Call for Papers

Call for papers

september 20, 2026

Call for Papers
Peripeti #42 Lively Words: Contemporary Intersections of Text and Performance

With this issue, we wish to explore the state of the text in theatre and the performing arts as well as performative and gestural interventions into text-based art and literature. This includes both the range of contemporary playwriting practices and more diverse modes of creating and employing text in the performing arts, including performative forms of writing and the performative use of different types of text, whether occurring in visual, performative, or literary culture.

The postdramatic turn at the end of the 20th century, along with an even longer avant-garde tradition, has challenged the primacy of the dramatic text in Western theatre, but also considerably expanded the role, shape, and function of text in the theatre, opening up new dramaturgical models beyond the dramatic form. Further, the cultural primacy of the printed text as a disembodied, monological production of linguistic meaning to be decoded by a silent, solitary reader is being contested in new ways within a post-digital media landscape.

While the historical primacy of the text in the theatre can be considered an extension of Gutenbergian print culture’s instating of Eurocentric, capitalist and patriarchal hierarchies, we wish to propose, in current and historical renegotiations between textual and performative strategies, a critical potential against such cultural hegemony.

In recent years, we have seen a myriad of new genres and formats of theatre and performance art – as well as book art, artist’s books and performance writing – some of which have rejected the idea of the dramatic text, while at the same time developing new ways of working with text in performance. We have seen collectively devised texts and visual storyboards; we have seen all sorts of non-dramatic texts – novels, philosophy, statistics, personal papers, etc. – brought to the stage; we have seen choreographers working with dialogue and writers exploring performance as part of their literary practice, etc. And across the realm of performance, literary and visual arts, we have seen paraphernalia and paratext, e.g. texts and material used to frame or advertise a work, become increasingly integral to the performative event itself.

This means that text in the performing arts today is so much more than a written play or a manuscript. In a performance like The Gaza Mono-Logues by ASHTAR Theatre a script functions both as a site of and a tool for trans-national psycho-social work, when young people in Palestine share their testimonies in the form of monologues that are later echoed on theatre stages all over the world in multiple translations and interpretations. Meanwhile the calls to action and online campaigns surrounding the performance raise both funds and awareness while building a long-term global community between theatre and activism. A performance like Rimini Protokoll’s Home Visit Europe involves written directions, instructions, game rules, questions, and tasks for the participants that are printed as part of the performance, as well as maps and statistical results generated during the performance. Many types of texts played a part in the development, production, and performance of this piece – not least the pre-performance advertisement, so essential for the recruitment of hosts and participants that it seems difficult to separate it from the piece itself. When dealing with performances like these, we may need to extend our understanding of text in performance: which texts should be included in the aesthetic analysis of the works?

With this issue of Peripeti, we wish to discuss the implications of an extended notion of text and textualities in theatre and the performing arts, while also suggesting a heightened awareness of the intersections and interferences between the performing arts and related forms of art and culture, often mediated through performative interaction with text. When Asta Olivia Nordenhof ends her poetry reading with an invitation to meet her at the very bar in which she is reading the poem, is it a performance or a poem? When a young playwright like Regina Rex works with bodies and objects in physical space rather than words, is she still (play)writing?
After years of questioning the rules and format of the drama, we sense a new interest in both the classics and new dramatic writing in Danish theatre. If this is indeed so, how may the conventions of written drama have been affected by the complexities of more experimental approaches? And what is the role and impact of the relevant educational programmes in the field?

We invite both academic articles for peer review, as well as non-peer-reviewed essays, artistic research and artistic contributions. Unfortunately, we cannot offer fees for contributions. While we wish to focus on the 21st century, we also welcome historical perspectives that point to current issues and practices at the intersection of text and performance. And while we as editors are physically situated in a Danish and a European context and our outlook starts from there, we are equally interested in contributions that move beyond this specific context. We specifically invite critical perspectives, e.g. feminist, queer, decolonial, and others, as well as contributions invested in a trans-national or even planetary outlook.

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