Actors, singers and celebrity cultures across the centuries - call for papers

Actors and singers have been traditionally at the centre of histories of spoken theatre, opera, musical theatre, popular music genres, film and other media. Through the embodied nature of their performance, they have always reflected and shaped manifold cultural and social practices.

With the emergence and development of Western celebrity cultures from at least the 16^th century (Kerr 2015; Adams 2022) to the present, these stage professions began to exert new and more overt forms of cultural influence on society. Over time, the rise of media technologies and their global circulation––from printing, photography and sound recording to radio, cinema, television and social media––have continued to provide singers and actors with new tools for fashioning their public and private personas. By the same token, their acts of performance have also continuously adapted to the incoming technologies in ways that remain mostly under-explored. 

The interplay of these factors has continuously modified power dynamics within the stage professions. As the relations between actors, singers and other members of the stage industries (composers, playwrights, conductors, directors, producers, critics, patrons, audiences etc.) have evolved, the strategies that presided over the construction of celebrity, stardom and fandom have also developed from earlier periods to our day. 

By connecting these streams of research, our conference aims to bring together doctoral students, early career and senior academics, scholar-practitioners and members of the cultural industries to share their work under the aegis of the Theatrical Voice Research Centre. We welcome proposals on the following, but not exhaustive, list of topics:

• Embodiment, performance and the construction of identity, class, race, age, gender, sexuality and disability;
• The production, reception and mediation of celebrity;
• Stardom and fandom in past and contemporary histories of actors and singers;
• The interactions of actors, singers, stardom and media technologies;
• The shifting relations of power within the stage professions, e.g. between singer and composer; actor and playwright; singer and conductor; actor/singer and director; actor/singer and producer;
• The impacts of digital media and social networks on the co-construction of vocal celebrity by performers and audiences;
• Vocal gestures, movement and the making of meaning;
• The active role of patrons, audiences, publics and fan communities in the construction of stardom and celebrity within the performing arts.

Work in progress is also welcome. Given our focus on technologies, we are delighted to host the conference at Studio 1 at the University of Surrey that––designed to a very high acoustic specification––will secure seamless audio and video broadcasting of the event via the Theatrical Voice Research Centre YouTube channel.

Submission details

Abstracts of maximum 250 words for 20-minute papers, 30-minute lecture recitals or 7-minute snapshots, and short biographies of 120 words should be sent to Barbara Gentili at b.gentili@surrey.ac.uk by 28 February 2025, including the applicant’s institutional affiliation and contact details. 

Deadline

28 February 2025

Decisions

Decisions will be communicated by 14 March.

Programme committee

• Barbara Gentili, University of Surrey
• Nicolò Palazzetti, La Sapienza University of Rome
• Clare Siviter, University of Bristol
• Jed Wentz, Leiden University
• Emmanuela Wroth, University of Cambridge

Image credit: 
Anton Maria Zanetti, Vittoria Tesi Tramontini and Antonia Negri Tomi, 1741. 
Pen and brown ink. RCIN 907413  
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