Ecotone: Performing Spatial Encounters

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CALL FOR PAPERS: THEATRE & ARCHITECTURE WORKING GROUP

IFTR 2027, Nafplio, Greece

International Federation of Theatre Research

28 June – 2 July, 2027

Ecotone: Performing Spatial Encounters

In response to IFTR's theme of Hybridity, the Theatre and Architecture Working Group (TAWG) invites participants to engage with the concept of ecotone. Derived from the Greek oikos (home or dwelling) and tonos (tension), ecotone evokes a dwelling-place formed through tension: a dynamic transitional zone in which neighbouring ecological communities meet. Neither wholly one environment nor another, it is a space of overlap, exchange, tension and transformation. Ecotones can be diverse and generative sites, but they may also be fragile, contested and vulnerable to disturbance.

As a spatial and ecological figure, the ecotone offers a way to foreground borders as inhabited environments and directs attention towards what happens at the edges: where bodies, buildings, landscapes, technologies, histories and practices encounter one another. How might theatre and architecture—as modes of practice—create, occupy or unsettle such transitional zones? What forms of performance emerge where environments, disciplines, communities or temporalities meet? How might performance make the tensions, dependencies and inequalities of these encounters perceptible? Can the ecotone help us understand hybridity as an unfinished spatial negotiation—one shaped by friction, adaptation and transformation? The location of the IFTR conference gives these questions particular resonance. Nafplio is situated among ancient and contemporary performance cultures, layered histories, coastal ecologies and changing architectural conditions. Rather than treating this setting as a backdrop, we invite contributors to critically consider how ecotones perform, and how the social, architectural, historical and ecological lives of sites condition the encounters that occur within them.

Possible areas of inquiry include, but are not limited to:

· theatres, performance spaces and cultural buildings as ecological interfaces;

· architecture and performance at borders, margins, thresholds and peripheries;

· site-specific, site-responsive and environmentally situated practices;

· landscape, climate and more-than-human agency in performance and design;

· coastal, littoral, island and amphibious spaces;

· architecture and performance addressing climate change, extraction or ecologicalloss;

· adaptive reuse, alteration, repair, maintenance and spatial afterlives;

· accessibility and the negotiation of bodily and architectural difference;

· Indigenous, decolonial and non-Western understandings of land, place and relation;

· collaboration among architects, designers, artists, researchers and communities;

· ecotonal methods of researching, teaching, writing, designing and making;

· temporary architectures, scenographies and mobile or itinerant practices;

· migration, displacement, occupation and spatial belonging;

· urban–rural, public–private intersections;

· physical–technological/digital intersections;

· cultural heritage, ruin and the coexistence of different temporalities;

· sound, atmosphere, weather, materiality and environmental change.

We welcome historical, theoretical, practice-based and speculative contributions that specifically respond to the TAWG theme of performing spatial encounters. Within this framework, presentations may address buildings and designed environments, but they might equally examine landscapes, infrastructures, ruins, digital spaces, temporary structures, scenographies, performance and/ or spatial practices that trouble conventional distinctions between theatre and architecture.

Deadline for proposals:

We invite abstracts of 250–300 words for scholarly and practice-based presentation formats, including papers, provocations, performance lectures, demonstrations and audio/visual essays. Work in progress is welcome, as are submissions from postgraduate and early-career researchers, independent scholars, artists and practitioners. Include a 100 word biography, your proposed format, and any spatial, technical or access requirements.

Abstracts can be submitted via the IFTR conference portal. Please note that you must renew your membership or become a member in order to submit an abstract. Submit by selecting the Theatre and

Architecture Working Group: https://www.cambridge.org/core/membership/iftr.

Submissions open: 1 October 2026

Deadline: 2 November 2026

Notification: 21 December 2026

For further information: https://iftr.org/conference-2027/About the IFTR Theatre &

Architecture Working Group

Theatre & Architecture is an interdisciplinary working group that focuses on the intersections between the two disciplines by examining the ways they inform, challenge, expand, complement or frame one another through a broader understanding of performance and space. For further Information about the Theatre & Architecture Working Group please visit: https://www.iftr.org/working-groups/theatre-architecture

During the IFTR Conference we warmly welcome individuals who wish to take part in the group's discussions, but who do not want to submit a paper.

Working Group Conveners

Dr Višnja Žugić [visnja.zugic@gmail.com] (2022-2026)

Dr Shauna Janssen [shauna.janssen@concordia.ca] (2021-2029)

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