EASTAP 2026 Annual Conference

Waiting for the Barbarians

Conference programme (Final Version)

Pre-Conference Day

Tuesday, 22 September

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

From 10:00 Registration desk opens

11:00-13:00 Editorial Meeting of European Journal of Theatre and Performance (EJTP)

13:00-14:00 Workshop for EJTP Editorial Board with José Sikkens & Dorien van Rheenen, University of Groningen Press (UGP)

15:00-17:00 EASTAP ExCom Meeting (ExCom members only)

17:30-18:30 Waiting, Witnessing, Disappearing

Performance lecture by Hossein Tavazoni

Venue: Kunstkantine

Wednesday 23 September – Saturday 26 September

Paper Panels, Emerging Scholars Forum (ESF), and Artistic Events

** Each panel is marked with a letter and a number, for example T.1; the letter indicates the thematic thread (T for Temporalities of Affect, M for Medialities of Waiting, W for Who is the Barbarian?, C for Collective Futures), and the number indicates the session within that thread. **

Day 1

Wednesday 23 September

9:00-9:30 Registration and coffee

Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

9:30-10:15 Conference Opening and Welcome

Alice Lagaay, Chair of Arts, Culture and Society, University of Groningen (RUG)

Rui Pina Coelho, EASTAP Executive Committee Secretary

Eleftheria Ioannidou and Pieter Verstraete, members of RUG Organising Committee

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

10:30-12:15 Paper Panels

Panel T.1 From Suspension to Destruction

Room 3227.0152, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Wenjun (June) Zhu: Waiting for Reform: Self and Other, Suspension and Progression in Chinese Adaptations of Waiting for Godot

Alexandra Marinho de Oliveira: The Poetics of Waiting in Brecht: A Dialogue with Walter Benjamin on the Barbarian and Critical Interruption.

Philip Hager: Temporalities of Impasse and Deferral in post-2010 Greece: Late Night and Antonio or the Message

Luule Epner: Waiting for Destruction: Lauri Lagle’s Leviathan

Panel M.1 Bodies and Voices

The Social Hub

Katja Schneider: Waiting in the Whiteness of Black: Simone Forti’s The Bear in the Mirror

Annelies Van Assche: Le Foyer de la Danse 2.0: Old Histories, New Precarities

Elena Kamilari: The Dramaturgical, Political and Intermedial Configurations of Waiting in the

Adaptation of Ionesco’s The Chairs (1971) on Greek Radio during the Military Dictatorship of 1967-1974

Richie Lux Kramár: Meditations in an Emergency: The Operatic Prompter and the Dramaturgies of Suspension

Panel W.1 The Performative Barbarian

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Natassa Siouzouli: The Advent of the Object, or: Waiting for the Subject to Vanish: Performance, Power, and Persistence

Armando Rotondi: Waiting for the Machine: Guy Bar-Amotz and the Performative Barbarian

Kamila Mamadnazarbekova: Beaufs, Barbarians, and Trans Performativity

Stefania Lodi Rizzini: Ritual Temporalities and Queer Fugitivity in the Performative Practice of Va Bene

Panel C.1 Ecologies of the Future

De Noorderlingen

Gustavo Vincente: Towards an Ecology of the Invisible: Practices of Care in Performing Arts

Lara Aysal: Worldmaking with Changing Parts: Liminality and Relational Art in Community-Based Practice

Valentina Temussi: Waiting as Political Time: Vigilance, Witnessing, and the Civil Theatre of Marco Paolini

Marcela Moura: The Mangrove as Barbaricum: A Model for the Creation of a Complex Stage

Rūta Mažeikienė: Performing AI-Augmented Dramaturgy: Between Human and Machine

ESF 1. Dramaturgical Lingering

Studio X, Het Regulateurshuis

Lisa Celsi: ‘Make Them Wait for It, then... What?’: Spectatorship as Waiting in Sarah Kane’s First and Last Plays

Borghild Rangnes Homlong: The Act of Waiting: Exploring the Dramaturgical Potential of Audience Interaction during the Theatre Intermission

Hossein Oroumiehchiha: Waiting and Suspension in The Seagull: Failures, Trauma, and the Dramaturgical Power of Deferred Action

10:45-11:15

Het Houten Huis, Bloemsingel 10c

Open session at Het Houten Huis, hosted by David van Griethuysen, Managing Director and Dramaturg

Get a backstage look at this imaginative music theatre company for young audiences, and see how it fits into Groningen’s theatre ecosystem. Please note that the session at Het Houten Huis partly overlaps with the panels.

12:15-14:00 Lunch Break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

14:00-15:45 Paper Panels

Panel T.2 Other Bodies

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Jetë Zhitia: Desire Deferred: Phèdre and the Dramaturgy of Waiting

Yanna Kor: Woman in Waiting in Contemporary Theatre

Simone Chiachiarrelli: Beginnings as Relational Devices: Reconfiguring Waiting and Crip Time in Bersani’s Performances

Ljubiša Matić: Countdown to Shutdown

Panel M.2 Art/Activism

Room 3227.0137, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink and Sigrid Merx: Simulation, Speculation and Dramaturgies of Suspension in Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Ana Maria Ursu: Art-tivism in Post-socialism

Fernando Matos Oliveira: Between Sleep and Laziness: Revisiting the ‘Politics of Installation’

Panel C.2 Citizenship, Ethics, Response-ability

De Noorderlingen

Marilena Zaroulia: ‘The Barbarians Are Already Inside’: Performing a Decolonial Europe in Hew Locke’s The Procession (2022)

Catriona Craig: Deferred Arrival: (In)Action, Ethical Dramaturgy, and Agonistic Solidarity

Elodie Verlinden: Suspending the Horizon: Whiteout, Signification, and the Dramaturgy of Deferred Eventuality in Dehors est blanc (Tumbleweed)

ESF 2. The Barbarian as Sexual Object

Studio X, Het Regulateurshuis

Marie-Louise Kolmos: Violators and Rebel-Bodies: Exploring Narratives Surrounding Intimacy Coordination in a Danish Production Context

Tamborrino & Andrea Zardi: GRNDR or Date a Barbarian

Keiu Virro: Co-creating Accessible Theatre: A Culture Hackathon as Action Research

15:45-16:00 Coffee break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

16:00-17:15 Keynote Talk

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Maria Boletsi (University of Leiden / University of Amsterdam)

‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ as Political Stage: From Modernist Suspension to Polycrisis, Defeat and Radical Hope 

17:15-19:00: Dinner on your own

19:00-19:45 Reception and speech by Judith Blankenberg (artistic director of Grand Theatre) & presentation EJTP #7.2

Grand Theatre Groningen

20:00: Helstone in het Pand der Goden byMathieu Wijdeven, Theater Rotterdam

Grand Theatre Groningen

Day 2

Thursday 24 September

9:30-10:00 Registration and coffee

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

10:00-11:15 Keynote Talk

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Emma Cox (Royal Holloway, University of London)

Reparation, Temporality, and Response: Awaiting the Law after Migration Fatalities

11:15-11:30 Coffee break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

11:30-13:15 Paper Panels

Panel T.3 Memory and Endurance

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Matilde Ghelardini: Presence through Absence: Silence, Memory, and Waiting in the Theatre of Gabriel Marcel

Suzanne Knip-Mooij: ‘This Strange Loop is Endless, Eternal’: On the Vibrancy of Suspended Temporalities in Susanne Kennedy’s Theatrical Trilogy

Kristina Hagström-Ståhl: ‘Traumatic Realism’ and the Scene of Memory: Time and Temporality in the Plays of Charlotte Delbo

Arianna Frattali: Suspended Time: Dramaturgies of Waiting in Robert Wilson’s Odyssey

Panel M.3 Language and Translation

The Social Hub

Henriëtte Rietveld: Translating Early Modern Barbar(it)y

Margharita Laera: Leaving the Barbarians Out of the Curriculum? The Role of International Drama in UK Drama Education in Schools

Kasia Lech and Claire French: No More Surtitles? Materiality and Linguistic Citizenships of the Global East

Cristina Svens: Contesting Social Fantasies about ‘the Others’: Multilingual Dramaturgy in the Children's Theatre Performance The Heroine of Basra by Theatre Jalada

Panel W.3 Entangled Pasts and Presents

Kunstkantine

Hossein Tavazoni and Eleftheria Ioannidou: Ancient Barbarians in Modern Cultural Imaginaries

Katerina Karra: Waiting for Civilization: Foreign Actresses, Operetta, and Cultural Anticipation in the Eastern Mediterranean (1900-1940)

Deimantė Dementavičiūtė-Stankuvienė: Between Civilization and Barbarians: The Postcolonial Hero in Post-Soviet Lithuanian Theatre

Tancredi Gusman: Waiting for Performance to Come Documentation and Reactivation between Past and Future

Panel C.3 Theatre as Political Institution

De Noorderlingen

Lisa Skwirblies: Performing Staatsräson: Cultural Freedom, Barbarism, and the Cancellation of Wajdi Mouawad’s Birds of a Kind in Munich

Lily Climenhaga: Post-Patriarchy?: Institutionalized Misogyny, The Brotherhood (2024), and Carolina Bianchi’s Critique of European Theatre’s Patriarchy Problem

Sandra Grehn: Searching for Memory, Barbarian Acts and New Possible Futures in Angered Theatre’s production Omelas (2025), inspired by Ursula K. Le Guin’s Sci-fi Novella The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas

Rita Agatina Di Leo: Waiting for a No-form of Censorship: Sorry, Boys By Marta Cuscunà

ESF 3. Waiting as Method

Studio X, Het Regulateurshuis

Dominika Fleszar: Waiting for the Red Barbarian: Katyn Dread in London Émigré Plays Świadek and Displaced Person (1948)

Arianna Morganti: The Institutional Counter-festival: Performative Practices and Political Memory in Estate Romana (1977-1985)

Eyck Marcus Wendt: Can The Performance Wait? Enduring the Interruption in Milo Rau’s Vienna Trials (2024) and Tania Bruguera’s Where Your Ideas Become Civic Actions (2015/2024)

Sanita Duka: Un Barbare à Paris: Left-Wing Cosmopolitanism, Estrangement, and the Barbarian Gaze

13:15-14:30 Lunch Break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

14:30-16:15 Paper Panels

Panel T.4 Waiting as Dramaturgical Device

Room 3227.0050, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Frithwin Wagner-Lippok: On the Affectivity of Waiting: Phenomenological Aspects of Waiting Using the Example of Kae Tempest’s Let Them Eat Chaos

David Roesner: The Comedy of Waiting: Musicality, Rhythm, and Political Expectation in Weimar Germany

Jurgita Staniškytė: From Durational Performances to Comic Pranksters: Repertoires of Protest: Lithuanian Case

Panel M.4 Relational Modalities

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Anneli Saro and Hedi-Liis Toome: Decolonizing Moments in the Russian Theatre in Estonia

Merilin Jürjo: Us vs Others: The Role of Theatre in Reinforcing Beliefs

Raffaella Viccei: When the Other Is Oneself: Waiting for Oedipus with Bob Wilson and Ulrich Rasche

Danielle Mages Amato: Staging Grief-Worlds: Re-Mapping Time and Space in Performance

Panel C.4 Collective Being

De Noorderlingen

Andy Lavender: Performance Temporalities in the Face of Doom

Paula Gomes Magalhães: Active Waiting: Political Urgency and Vigilance in Portuguese Revue Theatre (1974–1975)

Lukáš Kubina: Waiting for the Barbarian to Slip: Political Authenticity, Performative Breakdown, and the Dramaturgy of Anticipation

Paul Geary: (Not) Knowing the Future: Awaiting, Anticipating, and Staging Futurity in Ontroerend Goed’s World Without Us (2016)

ESF 4. On the Thresholds of Waiting

Studio X, Het Regulateurshuis

Ermina Apostolaki: The Barbarian Within: Durational Labour and the Suspension of Event in Pleno

Maria Sławińska: Where Miracles Happen: Theatre Beyond the Visible

Ioanna Solidaki: Slowness and the Experience of Stretching Time as Tacit Protest

Burcu Güney Yilmaz: Matrixial Temporality: Cultural Borderspaces and Time-Wealth Equity

Giulia Sala: Suspended Conflict and Postcolonial Imaginaries in the Balinese Barong Performance

16.15-17:00 Showcase hosted by director Elien van den Hoek, composer/puppeteer Martin Franke, and dramaturg David van Griethuysen around the youth music theatre production, Grondtonen (9+)

Venue: Het Houten Huis, Bloemsingel 10c (max. 30 people)

Meet the makers behind Grondtonen (‘ground tones’ or ‘root notes’), a new music theatre production for young audiences in the North, and hear how live music is built into imaginative theatre from the ground up.

***Please note that this event overlaps with the pre-performance snack***

16:15-17:00 Light pre-performance snack (only for ticket-holders of the opera dress rehearsal)

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

Performance Evening

Venue: Stadsschouwburg Groningen (SPOT)

17:30-18:30 Discussion with Klaus Bertisch (dramaturg), moderated by Pieter Verstraete

19:00: Dress Rehearsal Waiting for the Barbarians, Nederlandse Reisopera coproduction with Club Guy & Roni

Duration: 2 hours and 45 minutes (** please note this is a dress rehearsal – timings may vary **)

Day 3

Friday 25 September

8:45-9:00 Registration and coffee

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

9:00-10:45 Paper Panels

Panel T.5 Waiting, Wanting, Becoming

Room 3227.0205, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Cock Dieleman: Het wachten van / op Jetse Batelaan

Yağmur Atlar: Waiting for the Audience: Empowering Silence in Tim Crouch’s Plays

Helena Buffery: Waiting for Tomorrow: Temporal Suspension, Memory and Transgenerationality in the Work of Helena Tornero

Roskana Niewadzsiz: Trapped Somewhere Between ‘I’ and ‘Other’: Practice-based Re-tellings of Animal-Woman Folk Tales

Panel M.5 Cultural Borderspaces and Civil Resillience

Room 3227.0206, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Rebecca Brinch, Ylva Lorentzon, and Anna Lund: Transforming Imaginaries: Institutional Dramaturgies for Civil Resilience

Panel W.5 Barbarians and the Future

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Rui Pina Coelho: Barbarian Bodies at the End of the World: Heterotopia, Utopia and Refusal in Tiago Rodrigues’s La Distance

Alena Dvorakova: Waiting for the Hero of Resistance to Turn a Traitor

Cláudia Madeira and Raquel Rodrigues Madeira: What are We Waiting for? We, the Barbarians!: A ‘Resistance Manual for 2050’ (2025), by Ana Borralho and João Galante

Panel C.5 The Barbarian as Performative Strategy

De Noorderlingen

Thomas Riccio: The Barbarian Within: Cosmocentric Dramaturgies of Suspension and Transformation

Martin Bernátek: Choreopolitics of Red Vienna

Paulo Filipe Monteiro: Bluebeard, the Homemade Barbarian

10:45-11:00 Coffee break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

11:00-12:45 Paper Panels

Panel T.6 #MeToo: Polish Perspective

Room 3227.0137, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Katarzyna Waligóra, Monika Kwaśniewska-Mikuła, Kasia Lech, and Marta Keil: Theatre Studies After #MeToo: Polish Perspective

Panel M.6 Humans and Robots

De Noorderlingen

Irene Alcubilla Troughton, Maaike Bleeker, Soyun Jang, Laura Karreman, and Ruowen Xu: The Robots are Coming: Affect, Attunement and Imagination in Human-Robot Encounters

Panel W.6 Willful Barbarians

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Aylwyn Walsh: An elegy for Elegy

Maíra Santos: Cronopolitics of Waiting: Unlearning the Barbarian Within the Imperial Gaze

Ewa Bal: Theatrical akēdía is a Resistance Strategy in Response to Challenges of Patriotism, Heroism and Capitalism

Małgorzata Budzowska: Standby: On the Need for Barbaric Art in Times of War

12:45-13:45 Associate Artist Panel

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Guy Weizman (EASTAP Associate Artist), moderated by Eleftheria Ioanidou

13:45-14:45 Lunch break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

13:45-14:45 ESF Lunch Panel on Academic Publishing

Studio X, Het Regulateurshuis

14:45-16:00 Keynote Talk

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Sruti Bala (University of Amsterdam)

All the Arms we Need: on the Normalization of Militarization in the European Cultural Realm

16:00-16:40 Artist Panel

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Chokri Ben Chikha (RUG-Associated Artist)

Action Zoo Humain

16:45-17:00 Coffee break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

17:00-18:00 Performance Lectures

Performance Lecture Session 1

De Noorderlingen

Agata Tomšič: Can a Barbarian Change the Society We Live in through a Violent and Radical act of Rebellion?

Performance Lecture Session 2

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Christina Schmutz: Those Times Are Gone: A Lecture Performance on the Paradoxical Relationship of Restlessness in Theatre Art and Politics

Theron Schmidt: Waiting for Emergence: Performing Non-linear Classrooms

Staged Reading

Studio X, Het Regulateurshuis

Children is All by James Purdy

Yuankun Zhou, Grace Kavanagh, Jonna Wikström, and Eros Chien

Curating the North

Room 3227.0133, Anda Kerkhoven Centre

Open discussion with cultural agents from the North of the Netherlands, moderated by Lucia van Hetere

18:00-20:00 Dinner on your own

20:00 Double  Bill: Nik Rajsek - KINK / Sanam Tahmasebi / ShELFISH - Archive of a Lonely Body

Grand Theatre Groningen

Day 4

Saturday 26 September

9:00-9:15 Registration and coffee

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

9:15-11:15 EASTAP AGM Meeting and Plenary

Open to all EASTAP Members

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

11:15-11:30 Coffee break

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek

11:30-13:15 Paper Panels

Panel W.7 / C.7 The Waiting Never Ends

Zaal 1, Machinefabriek

Caterina Piccione: ‘Où le soleil tue les questions’: Waiting, Alterity, and the Need for Meaning in Camus’s Le Malentendu

Marta Brites Rosa: Rehearsing Freedom: When the Audience Became the Event

Eva-Liisa Linder: Same Waiting, Different Welcomes: Political Theatre and Democratic Transition in Estonia

José Pedro Sousa: Barbarian Intermissions: Modalities of Cultural Resistance in 17th-century Theatre in Portugal

13:15-14:00 Light lunch and World Café

Venue: Kunstkantine, Machinefabriek