Out of the Wings Forum 2025
Worldmaking on Stage: Hearing Each Other
Tuesday 15 July 2025
Macadam Building MB2.2, King’s College London
Call for Presenters
As part of the 2025 Out of the Wings Festival, Out of the Wings is once again coming together with Language Acts and Worldmaking to offer a one-day discussion forum aimed at theatre translation practitioners and researchers.
Taking place on Tuesday 15 July, and timed to coincide with the opening day of the Out of the Wings Festival (15-19 July 2025), the Forum will set the scene for a week of play readings from Latin America, Portugal, and Spain, presented in English translation every evening at Omnibus Theatre. (Booking for the readings at Omnibus is open now at this link.)
Following the success of its previous four editions addressing the idea of ‘Worldmaking on Stage’, in 2024 we invite participants to explore how we hear translation. This is an opportunity to think about, for example: the soundscapes of translation; the role of actors, directors, producers and audiences in hearing translation; the ways in which we create systems, communities and networks of translators through mutual listening; how hearing and listening create collaborators.
At the Forum, we will bring together practitioners and researchers — actors, directors, producers, literary managers, commissioning editors, dramaturges, writers, translators, research students, theatre translation trainers, theatre translation lecturers, and academics — to engage with ideas on staging, teaching, and researching translated theatre.
We invite short proposals for ten-minute (maximum) provocations. This length of time is to ensure conversation and to allow us to hear as many voices as possible. Please take this into account as you prepare your proposal. We invite you to engage with, among others, the following questions and topic areas or to propose other questions in your submission.
How do theatre translators engage with the aural throughout the process of theatre translation? What are the techniques they create to do this?
What are the processes of creating soundscapes in theatre translation?
What role do the actors, directors, producers and audiences play in the hearing of theatre translation?
How does the trust in mutual listening support the creation of systems and networks of translating communities?
What does it take for theatre in translation, its practitioners and advocates to be heard?
The deadline for proposals is Friday 25 April at 17:00, London local time. Please fill in this form to submit a proposal.
The Forum will take place in person at King’s College London. We may be able to accommodate some online participation. Please state clearly in your proposal if you wish to present online.
If you have any queries or questions then please contact the organisers: Professor Catherine Boyle, King’s College London (catherine.boyle@kcl.ac.uk); Dr Sophie Stevens, Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies (sophie.stevens@sas.ac.uk).
Booking for the Out of the Wings Festival play-readings at Omnibus Theatre is open now. To read more about the work of Out of the Wings more generally, please see our website here. We look forward to seeing you at the forum and festival 2025.
Out of the Wings is active all year round with a monthly informal reading of a play in translation, our annual festival, blog, and other ad-hoc events. To keep in touch with our activities, join our mailing list here.
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