CfC for IBS@IFTR Conference 2026 – What Theatre after Brecht Does

Call for Contributions for a panel sponsored by the International Brecht Society (IBS) at the Annual Conference of the International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), Melbourne, Australia, July 2026

“What Theatre after Brecht Does”

The next IFTR Annual Conference will happen from July 6–10, 2026, at the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne, Australia, under the motto ‘What Theatre Does’ (please see the Call for Papers on the IFTR 2026 Conference website).

We would like to organize an IBS-sponsored panel for the IFTR 2026 Conference that engages more specifically with ‘What Theatre after Brecht Does.’ (Depending on interest, we may be able to organize several panels.)

We invite a broad range of approaches to this topic, including but not limited to the following:

• Which orthodoxies of Brechtian theatre (with regard to his plays, concepts, staging practices, and the associated scholarship, etc.) no longer apply?
• Which adjustments are necessary to ensure that theatre and performance after Brecht effect social and political change in the future?
• In which way does theatre in a Brechtian sense do something? How could contemporary readings and practical applications adapt an understanding of action from Brecht’s concept of a “theatre of intervening thought”?
• What is the use value of Brecht’s plays, theories, and methods for indigenous performance, theatre in the Anthropocene, stage productions engaging with AI, contemporary anti-capitalist, anti-fascist and anti-autocratic theatre, etc.?
• What kind of world-making does theatre after Brecht facilitate and what kinds of future does it help us to imagine?
• What culturally specific understandings does Brechtian theatre take for granted that need to be revised or expanded?

Please send an abstract (of 200 to 250 words) and a brief bio to Micha Braun (mibraun@uni-leipzig.de) and Markus Wessendorf (wessendo@hawaii.edu) by Nov. 24, 2025.

If your abstract is accepted for the IBS-sponsored panel, you will then have to submit it by Dec. 8, 2025 to the IFTR conference platform, which is accessed via the IFTR webpage, after having either joined the IFTR or renewed your IFTR membership on that same webpage. (An IBS membership is not required to participate in the panel.) Subsequent publication of selected contributions in E-CIBS (the Electronic Communications of the IBS, https://e-cibs.org/) or in the peer-reviewed Brecht Yearbook (https://ibs.wildapricot.org/media/brecht_yearbook) is intended.

Quelle: https://iftr.org/cfc-for-ibsiftr-conference-2026-what-theatre-after-brecht-does/