Theatre and Illiberal Regimes - Call for Papers

Theatre and Illiberal Regimes

A workshop at the Institute for Advanced Study, at Central European University

14-15 April 2025, Budapest

The year 2024 has been a difficult for democracy around the world. Illiberal gains across the world consolidated a pre-existent global ascendence. The workshop hosted by the IAS CEU in Budapest in partnership with Mozarteum Salzburg explores how illiberal regimes instrumentalize theatre to support and bolster their political agenda locally and in international contexts.

The event aims to look at a variety of cases from the illiberal spectrum (from one-party states to theocracies and various forms of authoritarianism) to uncover continuities in terms of individual regimes’ deployment, today and in the past, of theatre to acquire symbolic capital, while also facing contestation from civic agency advocating pluralism and progressiveness.

We welcome contributions both from scholars working on theatre in illiberal contexts and from artists that have been directly affected by them.  

The workshop will be held in Budapest at IAS CEU, on 14-15 April 2025. Papers are to be shared among participants by April first.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to Viviana Iacob at the following address IacobV@ceu.edu and by February 27, 2025.