About this journal

Theatre, Dance and Performance Training ( TDPT) is a rigorously peer-reviewed journal that provides a forum for practitioners, academics, creative artists and pedagogues to articulate research into performance training in all its diversity.

The journal prides itself on revealing insights into the complex and vital processes of training and their relationship to performance making, including those from the past, from the present, and speculating into the future. TDPT is genuinely international in scope and interdisciplinary in form and focus. Authors are encouraged to review previous articles published in the journal for examples of these insights and to assess the appropriateness of their proposal.

Formats

- Our “ Articles” feature contributions in a range of critical and scholarly formats (approx. 5,500-7,000 words).

- Our “ Sources” provide an outlet for the documentation and analysis of primary materials of performer training, appropriately       
  contextualised and critiqued by the author(s) . (approx. 5,500-7,000 words).

- The editors request that authors submit a 250 word abstract directly to them before submitting a full essay. This can be done by emailing 
   your abstract to Jonathan Pitches ( [email protected]) and Libby Worth ( [email protected]).

- Our “ Training Grounds” materials are briefer pieces, (which are not peer reviewed.)

Training Grounds comprises:

- Essais (more speculative and playful essays (between 750-1,250 words))

For Essais, Postcards and Speaking Image formats, please contact the Training Grounds editors: Thomas Wilson ( [email protected]), Sara Reed ( [email protected]) and Roanna Mitchell ( [email protected]).

For suggestions for Book reviews please email Chris Hay ( [email protected])

For suggestions for Events reviews please email Aiden Condron ( [email protected])

Innovative cross-over print/digital formats are possible, including the submission of audiovisual training materials, which can be housed on the online interactive Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal blog: http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/

The journal accepts articles on any aspect of performance training, which may include but not be restricted to:

·Training purposes: why train, who trains and what is trained?

·Training historiographies: the currency of historic training approaches in the C21st

·Training futures: emerging trends and methodologies

·Theorising training

·Interdisciplinary training

·Intercultural training

·Intergenerational training

·Training and race; training and gender; training and (dis)ability

·Training lineages and (false) traditions

·Training, documentation and visuality

·Training places: laboratories, conservatoires, universities, schools, ensembles

·Training the untrainable: intuition, creativity, presence, talent

·The languages of training and the problems of translation

·Training for voice and sound production

·The politics and ethics of training

·Training pedagogies and pedagogues

·Training and (digital) technologies

·Lifelong or continuing training

Papers are reviewed 'single-anonymized' by recognised experts in the field. Feedback on papers is always provided and the editors work closely with authors in the development of papers, post-peer review (See Instructions for Authors for more details).

Editors

Jonathan Pitches  is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Leeds and Head of School of Performance and Cultural Industries. He specialises in the study of performer training and has wider interests in environmental performance and blended learning. He is founding co-editor of the TDPT and has published several books in this area: Vsevolod Meyerhold  (2003), Science and the Stanislavsky Tradition of Acting  (2006/9), Russians in Britain  (2012) and, Stanislavsky in the World  (with Dr Stefan Aquilina 2017).  Recent book publications include: Great Stage Directors Vol 3: Komisarjevsky, Copeau Guthrie  (sole editor, 2018) and the monograph, Performing Landscapes: Mountains  (2020).  His most recent publication is the co-editedRoutledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold  (2022)  (again with Dr Aquilina). 

Libby Worth is Reader in Contemporary Performance Practices, Royal Holloway, University of London. She is a movement practitioner with research interests in the Feldenkrais Method, physical theatres, site-based performance and in folk/traditional and amateur dance. Performances include co-devised duets; Step Feather Stitch (2012) and dance film Passing Between Folds (2017). She is co-editor of TDPT and has published on Anna Halprin (2018 2nd Ed., co-authored), Ninette de Valois (2012 co-edited), Jasmin Vardimon’s Dance Theatre (2016) and Time and Performer Training (2019, co-edited). She currently leads an AHRC funded Project: Dancing Dialogues: Networking research with traditional English and diasporic dance groups practicing in three regions in England. 

Consultant Editor

Simon Murray

Associate Editors

Paul Allain is Professor of Theatre and Performance at the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. He has published extensively on actor training and contemporary performance processes in books, DVDs and articles, with a particular focus on contemporary Polish theatre and Jerzy Grotowski. He has recently explored digital documentation including his ‘Physical Actor training - an online A-Z’, funded by The Leverhulme Trust, which involved making 66 short films as part of a digital resource. This was published by Methuen Drama Bloomsbury at Drama Online. He has had a long involvement in TDPT as associate editor, coediting special issues and as author.

Stephen Atkins PhD (he/him/they) is a performer, director and theatre maker who is currently teaching at Capilano University in Canada. He has a diverse portfolio consisting of commercial theatre, film and TV as well as Avant Garde theatre and performance art in Canada, Australia and the USA. His primary interest is in actor training which has resulted in his book, Crosspoints: An Integrative Acting System which will soon be republished as a deck of cards intended to give actors a generative system of prompts to aid in rehearsal, devised theatre or self-authored work. 

Bryan Brown is Senior Lecturer of Drama at the University of Exeter. From his research in performer training and the laboratory theatre tradition, he has recently formulated the cultural laboratory as an artistic and cultural model rooted in social innovation. He co-created Maketank in Exeter as the practical application of this emerging model. He is also currently applying laboratory performer practices to screen training. He is the author of A History of the Theatre Laboratory (2019), two chapters on Vsevolod Meyerhold, as well as articles on the cultural laboratory and the Worldwide Play Readings Project: Belarus and Ukraine. 

Aiden Condron is an actor, maker, researcher and educator who has trained and coached actors and performers in the UK, Europe, the US, India and the Middle East in live and recorded media across a range of cultural settings and institutionally as a Lecturer and Programme Leader in Acting in leading higher education conservatoires and universities. He is currently a Lecturer in Acting & Performance at London South Bank University. Aiden is founding artistic director of Living Acting Studio, an international acting training studio and lab. From 2002-2102 he was artistic director of NERVOUSYSTEM an award-winning International Performance Laboratory. 

Misri Dey is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Acting at Falmouth University, and a theatre maker, performer and dramaturg. She specialises in solo and group performance making and dramaturgies and is author of the monograph Making Solo Performance (2018).  Decolonising activities pulse throughout her performance, research, pedagogical, editorial and political work, currently manifest in her new Arts Council funded solo - Family Tree (2022), Research England funded podcast series ‘ They Just Don’t Apply’: interviews with people of colour in UK creative academia’ (2023), co-chairing the Race Equality Group and Equality and Diversity Committee at Falmouth University and membership of UK Revolution or Nothing Network.

Zoë Glen is a neurodivergent theatre practitioner, actor-trainer and researcher. Her research interests include inclusive practice, neurodiversity and access in actor training; neuroqueer performance and how phenomenology can be used in acting. She is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Kent, investigating the needs and experiences of autistic student-actors on BA acting programmes.  

Chris Hay is Professor of Drama in the Flinders Drama Centre at Flinders University, Australia. He recently completed an Australian Research Council DECRA-funded study into the origins of live performance subsidy in Australia, including the institutionalisation of actor training. He has also published on anti-racist pedagogy and knowledge transfer in performer training. Chris serves as the Co-President of the Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies. 

Proshot Kalami is an Associate Professor at Norfolk State University and a fellow at the Leuphana Institute for Advanced Studies (LIAS), Leuphana University, Lüneburg. For her works as a playwright, theatre director and radio drama director/voice actor she has won multiple awards. Proshot has staged and toured her works in the UK, Italy, Germany, France, Morocco and USA. Her scholarship focuses on the interaction of the actor’s body and technology in the works of theatre artists from the global south. She publishes in English and Farsi and speaks French and German with basic knowledge of Bengali and reading knowledge of Arabic.

Christina Kapadocha (PhD) is a multi-awarded London-based theatre and somatic practitioner-researcher, a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and founder of Somatic Acting Process®. She has been working as an actress, director and movement director in Greece and the UK since 2007 while she is currently a Lecturer at East 15 Acting School, University of Essex. Her practice-research projects and publications concentrate on the contributions of somatically inspired practices into theatre-performing environments and beyond. She is an associate editor for the Theatre, Dance and Performance Training journal and the editor of Somatic Voices in Performance Research and Beyond (Routledge, 2021).

Maria Kapsali is a Lecturer in Physical Performance in the School of Performance and Cultural Industries at the University of Leeds. She has published the co-authored DVD/Booklet Yoga and Actor Training (Routledge, 2015) and edited a special issue of Theatre Dance and Performance Trainingjournal entitled ‘Training, Politics and Ideology’ (July 2014). She is a convenor of the TaPRA Performer Training Working Group and co-editor of the Theatre Dance and Performance Training Blog http://theatredanceperformancetraining.org/. She is currently working on a monograph on Technology and Performer Training, to be published by Routledge as part of the Perspectives on Performer Training series, which she co-edits with Professor Rebecca Loukes.

Rebecca Loukes is Associate Professor of Performance Practice at University of Exeter, UK. She trained in the somatic awareness work of Elsa Gindler (1885-1961) and in Asian martial-meditation arts with Phillip Zarrilli. She is Co-Artistic Director of RedCape Theatre https://www.redcapetheatre.co.uk/ She writes and researches in the areas of performer training, devising, choreography and inter/transcultural performance. She co-edits the Routledge book series Perspectives on Performer Training. https://humanities.exeter.ac.uk/drama/staff/loukes/

Virginie Magnat is a performance scholar-practitioner from Occitania, in Southern France. She is Professor in the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies at the University of British Columbia's Okaanagan Campus located in the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Sylix people. She works at the intersection of Performance studies, cultural anthropology, qualitative research, arts-based inquiry, and Indigenous epistemologies and methodologies. Her two monographs The Performative Power of Vocality (Routledge 2020) and Grotowski, Women, and Contemporary Performance: Meetings with Remarkable Women (Routledge 2014) are both based on research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. https://virginiemagnat.spac/

James McLaughlin trained at the University of Auckland in English, Philosophy and Drama before embarking on a career as a comedian, writer and theatre director. He was the founding Theatre Manager of New Zealand's only improvised comedy theatre, the Covert Theatre. He has fifteen years of professional improv experience, including numerous tours throughout New Zealand, North America and Europe. He has participated in an improv masterclass with Keith Johnstone and won the inaugural World Cage Match Championship at The Chicago Improv Festival.

Roanna Mitchell is a performance-maker and movement person, co-director of the Chekhov Collective UK practice research centre, and senior lecturer and Course Lead for Drama at the University of Kent. Her work explores performance and training in the intersection between acting and dance, and applications of Chekhov and related techniques beyond the theatre, especially in mental health contexts. She has directed/created/movement-directed performance internationally, often working site-responsively and including collaborations with Richard Schechner ( Imagining O, UK/India/US), Platform 7 ( Resting Place, Ramsgate/Charing Cross Station/Folkestone Seafront), Accidental Collective ( Here’s Hoping, Theatre Royal Margate / Oval House London) and Portrait Theatre ( Stillmine, Margate Arts Club).

www.roannamitchell.com

www.chekhovcollectiveuk.co.uk

Lisa Peck is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Practice at the University of Sussex and Associate Tutor at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. Over two decades she has worked as a teacher, theatre-maker, teacher educator and education consultant for the National Theatre and Digital Theatre Plus. She is co-founder of RAPT (Research, Artistry, Participation, Theatre) which makes multi modal public artworks. Her research intersects social science and humanities to explore critical pedagogies in theatre-making and actor training. She has published in Theatre Dance and Performance Training and Stanislavski Studies. Her monograph: Act As A Feminist: Towards A Critical Acting Pedagogy, published by Routledge in 2021, maps a female genealogy as an alternative to traditional male lineages in training. She is currently working on a new monograph titled Emma Rice’s Feminist Acts of Love for Cambridge University Press.

Sara Reed is an independent academic, researcher, writer, project manager and a qualified Feldenkrais practitioner. With a career that has spanned a wide range of dance, performance, arts and education contexts, she has published widely in the area of embodied-movement, dance, somatic practices and pedagogy. Her experience includes interdisciplinary teaching across art forms. Sara is an Associate Editor for TDPT Training Grounds and on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Dance & Somatic Practices and Dance, Movement & Spiritualties. She is Co-chair for Independent Dance.

David Shirley is the Executive Dean of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts (WAAPA), at the Edith Cowan University, Perth, Western Australia. A professional actor with extensive experience in theatre, film, television and radio, David trained at the Arts Educational Schools and at RADA. The founding Chair of the Conference of Drama Schools Research Forum and a former Co-convenor of the 20th/21st Century Performer Training Group at TaPRA (Theatre and Performance Research Association), David is actively engaged in promoting research initiatives across the HE performer training sector. His own research includes published articles/book chapters related to Stanislavsky and Russian Naturalism, British Actor and Director training, the American Method, the work of Samuel Beckett and Postdramatic Theatre. David was formally the Chair of the Federation of Drama Schools (FDS) in the UK and is a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (FRSA) and Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA).

Peta Tait is a Professor at La Trobe University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Plays include: Eleanor and Mary Alice (Currency Press 2018) about Eleanor Roosevelt; Tree Bones (Australian Plays Transform (APT) 2019); co-written with Matra Robertson, Breath by Breath (APT 2003), and Mesmerized as Retrato de Augustine (in press Brazil). Peta has published over 70 articles and chapters and 12 books including: the authored Forms of Emotion: Human to Nonhuman in Drama, Theatre and Performance (Routledge 2022); authored Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion (Bloomsbury 2021); and the edited The Great European Stage Directors volume one (2018).

Rishi Trikha is an Associate Professor in Theatre Arts at London Metropolitan University, where he is course leader for the university’s performance programmes, Academic Governor, and leads on Education for Social Justice.  His work as a director and dramaturg includes projects at the National Theatre, Royal Court, Roundhouse, and other venues across the UK and abroad.  Recent credits include dramaturgy on The Chosen Haram and Stuntman, which are touring internationally throughout 2023-24, The Flood at Queens Theatre (2023), and several current Arts Council and Creative Scotland-funded circus projects.  His research explores hybridity, visual dramaturgy, and ethics in performance training.  

Thomas Wilson is Programme Director for BA (Hons) European Theatre Arts at Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance, and an Associate Editor for Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal. He has a diverse performance background, initially competing internationally in voltage (Equestrian Gymnastics), before training in a range of physically-rooted practices (Contact Improvisation, Butoh, Theatrical Biomechanics) and making work at the intersection of theatre and dance. He served on Accademia Teatro Dimitri's Educational Advisory Commission from 2016–2020. His book Juggling Trajectories: Gandini Juggling 1991–2015 was shortlisted for the Society of Theatre Research Book Prize in 2016.

Editorial Board

Rhonda Blair, Southern Methodist University, Texas, USA
Franc Chamberlain, University of Huddersfield, UK
Karen Christopher, Freelance artist-practitioner, UK
Niamh Dowling, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), UK
Mark Evans, Coventry University, UK
Xing Fan, Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance Studies, University of Toronto, CA
Hilary Halba, University of Otago, Aotearoa/ New Zealand
Lin Hixson, School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Every House has a Door, USA
Rick Kemp, Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Actor, Director, Artistic Director of Stumpgrinder, USA
Esa Kirkkopelto, Lund University, Sweden
Andrew Lavender, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, UK
Royona Mitra , Brunel University, UK
Mary Paterson , Independent practitioner, writer and producer
Anton Rey, Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland
Ian Watson, Rutgers, New Jersey, USA 

News, offers and calls for papers

News and offers

• Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Blog
• Performing Arts Forum - A place for the professional and not-yet professional practitioners and activists
• Centre for Performance Research - Multi-faceted theatre organisation located and rooted in Wales