Call for papers
Radiophonic Intermediality in Contemporary Theatre & Performance.
Deadline for abstracts: 26 October
Theatre is generally considered a ‘hypermedium’ (Chapple and Kattenbelt 2006), able to assimilate a wide variety of other art forms through a process of ‘remediation’ (Bolter and Grusin 1998). As a result of this, the stage has become ever more ‘intermedial’ (Rajewsky 2005), gesturing towards, borrowing from and incorporating other technologies as well as their modes of expression. After the decentralization of the text or script in performance, following Hans-Thies Lehmann’s influential book on Postdramatic Theatre (1999/2006), more scholarly attention has been paid to physical movement, lighting and visual design, particularly video projection, digital graphics and the use of AI, but also to sound.
While subsequent studies of postdramatic theatre have connected contemporary performance practices to the historical avant-garde and modernism’s fascination with sound technology (Ovadija 2013), the continuing e ect of postwar radio broadcasting on the evolution of theatre has been somewhat overlooked. Nevertheless, many playwrights whose careers took o in these decades had a formative period of writing for the wireless, and directors often combined studio with stage work. The medium’s significance is often reduced to providing an outlet for adaptations of plays, but this ignores the role that radio drama fulfilled in reshaping theatre, through its own unique aesthetic a ordances.
Such cross-fertilization did not end with the dwindling of radio broadcasting in the traditional sense, first through the rise of television, then the internet and streaming. The latter even enhanced the evolution of theatrical sound, initially through the circulation of archival radio drama recordings on websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, UbuWeb and the Internet Archive, followed by platforms like Spotify and Audible. Last but not least, screen fatigue and the suspension of cinema as well as theatre during the COVID-19 pandemic, similar to ‘blackouts’ caused by air raids in World War II, allowed sound culture to thrive, reconnecting the stage with radio as a ‘sightless’ theatre, facilitated by podcasting.
At the same time, several clichés surrounding the medium have been dispelled by theorists of the field. For example, Shingler and Wieringa abandoned the notion that radio drama is a ‘blind’ art form, recasting it as ‘entirely auditory’ instead (1998, 74), while Hand and Traynor suggest that it is ‘just a di erent way of seeing’ (2011, 36). This view has been further underpinned phenomenologically by scholars such as Soltani (2020) or Cazeaux (2026), who reject the medium’s reputation as ‘disembodied’ by pointing to the listener’s imaginative and a ective engagement with it. Such new developments open up valuable points of contact with performance studies, yet they remain largely underexplored.
Radio scholars and historians have long advocated the importance of the medium for postwar theatre, particularly in the UK (Drakakis 1981; Rodger 1982; Whitehead 1989). Yet their hypotheses have never been picked up outside of radio studies, and even within the field they are yet to be substantiated with case studies. While the rising importance of sound technologies in theatre and performance has been amply studied (Salter 2010; Kendrick & Roesner 2012; Curtin 2015; Home-Cook 2015; Kendrick 2017), links with radio are rarely made. The proposed call for papers aims to remedy this state of a airs, through various academic initiatives that bring together di erent international perspectives.
Now that radio studies are experiencing a resurgence, due to the ‘New Modernist Studies’ in literary criticism and the growing multidisciplinarity of sound studies, but also the centenary of the wireless in media studies, it is time to integrate radio drama into the field of theatre and performance studies as well. Participants are free to focus on radio in the traditional or historical sense of ‘broadcasting’, but also on ‘audio drama’ in a more contemporary guise. The goal is to examine how present-day acoustic practices on stage can be usefully traced back to the medium and its later iterations as well as technological advancements (e.g. stereo, binaural sound, headphones, DAB, digital recording, etc).
In addition to an emphasis on voice, sound or noise and listening, other aspects of radiophonic intermediality in the theatre can range from a highly imaginative use of the performative space to fragmented representations of the human body, as well as silence and diminished visibility (cf. stage ‘blackouts’), a strong sense of psychological interiority, even certain collage techniques. We invite contributors to reflect on drama from the late 1940s until today, through an interdisciplinary lens that encompasses radio, theatre and performance studies but also intermediality, building on recent publications in that field (e.g., Rippl 2015; Bruhn et al 2024). Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Case studies of playwrights or artists with backgrounds in radio
- Theatrical collectives highlighting sound in their dramatic practices
- Directors and other practitioners working across radio and theatre
- Radiophonic techniques and sound design in contemporary drama
- Radio plays adapted for the theatre or performed live on the stage
- Acoustic performances during and after the COVID-19 pandemic
While we are open to Anglo-centric case studies and contributions on Western Europe or North America, where the medium has a particularly strong history as well as established research traditions, the goal is to explore radiophonic intermediality from a transnational scope. As such, the focus lies on underrepresented areas, which include other regions of Europe and the Global South (Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, Oceania).
Papers will be workshopped with feedback at two academic events. The first is a hybrid symposium at the Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC) of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) on 1 April 2027. The second is a panel of the ‘Intermediality in Theatre & Performance Working Group’ at the IFTR conference on ‘Hybridity’ organized by the University of the Peloponnese in Nafplion, Greece, between 28 June and 2 July. Contributions will be eligible for publication, after positive peer review, in a special issue of the Journal for Literary & Intermedial Crossings (JLIC) and a dossier of Theatre Research International (TRI), guest-edited by Pim Verhulst, Inge Arteel and Danica Stojanovic.
Please send your abstracts (ca. 200-300 words), with a title and a short bio (max. 100 words), to p.verhulst@reading.ac.uk by 26 October 2026, clearly indicating your wish to participate in the VUB symposium at Brussels, the IFTR panel in Greece, or both. This call is part of an MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, co-funded by the EU and the UKRI, titled ‘Entangled Theatre History and the Ephemerality of Radio: Tracing the BBC’s Intermedial Impact on British Postwar Drama’ (ETHER). The project’s Principal Investigator is Dr. Pim Verhulst, supervised by Prof. Jonathan Bignell and hosted at the University of Reading.
References
Bruhn, Jørgen, Asun López-Varela Azcárate, Miriam de Paiva Viera, eds. (2024), The Palgrave Handbook of Intermediality.
Cazeaux, Clive (2026), The Phenomenology of Audio Drama, Routledge.
Chapple, Freda, Chiel Kattenbelt (2006), Intermediality in Theatre and Performance, Rodopi.
Drakakis, John, ed. (1981), British Radio Drama, Cambridge University Press.
Grusin, Richard & Jay David Bolter (1999), Remediation: Understanding New Media, MIT Press.
Hand, Richard, Mary Traynor (2011), The Radio Drama Handbook, Continuum.
Home-Cook, George (2015), Theatre and Aural Attention: Stretching Ourselves, Palgrave Macmillan.
Kendrick, Lynne (2017), Theatre Aurality, Palgrave Macmillan.
Kendrick, Lynne, David Roesner, eds. (2011), Theatre Noise: The Sound of Performance, Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies (2006), Postdramatic Theatre, translated by Karen Jürs-Munby, Routledge.
Ovadija, Mladen (2013), Dramaturgy of Sound in the Avant-Garde and Postdramatic Theatre, McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Rajewsky, Irina (2005), ‘Intermediality, Intertextuality, and Remediation: A Literary Perspective on Intermediality’, Intermedialités / Intermediality, 6, 43–64.
Rippl, Gabriele, ed. (2015), Handbook of Intermediality: Literature – Image – Sound – Music, De Gruyter.
Rodger, Ian, ed. (1982), Radio Drama, The Macmillan Press.
Salter, Chris (2010), Entangled: Technology and the Transformation of Performance, MIT Press.
Shingler, Martin, Cindy Wieringa (1998), On Air: Methods and Meanings of Radio. Arnold.
Soltani, Farokh (2020), Radio/Body: Phenomenology and Dramaturgies of Radio, Manchester University Press.
Whitehead, Kate (1989), The Third Programme: A Literary History, Clarendon Press.
