Contemporary Theatre Review welcomes submissions for its upcoming Special Issue, Theatre in Unexpected Places. 

This special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review will examine current practices outside the traditional confines of stages and auditoriums. From digital platforms and augmented reality to community-centred practices and performances in urban, rural, and liminal spaces, theatre is finding new homes and audiences. We invite contributors to reflect on the diverse ways theatre emerges in unexpected places, interrogating what it means for the form, the audience, and the broader cultural landscape. How do these unconventional sites shape theatre’s aesthetics, politics, and accessibility? How might they invite us to revisit or revise our understandings of site-specific or site-sensitive practice? What new stories, communities, and sensibilities are enabled when performance moves beyond the stage?

Possible areas of focus include (but are not limited to):

• Theatre in streets, parks, or reclaimed urban spaces, and its impact on community engagement, political activism, and public discourse.
• Theatre in political and judicial spaces, including performances staged in courthouses, parliamentary buildings, or protest sites, and their role in shaping legal narratives, civic engagement, and public discourse.
• Performance in forests, on beaches, or in wilderness areas that respond to and interact with ecological concerns.
• Travelling performances, roving ensembles, and site-responsive works that are rooted in mobility or migration.
• Theatre as a participatory act within communities, including immersive, interactive, or therapeutic engagements.
• Theatre in virtual and digital spaces, including livestreams, VR/AR performances, social media experiments, and hybrid practices.
• Theatre in refugee camps, conflict zones, or other areas of humanitarian response.

We welcome contributions in a variety of forms, including:

• Essays
• Practice-based reflections
• Provocations (short, critical challenges to existing ideas or norms)
• Manifestoes (articulations of new visions for theatre in unexpected places)

Submissions can range from concise interventions to more developed explorations, with a word limit of 1,000–3,000 words. This shorter format is intended to enable the inclusion of a wide range of contributions in the issue, including ‘rapid response’ engagement with current developments.

Contributors are asked to provide an Abstract of their proposed contribution (300 words) and a short Author bio (150 words) by 1 May 2025.

First drafts of accepted contributions will be due 1 November 2025.

Submissions and inquiries can be directed to Sir Anril Tiatco sptiatco@up.edu.ph and Stephen Greer Stephen.Greer@glasgow.ac.uk.