22 April, 2025 | by Robert Dean
Call for Papers for a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review
In-Yer-Ear: Performing in the Headphone Era
Contemporary Theatre Review
Tuesday 15th July 2025
Monday 1st February 2027
We are seeking contributions that explore the artistic, technological, and cultural significance of headphone-mediated performance over recent years. This special issue welcomes contributions that engage headphone-mediated performance across diverse cultural spaces that foster broader dialogues orbiting around several key questions: What are the working logics of headphone-mediated performances? How do they negotiate conventional emphases on the liveness, presence, or communal experience of performance? How do they restructure and mobilize performance experience, and how do they work with performance space or with audience engagement and perception? To what extent does ‘in-yer-ear’ theatre draw from and embrace the specificity of its medium? In other words, how does it harness the enclosed nature of its wired listening to envision new futures for expanded stages and “liveness-plus” performance? How do the private stages of headphone listening reflect contemporary emphases on individual experience or reproduce algorithmic echo-chamber logics? In what ways do they engage with neoliberal ethics and the cult of individualism? To what extent do they position headphones as cultural references, fashion statements, or commodities within consumer culture? Contributions might approach questions including but by no means limited to: - Historical antecedents of headphone-mediated performance including headphone verbatim - Intersections with current audio culture (or more specifically with podcasting, ASMR, and other headphone-based media forms) - Possible future directions of headphone-based theatre - Space and place in walking-based headphone theatre or audio/video tours - Role and influence of personal audio technologies in theatre practice (from design to performance) - Headphone-based theatre and audience experience - Audience and/as performers in headphone performances - Digital listening and embodied perception - Wired spectatorship, digital bubbles, current algorithmic culture - Inclusion and Accessibility in headphone-based performances - Aesthetic and narrative elements of headphone-based theatre - The politics of headphone-based theatre - Role of headphone theatre in intimate or one-to-one performance - Digital theatre listening as/and eco-minded practice - Questions of liveness in headphone-mediated theatre The issue welcomes research articles (6-10,000 words) as well as a range of other types of submissions, including, but not limited to, artistic reflections/interventions, interviews or manifestos (3-6,000 words) that align with the theme. If interested, please submit 300-word proposals by Tuesday 15 July 2025 to the guest editors: [email protected] and [email protected] If successful, full articles will be due in April 2026.