TaPRA 2026

Plenary events bring all delegates together for panels addressing topics of particular significance to the field. One plenary takes place each day, and all are open to every delegate.

We expect these sessions to be very popular, so we recommend arriving at the venue at least ten minutes before the start.

For those who would prefer a more relaxed viewing experience, each plenary will also be live-streamed in the Film and Drama Studio in Arts Two. If the main plenary venue reaches capacity, delegates will be directed to the Film and Drama Studio to watch the live stream.

Performing Labour: Identity, Authenticity and Precarity

2 September

10:00AM–12:00PM

ArtsTwo Lecture Theatre

This opening plenary will begin with a welcome from the TaPRA Executive Committee and the Queen Mary conference hosts.

The panel will then explore how labouring identities are shaped by the social and economic conditions in which performance takes place. Bringing together questions of surveillance, racialised exclusion and precarity, the session considers how institutions determine whose work is recognised, how it is valued and where it is permitted to occur. It also examines the ways performers and artists resist these constraints, creating alternative forms of work, visibility and belonging.

• Maria De Simone: “'It’s a Matter of Money, Mostly': George Walker and the Labor of an Alternative Theatrical Economy" 
• Savannah Whaley: “No place on the job market: Maïa Izzo-Foulquier’s Curriculum Vitae Pute et Peintre"
• Bryony White: "The Working Day: Sex, Intimacy and Reproduction in Tearoom (2007)"

 

Cultural Resistance from Tower Hamlets to Palestine

3 September

3:30PM–5:00PM

ArtsTwo Lecture Theatre

This roundtable brings together artists, researchers, and activists to examine the role of culture in practices of resistance, struggle and solidarity today. Bringing together perspectives and experiences - ranging from local organizing around the Save Brick Lane campaign in East London, to producing theatre in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine - the session will explore how cultural production, creative practice and community organizing can contribute to solidarity from the local to the international. Joined by chair Prof. Mojisola Adebayo, the panelists' will reflect on their own creative practices, scholarship and mobilizations to consider the role of cultural resistance in struggles against oppression, militarism, violence and gentrification, as well as the challenges of producing culture under conditions of occupation, censorship and authoritarianism.

• Sruti Bala (University of Amsterdam)
• Joel Samuels (White Kite Collective)
• Fatima Rajina (Nijjor Manush)
• Diala Taneeb (TaPRA Fellow 2026)
• Chair: Mojisola Adebayo (QMUL)

 

Call & Response: A Correspondence in Black Feminist Practice

4 September

3:30PM–5:00PM

ArtsTwo Lecture Theatre

This closing plenary will feature a dialogue followed by short final remarks from the TaPRA Executive Committee and the announcement of TaPRA 2027.

Tia-Monique Uzor and Vanessa Macaulay offer a plenary that unfolds through call and response, drawn from Africanist practice as method. Between July and September 2026, they exchanged voice notes, sounds and images in an ongoing back and forth, each responding to shared ideas, concepts, artworks and provocations, to our surroundings and to one another. Together they have built an artistic conversation across Black feminist theory and performance, digital Black dance ecologies, and body-based experimental performance, holding the circumstances of Black women's bodies within academia. They will bring the recorded exchange into the room, offering our final responses alongside questions for the field.

• Tia-Monique Uzor
• Vanessa Macaulay

Most delegates present their work within one of TaPRA’s thirteen working groups, each of which organises its own panels and workshops.

The working groups meet across six sessions during the conference, and all sessions are open to every delegate, regardless of whether they are presenting as part of that working group. During the sessions designated as “Open Panels” on Days 2 and 3, working group members are encouraged to attend sessions hosted by other working groups.

Further information about all working groups is available on the TaPRA website. 

A draft of the full academic programme is available online. Please note, the programme will be in draft form until the conference and details will be updated regularly until then. 

General Panels explore special themes and topics that may not be covered by the working groups. Taking the form of curated presentations, roundtables and workshops, these one-off sessions take place on either Day 2 or Day 3 and run in parallel with working group sessions. All General Panels are open to every delegate.

A draft of the full academic programme is available online. Please note, the programme will be in draft form until the conference and details will be updated regularly until then. 

We are pleased to welcome the following academic publishers to TaPRA 2026:

• Bloomsbury
• Intellect
• Manchester University Press
• Methuen Drama
• Palgrave Macmillan
• Routledge

Each publisher will have a table in the ground-floor foyer of Arts Two, showcasing recent publications, hosting author events, and giving delegates the opportunity to meet with editors.

Many of the publishers will also be giving away books to delegates on the final day of the conference.