The abstracts are available here.
Information about our keynote speakers is available here.
You can also download a PDF version of the programme here.
Thursday, 4 June 2026
9:00-15:30 PhD Forum (venue: Room 111, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Palachovo nám. 2)
Chairs: Clare Wallace, Leila Vaziri
The PhD forum is a closed workshop for graduate students.
Wiebke Acton (University of Leeds), Contemporary Theatre-making in a Transnational Context between Germany and the U.K.: A Performance-based Investigation
Hannah Eder (University of Regensburg), A New Theatre of Protest: Activism on the British Stage after the Financial Crisis
Tomáš Eštok (Comenius University in Bratislava) Intersections between Queer Theory and Leftist Politics in Anglophone Theater
Onur Karaköse (Humboldt University Berlin), Dramatizing Mass Shootings on the Contemporary American Stage: Theater and the Public –Negotiation of a Nation in Crisis
Claudia Maya Prats (University of Barcelona), Affect, Care and Feminism in Contemporary British Dystopian Drama
Laura Meyer (University of Konstanz), Crip Intimacy in Contemporary British Theatre
(15:30-17:30 CDE Board Meeting)
16:00-18:00 Arrival and Registration
18:00-19:00 Dinner
19:00-19:30 Conference Opening and CDE Award Presentation
Kerstin Schmidt (President of CDE), Ondřej Pilný, Clare Wallace
19:30-20:30 Keynote 1 (chair: Ondřej Pilný)
Alice Koubová, After Resistance, before Resignation: The Genealogy of Resilience
20:45 Conference Warming
Friday, 5 June 2026
9:00-10:30 Panel 1 – Resources and Ecologies (chair: Kerstin Schmidt)
Robert Lublin, Recovery and Resilience in Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Water by the Spoonful
Nicole Schneider, The Resilience of Water: Place, Endurance, and Water in Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah (2021) and Rob Florence’s Katrina: Mother-in-Law of ’em All (2018)
Harriet Carnevale, “Wild as gorse, tough as heather”: Land, Myth and Resilience in Stranger Beasts
10:30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-12:30 Panel 2 – Radical Stages, Contemporary UK Theatre (chair: Martin Riedelsheimer)
Ruud van den Beuken, The Resilience of Radical Hope in Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s Death of England Trilogy
Eva Ries, Promiscuous Obedience as Resilient Resistance in Alice Birch’s Revolt. She said. Revolt Again
Muammer Özoltulular, Staging Relational Resilience in Flora Wilson Brown’s The Beautiful Future is Coming
12:30-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Panel 3 – Asserting Agency in Contemporary American Theatre (chair: Ilka Lensen-Saal)
Ahlam Jodat Maodah, The Resilience of Silence: Submissive Performance and the Reclamation of Voice in Cesi Davidson’s ‘Voice Lessons’
Michael Jaros, Feeding Beatrice: Hunger, Property, and Black Ownership in the Contemporary American Theatre
15:00-15:30 Coffee
15:30-16:30 Keynote 2 (chair: Miriam Haughton)
Playwright in Conversation: Louise Lowe
19:30 Theatre performance at Divadlo Komedie (optional)
Saturday, 6 June 2026
9:00-10:30 Panel 4 – Spaces of Performance, Spaces of Neoliberalism (chair: Anette Pankratz)
Sarah Heinz, A Dream House on Stage: Inhabiting Resilience in Geoff Sobelle’s Home
Charlotte Farrell, To Hold What Shimmers: The Resilience of Queer Performance in Sydney
Eamonn Jordan, Coping in Conor McPherson’s The Brightening Air
10:30-11:00 Coffee
11:00-12:00 Keynote 3 (chair: Chris Megson)
Tony Fisher, Necro Theatre: Staging Resilience in the Age of Capitalist Melancholia
12:00-13:00 Lunch
13:00-14:30 Panel 5 – Contested Histories and Alternative Networks (chair: Julia Rössler)
Kristýna Ilek, Networks of Care: Dramaturgy, Resilience and Power on the Island of Ireland
Chengyao (Michael) Ye, Staging Hitler: Resilience, Resistance, and the Politics of Contemporariness in British Theatre since the 1990s to the Present
Tomáš Kačer, Red Tape Resilience: Deconstructing a Dominant Historical Discourse in Tracy Letts’s The Minutes
14:30-15:00 Coffee
15:00-16:00 Keynote 4 (chair: Clare Wallace)
Playwright in Conversation: Deirdre Kinahan
16:15-18:45 CDE Annual General Meeting and Election
Sunday, 7 June 2026
9:30-10:30 Keynote 5 (chair: Clare Wallace)
Miriam Haughton, What Is Happening to Art? Theatre Finance, Funding, and Policy in the Twenty-first Century
10:30-11:00 Coffee
11:00-12:00 Panel 6 – Disenfranchisement and Resistance (chair: Merle Tönnies)
Edyta Lorek-Jezińska, The Risks of Making Tea and Advantages of Murder: Resilience, Resistance and Counterfeit Disability in Rob Drummond’s Don’t. Make. Tea. (2022/24)
Douglas Basford, “What Progress?”: Performing Resilience in Public Enemy: Flint
12:00-12:15 Closing Remarks
12:15-13:30 Lunch (optional)
13:30 End of Conference
The conference is supported by the European Regional Development Fund project “Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building” (reg. no.: CZ.02.01.01/00/22_008/0004595) and the ESP Programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Ireland.