As we enter the Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies’ 60th anniversary year, we are now accepting proposals for events and programming for the 2026–27 academic year and invite our community to submit proposals that align with one (1) of the four focal points listed below. Applicants will select a single focal point in the application form. All CDTPS faculty, staff, and students are invited to submit proposals.
Special 60th Anniversary Programming
This milestone offers a special opportunity for our community to reflect on the Centre’s past, celebrate its present, and imagine its future. In this spirit, we encourage proposals this year that engage with the Centre’s 60-year history, legacy & time, collaboration & community, forward-looking visions and future ancestors, as well as theatre and performance at U of T in creative, critical, and diverse ways. What does it mean to be doing and thinking about theatre for 60 years? What is important, at this moment, for the current CDTPS community to reflect upon? How might we set the groundwork for CDTPS’ next 60 years?
Proposals may include lectures, staged readings, FOOT 2027, working groups’ activities, book launches, practice as research projects, colloquia/symposia/conferences, and other projects that align with the work we do at the Centre.
About the focal points
Applicants are asked to select one (1) focal point and respond to the guiding question associated with that focal point in the CFP form. The focal points are intended as conceptual lenses rather than strict categories; projects may naturally touch on other themes but should be anchored primarily in one focus.
Select one focal point for your proposal:
- History, Legacy & Time
- Collaboration & Community
- Forward-Looking Visions & Future Ancestors
- Theatre and Performance at U of T
1. History, Legacy & Time
How does your event concept engage with or respond to the Centre’s history of the past 60 years?
Applicants are asked to describe how their proposed event engages with the Centre’s 60-year history or legacy. This could include:
- Reflecting on key moments in CDTPS history
- Revisiting landmark productions, theories, or artists connected to the Centre
- Responding to shifts in performance practice over the last 60 years
2. Collaboration & Community
How does your proposal foster collaboration and community within CDTPS? Please describe the forms of collaboration involved (e.g. across student cohorts, faculty, alumni, disciplines, or practices such as theory and practice, pedagogy and scholarship), and how these relationships shape the concept, process, or outcomes of your event.
Applicants are asked to submit proposals that encourage or foster multi-cohort or cross-disciplinary collaboration. This could include:
- Undergraduate + graduate student collaboration
- Partnerships with faculty or students
- Intersections between theatre, performance, design, dramaturgy, and technology
- Events that bring together current and former members of the Centre
- Theory and Practice
- Pedagogy and Scholarship
- Creative energies of the past and the future
3. Forward-Looking Visions & Future Ancestors
How is your project an offering or reflection for the present and/or future of CDTPS and its communities?
Applicants are encouraged to consider how their projects speak forward in time—imagining the next 60 years of drama, theatre, and performance studies at CDTPS, and reflecting on how current work might shape the experiences, values, and creative practices of future students, scholars, and artists. This could include:
- Experimental or speculative performance practices
- Multimedia, digital, or technologically engaged performance
- Research creation or process based inquiry
- Projects that imagine how theatre and performance knowledge is transmitted across generations
- Reflections on mentorship, lineage, inheritance, or institutional memory
- Events that intentionally create materials for future use (e.g. documentation, recordings, tools, manifestos, pedagogical resources)
- Proposals that consider sustainability, care, and long term impact as part of innovation
4. Theatre and Performance at U of T
How does your project engage with theatre and performance at the University of Toronto?
Applicants are asked to reflect on their experiences of theatre and performance at the University of Toronto and respond to learning and practice, place, space and community. This could include:
- Site-specific or campus-based performance
- Engagement with U of T histories, spaces, or communities
- Interdisciplinary work across U of T departments or colleges
- Reflection on public education, institutional power, or knowledge production
- Projects that situate CDTPS within Toronto’s theatre ecology
To submit your proposal, please fill out the CDTPS 2026-27 Season Programming Committee Event Form and select one focal point that best aligns with your proposed project by the deadline of 11:59pm on May 4, 2026.
Programming Committee Guidelines
Every spring, the CDTPS sends out a call for proposals for our upcoming Programming Committee events season, which occurs during the academic year from September to April. One of the main priorities of the program committee is to program work that will bring learning opportunities to the whole CDTPS community. Faculty, students and staff are invited to apply. Proposals vary widely and can include anything from lectures, staged readings, the FOOT Conference, working group activities, book launches, practice as research projects, colloquia, symposia and other projects that align with the work of the Centre.
Applying to the Programming Committee is an opportunity to produce your own event while receiving support from the Centre. However, producers are entirely responsible for their project’s execution. The support provided to producers does not necessarily equate to a dollar amount, although producers may make a request for funding in their application. The monetary amount, if awarded, will depend on a number of factors including the kind of event proposed and the number of applications received in a given season. All funds for programming committee events are pulled from the same pool of funds and must be distributed as equitably as possible. Funds not used within a producer’s budget will go back into the Programming Committee funding pool to support future events.
Aside from a monetary amount, which is not a requirement of your proposal, there are various other supports that are offered to Programming Committee event producers including space and labour, both of which are not free resources. The labour offered includes the professional services and guidance from the Centre staff, as well as hours offered from our work-study students, all of which are paid by the Centre. Please keep in mind that our curricular courses take priority over Programming Committee events when selecting spaces and times for events.
We offer the following financial ranges for these event categories:
- Lecture/guest speaker/guest artist – up to $250
- Artistic/training/performance workshop – up to $500
- Staged reading/hospitality – up to $200
- Academic workshop/event – up to $500
Within these categories, we have developed some standards for what we can offer financially. For guest speakers/lecturers/artists who participate in panel discussions, we are offering an honorarium of up to $250. For invited guests who run a workshop or who present a full-scale lecture and participate in a Q&A, we are offering an honorarium of up to $500.
For staged readings, the committee will offer up to $200. This amount is for hospitality and producers will be reimbursed for receipts presented. Staged readings must include members of our community in the reading.
Although the Programming Committee does not primarily fund theatrical productions, we will consider a theatrical production proposal that is show-ready if the following criterial are met:
- The application is submitted 5 business days prior to the Programming Committee events’ deadline (April 27 by 11:59pm)
- The production idea is feasible, coherent and conceptualized
- The production can take place in December or April
- The proposal includes the following supportive documents:
- A description of the play or project that you would like to showcase including the run time (suggested 45 to 90 minutes)
- An explanation of why you would like to put on this show and how it is relevant to the CDTPS community
- Artistic intent (How will you stage this show? i.e., visual concept and approach)
- Designers, technical team and cast (known to date)
- A copy of the play (if applicable)
- A preliminary production schedule
- CV for key artistic personnel and any supporting press materials, website links, etc.
These materials should be emailed to comms.cdtps@utoronto.ca and will be reviewed by our theatre operations team – Ariel Martin-Smith and Adrien Whan.
We would also like to remind students that the Alumni Performance Project is another option for students to produce a full-scale production that can be applied for within five years of graduation.
As we want the Programming Committee events to be open to everyone in the community, we do not support entrance fees or paid ticketing.
The application form will take you through a series of questions including, most importantly, why you think your event would be beneficial to the CDTPS community. If this event is part of your PhD research, please ensure that you’ve investigated SGS/FAS or other graduate student support prior to submitting a proposal to the programming committee.