masked Yang Xi, and Indian Sanskrit Drama · Journal of Asia Studies and International Communications · 2026
- GRIEF IN PHILIP RIDLEY'S VINCENT RIVER · Çukurova Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Dergisi · 2026
- NEGOTIATING TRADITION AND TECHNOLOGY: THE STRATEGIC DIGITALISATION OF INDIAN THEATRE BY MODERN INDIAN PLAYWRIGHTS · ShodhKosh: Journal of Visual and Performing Arts · 2026
- The Quest for Social Justice against Oppression in Timberlake Wertenbaker’s Arden City · Erzurum Teknik Universitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitusu Dergisi · 2026
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