2025-06-02

Pamiętnik Teatralny invites contributions to a thematic issue on grief.

We are interested in how theatre, drama, performing arts, and rituals approach the experience of loss, both at the individual and social level. Grief can be a transformative process, provoking change and reflections on one’s identity. But it can also have an immobilising effect, causing stagnation, standstill, or stupor. As a medium of memory, theatre is inextricably linked to the work of mourning.

Can theatre constitute a space for grief and allow individuals and whole communities to process the experience of loss into artistic expression, offering a platform for self-discovery, transformation, healing, finding a sense of shared experience?

Suggested topics:

• Images of grief and mourning in theatre: historical and contemporary, from the comparative or cultural perspectives;
• Different ways of representing grief depending on the theatrical and performative forms adopted;
• The theatrical dimension of mourning rituals;
• Grief and the complexity of loss; grief and love; grief and memory; repressed grief; grief and interpersonal bonds;
• Grief in times of pandemic, war, crisis;
• Grief and mourning and the more-than-human world;
• The methodology of describing grief and mourning in theatre;
• Alternative approaches to loss.

We are also open to other proposed conceptualisations of grief and mourning in performing arts.

Abstracts in Polish (ca. 1,200–1,800 characters) or English (ca. 250–300 words) should be submitted by 1^st October 2025 to:  .teatralny@gmail.com. Following the editorial board’s preliminary selection, authors will be asked to submit full texts (25,000–40,000 characters in Polish; ca. 4,000–6,500 words in English) by 31^st March 2026 using the electronic system provided on our website.