Platform Vol. 7, No. 1 - On Corporeality

Platform: Journal of Theatre and Performing Arts is published biannually. Contributions are particularly welcome  from   postgraduate researchers,  postdoctoral researchers, and   early-career    academics in theatre and performing arts.  We   welcome the submission  of academic  papers,  performance responses, photo essays, book reviews, interviews, and new dramatic writing. Platform also welcomes practice-based research papers.



 This issue of Platform considers  ‘the body’ as it appears or is experienced in theatre and performance. ‘On  Corporeality’ is partially  inspired by the second biannual interdisciplinary symposium,  Trans.form@Work, hosted by the Department of Dance, Film and Theatre at the University of Surrey in May 2012. Corporeality emerged as a persistent theme in this symposium, as it has in a number of other symposiums, conferences and publications across the humanities, especially over the past five years. This proliferation of engagements with corporeality – part of what Maxine Sheets-Johnstone calls ‘the corporeal turn’, in a book of the same name – testifies to a burgeoning interest in the body: not only as a site of inscription, but also as a vehicle of expression and possible transgression or resistance. Our concern with bodies also stems, then, from the belief that the debates of the corporeal turn are not only still revolving, but evolving as a consequence of such possibilities. Consequently, this issue marks an attempt to engage with and seek multiple understandings of this politically charged field.