About (Kill)joys, Grievances, and Resistance

About (Kill)joys, Grievances, and Resistance: Imagining Institutional Change in European Theatre - A roundtable with artists/makers/thinker from across Europe

Bringing together artistic directors, choreographers, performance makers and researchers working across Europe and the UK, this event asks: what does it mean to imagine and rehearse change as a “killjoy” (Sara Ahmed), as a troublemaker, as an artist committed to social justice? What strategies, solidarities, and visions can help us remake our institutions—and rehearse a more equitable future?

This is not only a call for critique, but for creativity. As Audre Lorde reminds us, “poetry is not a luxury.” Imagination is a vital tool in dismantling oppression and envisioning new ways forward. But this roundtable also offers a space to honour grievance as a form of knowledge, the fierce, sustaining kind that arises from shared struggle, from building something different together.

This roundtable starts from the shared recognition that theatre institutions across Europe remain shaped by racialized and exclusionary systems – often obscured, but deeply entrenched. From casting to programming, from funding models to aesthetic conventions, the backstage of theatre is a site where inequality persists. Taking inspiration from Dorinne Kondo – who argues in her book Worldmaking: Race, Performance and the Work of Creativity (2018) that theatre in the U.S. is shaped by “race-making” not only on stage, but through institutional frameworks, hiring practices, aesthetic norms, and economic systems – we turn our attention to the often-unseen processes that determine what (and who) makes it to the stage. What would it mean to radically reimagine those processes? What new alliances, policies, and practices are needed to build more just and sustainable cultural institutions?

We are warmly inviting interested audiences, creative makers and thinkers to join us in our discussions!

Hosted by

Ann-Christine Simke, Lecturer in Performance, Division of Arts and Media, School of Business and Creative Industries, University of the West of Scotland, Scotland

Anika Marschall, Assistant Professor in Performance, Institutions and Societal Transformation, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, Netherlands

With

Audrey Leboutte, curator, former artistic coordinator at Zinnema, Brussels

Caitlin Skinner, Artistic Director and CEO of Stellar Quines, Scotland

Farah Saleh, works on decolonial embodied practices, Glasgow University

Julian Warner, performer, curator and artistic director of Brecht Festival, Augsburg, Germany

Phyllis Akinyi, Danish-Kenyan dancer, choreographer, performance artist, and dance researcher based between Madrid and Copenhagen

Sonya Lindfors, Cameroonian-Finnish choreographer and artistic director of UrbanApa, Helsinki

Swati Arora, Senior Lecturer in Performance and Global South Studies at Queen Mary University, London.

The hosting of this roundtable was made possible through funding from the Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE).

We also thank the University of the West of Scotland (UWS) for institutional support.