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Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne (SCL/ÉLC) invites interdisciplinary contributions to a special issue on Canadian Drama and the Performing Arts.

This special issue invites submissions on the ways Canadian dramatists, scholars, theatre and performing arts practitioners, and audiences are engaging with the changing, and sometimes unstable, social and cultural landscapes of our time.

Theatre, and the performing arts in general, respond to and reflect the socio-cultural conditions from which they emerge. How are concepts of performance and performativity adapting to reflect changing notions of identity and selfhood? How do theatrical representations respond to anxieties and traumas emerging from unstable political contexts? How do the performing arts attempt to de-colonize inherited narratives, systemic prejudices, and fraught social inequities?

This special issue will examine how theatre and the performing arts – including dance, music, and opera, as well as drama – are developing modes of representation that speak to some of these challenges. In some cases, dramatists and culture workers have had to re-imagine what theatre performance and production will look like in the future, including reconceptualizing the notion of “audience” and “theatre” itself.

Topics might include, but are not limited to:

• The contributions of BIPOC perspectives and anti-racist activism
• Indigenous theatre – playwrights, directors, actors, reviewers, scholars, theatre companies
• The central role of class dynamics in theatre texts and/or institutional settings
• Queering Canadian drama -- How gender is being reimagined, and re-performed, on contemporary stages
• Theatre and trauma
• Staging in the times of COVID-19 (during and post-pandemic)
• Theatre and disability
• Theatre and ageism
• History and the present -- where do they meet; how have they changed?
• Drag performance(s)
• Theatre and technology
• Teaching performance theories and staging strategies; theatre pedagogy
• (Re)presenting the canon
• Climate activism and theatre
• And the winner is…theatre and the institution(s) of Canadian drama (prizes, arts grants, national institutions, etc.)
• Fringe and other festivals
• Theatre activism – what does this look like; where is it going?
• Theatre and interdisciplinarity – music, dance, puppetry, masks, video
• Theatrical reviews and theatre criticism
• Theatre and censorship
• Francophone performance in Québec and Canada
• Theatre as a response to neoliberalism and late capitalism
• Theatre and/or/in the nation-state
• Situating Canadian performance/drama on the global stage
• National theatre as anachronism?
• Grassroots/community theatre
• Regional theatre
• Mobilizing audiences in a digital age

They welcome submissions of essays of 6000-8000 words, including Notes and Works Cited, on topics related to this general theme. English contributions should conform to the MLA Handbook, 8th edition; French submissions to Le guide du rédacteur (Translation Bureau, 1996).

Deadline for submissions is April 30, 2023.

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Studies in Canadian Literature / Études en littérature canadienne (SCL/ÉLC) is a biannual, bilingual journal devoted to the study of Canadian literature in English and French, and published at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. SCL/ÉLC is peer-reviewed, and welcomes submissions on all aspects of Canadian literature. The journal has published continuously since 1975, when it was founded by Barrie Davies, Desmond Pacey, Roger Ploude, and Michael Taylor.