British Theatre in the 21st Century

So I co-organised a conference (alongside Élisabeth Angel-Perez and Aloysia Rousseau of the Sorbonne and Liliane Campos of the Sorbonne-Nouvelle) about British theatre in the 21st century. And I'm pleased to say it was a real success.

The standard of the papers was very high, higher than usual, I'd say, for a conference like this. I think lots of things are to do with that: the conference being in Paris at the Sorbonne meant that I think all we British academics felt we needed to raise our game a little, but also it really just confirmed that the field of British theatre studies is very, very strong right now.

There were papers from Martin Middeke, Vicky Angelaki, Trish Reid, Mike Pearson, Donna Soto-Morettini, David Overend, Marilena Zaroulia, Louise Owen, Marissia Fragkou, Nicholas Holden, Helen Freshwater, Clara Escoda Agusti, Déborah Prudhon, Tom Cornford, Kirsty Sedgman, Mark Smith, Sarah-Jane Dickenson, Clare Wallace, Adam Ledger, Mark Robson, Jen Harvie, Lynette Goddard, Damien Giraud, Ramona Mosse, Anna Street, Séverine Ruset, Seda Ilter, Ben Fowler, Chris Megson, Jerri Daboo, Clare Finburgh, Liz Tomlin and Catherine Love. They covered a huge range of writers and theatre makers from the very established (Caryl Churchill, Forced Entertainment, David Greig) to the newly emerging (James Graham, Alistair McDowall, Kieran Hurley, Alice Birch) and on themes as diverse as belief, war, aural theatre, new writing, immigration, audiences, community and crisis. The theme of Brexit was a constant presence. And there were keynote presentations from David Greig, Tim Crouch and Katie Mitchell.

It was a joy to see so many scholars working on British theatre from right across Europe.

My brief opening remarks focused on Brexit and suggested ways of seeing that prefigured in British theatre. If you like, you can read those remarks here:

• Conference Opening Remarks

Meanwhile, Kirsty Sedgman tweeted the whole of the conference for the Society for Theatre Research and those tweets have been storified here:

• STR storify