Call for Papers – THEATRALIA 2026/2: Theatre and Structuralist Approaches – Legacy, History, and Current Relevance
The year 2026 will see many events honouring, discussing, and revisiting one of the most influential traditions in literary and linguistic theory, which emerged in Prague, – a tradition rooted strongly in the Central European mindset, – that of Structuralism. On the unique occasion of the centenary of the Prague Linguistic Circle, founded in 1926, the Prague School will surely be explored from many perspectives. In the forthcoming discussions, the theatre – both as a field of research and a laboratory of theoretical thought – should neither be omitted nor marginalised. Joining the celebrations of this important event in Czech and world history, the open-source peer-reviewed journal Theatralia invites theatre theory and history scholars to revisit and reassess the (seemingly) well-established and thoroughly researched intellectual tradition. A focus on the Prague School and its theatre theory is one of the research foci of the Department of Theatre Studies, Masaryk University in Brno – and we feel obliged and honoured to keep the discussion alive and thriving.
The proposed issue of Theatralia 2/2026 invites contributions in the form of research articles for the peer-reviewed sections of the journal (4,000‒7,000 words), as well as non-peer-reviewed reports and reviews (1,000‒1,500 words), exploring the following themes (the list is by no means exhaustive):
- archival research providing innovative interpretation of key works, theories, and figures (such as Jan Mukařovský, Jindřich Honzl, Petr Bogatyrev, Jiří Veltruský, or Roman Jakobson and others);
- discussion of the relation of interwar avant-garde theatre (and artistic praxis as such) to Prague School theatre theory;
- interdisciplinary explorations of theatre theory with linguistics, ethnography, anthropology, or sociology;
- exploration of approaches to drama as a literary genre between the page and the stage, between linguistics, the literary and the dramaturgical approaches;
- current relevance of the legacy of Prague School theory in the context of postStructuralist and cultural methodologies in theatre (history) research;
- current relevance of Prague School theory in analysing post-dramatic and/or performative artefacts and events;
- issues of teaching the Prague School to students of both theorical and practical studies
of theatre.
The call follows the long-term research that has been published in three special issues of Theatralia (see https://www.theatretheory.cz/publications), and presented in Theatre Theory: Prague School Writings (2016) edited by David Drozd, Tomáš Kačer, and Don Sparling.
These publications, however, are aging, and the summative book Theatre Theatre will soon be 10 years old. The discourse needs to carry on and stay alive: not everything is known, researched, and should not be taken for granted.
Let’s take a fresh look at the century-old tradition!
Proposal submission deadline (300–500 words): 30 November 2025
Manuscript submission deadline for the peer-reviewed sections (Yorick, Spectrum): 30 January 2026
Manuscript submission deadline for the non-peer-reviewed sections (Reviews, Events): 30 March 2026
Expected date of publication: Autumn 2026