The 34^th Annual CDE Conference, organised on behalf of the German Society for Contemporary Theatre and Drama in English, will be held at Masarykova kolej (Thákurova 1, Prague 6) on 4–7 June 2026. The organising team consists of members from the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University; namely Prof Ondřej Pilný, doc. Clare Wallace, Marie Gemrichová, Ondřej Polák, and Valeriya Sabitova. The conference is supported by the European Regional Development Fund project “Beyond Security: The Role of Conflict in Resilience-Building” and the ESP Programme of the Department of Foreign Affairs of Ireland.

Conference Programme

Thursday, 4 June 2026

9:00–15:30 | PhD Forum (venue: Room P111, Faculty of Arts, Charles University, nám. Jana Palacha 1/2, Prague 1)

Chairs: Clare Wallace, Leila Vaziri

Participants: Claudia Maya Prats, Hannah Eder, Wiebke Acton, Onur Karaköse, Laura Meyer, Tomáš Eštok

15:30–17:30 | CDE Board Meeting

16:00–18:00 | Arrival and Registration

18:00–19:00 | Dinner Break

19:00–19:30 | Conference Opening and CDE Award Presentation

Kerstin Schmidt (President of CDE), Ondřej Pilný, Clare Wallace

19:30–20:30 | Keynote 1 – Alice Koubová

20:45 | Conference Warming

Friday, 5 June 2026

9:00–10:30 | Panel 1 – Resources and Ecologies (chair: tba)

Robert Lublin – Recovery and Resilience in Quiara Alegrı́a Hudes’s Water by the Spoonful

Nicole Schneider – The Resilience of Water: Place, Endurance, and Water in Erika Dickerson-Despenza’s cullud wattah (2021) and Rob Florence’s Katrina: Mother-in-Law of ’em All (2018)

Harriet Carnevale – “Wild as gorse, tough as heather”: Land, Myth and Resilience in Stranger Beasts

10:30–11:00 | Coffee Break

11:00–12:30 | Panel 2 – Contemporary UK Theatre (chair: tba)

Ruud van den Beuken – The Resilience of Radical Hope in Roy Williams and Clint Dyer’s Death of England Trilogy

Eva Ries – Promiscuous Obedience as Resilient Resistance in Alice Birch’s Revolt. She said. Revolt Again

Muammer Özoltulular – Staging Relational Resilience in Flora Wilson Brown’s The Beautiful Future is Coming

12:30–14:00 | Lunch Break

14:00–15:00 | Panel 3 – Race (chair: tba)

Ahlam Jodat Maodah – The Resilience of Silence: Submissive Performance and the Reclamation of Voice in Cesi Davidson’s ‘Voice Lessons’

Michael Jaros – Feeding Beatrice – Hunger, Property, and Black Ownership in the Contemporary American Theatre

15:00–15:30 | Coffee Break

15:30–16:30 | Keynote 2 – Playwright in Conversation: Louise Lowe

19:30 | Theatre Performance at Divadlo Komedie (optional)

Saturday, 6 June 2026

9:00–10:30 | Panel 4 – Spaces of Performance, Spaces of Neoliberalism (chair: TBA)

Sarah Heinz – A Dream House on Stage: Inhabiting Resilience in Geoff Sobelle’s Home

Charlotte Farrell – To Hold What Shimmers: The Resilience of Queer Performance in Sydney

Eamonn Jordan – Coping in Conor McPherson’s The Brightening Air

10:30–11:00 | Coffee Break

11:00–12:00 | Keynote 3

Tony Fisher – Necro Theatre: Staging Resilience in the Age of Capitalist Melancholia

12:00–13:00 | Lunch Break

13:00–14:30 | Panel 5 – Contested Histories and Alternative Networks (chair: TBA)

Kristýna Ilek – Networks of Care: Dramaturgy, Resilience and Power on the Island of Ireland

Chengyao Ye – Staging Hitler: Resilience, Resistance, and the Politics of Contemporariness in British Theatre since the 1990s to the Present

Tomáš Kačer – Red Tape Resilience: Deconstructing a Dominant Historical

Discourse in Tracy Letts’s The Minutes

14:30–15:00 | Coffee Break

15:00–16:00 | Keynote 4 – Playwright in Conversation: Deirdre Kinahan

16:15–18:45 | CDE Annual General Meeting and Election

Sunday, 7 June 2026

9:00–10:00 | Keynote 5

Miriam Haughton – What Is Happening to Art? Theatre Finance, Funding,

and Policy in the Twenty-First Century

10:00–10:30 | Coffee Break

10:30–12:00 | Panel 6 – Disenfranchisement and Resistance (chair: tba)

Edyta Lorek-Jezińska – The Risks of Making Tea and Advantages of Murder: Resilience, Resistance and Counterfeit Disability in Rob Drummond’s Don’t. Make. Tea. (2022/24)

Diana Benea – Performing Resilience in Ping Chong + Company’s Community-Based Productions with Refugees

Douglas Basford – “What Progress?”: Performing Resilience in Public Enemy: Flint

12:00–13:30 | Lunch Break (optional)

13:30 | End of Conference

You may find the more information about the conference on its official website.