Lab Dates: November 2025 – Jan 2026
Location: Online (open to participants worldwide), FREE
Languages: English-led, multilingual participation welcome
Deadline to apply: 17 October 2025, 12 AM GMT
Access: Human generated live captioning available on request 

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Are you an artist, writer, or practitioner? Are you interested in experimental writing and thinking in response to performance? Are you curious about how writing and performance intersect with lived experiences of migration, diaspora and political action? Do you want to work with writing as a tool for anti-imperial and abolitionist practices, as a tool for resistance and imagination?

Non-Conforming Criticisms Lab is a free, online programme dedicated to experimental, critical, and politically engaged writing in response to live art and performance. These three sessions with invited facilitators will be spaces for collective learning, exchange and reflection. Participants should be curious about performance and writing as anti-imperial, abolitionist and anti-colonial practices, as tools for resistance, imagination and transformation.

This lab is a part of the Live Art Writers Network (LAWN) led by performingborders and Diana Damian Martin. LAWN cultivates and supports experimental writing practices in response to live art and performance. This project addresses the lack of spaces dedicated to critical, reflective and experimental writing in the live art sector, particularly for practitioners whose work is informed by lived experiences of intersectional borders.

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What to expect: 

The lab will be a space for peer exchange and experimentation with live arts writing. Together we’ll think through ways writing can respond to political crises, open up speculative and abolitionist approaches to criticism and shape nonconforming editorial practices. We’ll also explore access-led and DIY publishing as ways of making work accessible across different contexts and audiences. 

Digital + in-person gatherings:

• Three digital lab sessions (2-hour sessions, monthly between Nov 2025–Jan 2026)
  
• One in-person meet-up in London (optional, for UK-based participants): focusing on self-publishing and Risograph printing, with Slow + Dirty Press, Jan 2026.
  
• One in-person meet-up in South England, a public event to share and gather around what has come out of the lab sessions, Feb 2026. Date TBC
  

The space will offer:

• A chance to develop your writing practice, share approaches to work and creative/critical writing, and connect with peers
  
• A supportive environment shaped by slowness, experimentation and solidarity
  
• Potential publishing opportunities via performingborders and HowlRound Theatre Commons 

Dates and Lab Topics:  

Welcome Session –  Wednesday 5 November 2025, 6:30-7:30 PM (GMT)- Facilitated by performingborders and Diana Damian Martin 

Lab #1 – Wednesday 12 November 2025, 7-9 PM (GMT) – Facilitated by HowlRound Theatre Commons 

How can arts writing be conscious of its public audience? This session opens writers to a consideration of audience through activities and discussion that center an editorial perspective and a commitment to accessibility in writing. Led by Vijay Mathew and Ashley Malafronte of HowlRound Theatre Commons, this work is grounded in HowlRound’s digital accessibility efforts and commons-based editing and publishing practices.  

HowlRound Theatre Commons is a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide that amplifies progressive, disruptive ideas about the art form and facilitates connection between diverse practitioners. We envision a theatre field where resources and power are shared equitably in all directions, contributing to a more just and sustainable world. HowlRound publishes written work (essays, criticism, interviews, and more) in the HowlRound Journal, podcasts through HowlRound Podcasts, and events livestreamed through HowlRound TV. We also produce convenings to gather artists and cultural workers to discuss pressing field issues. Other commons have emerged from the HowlRound commons, including the Latinx Theatre Commons, which began as a result of a meeting convened by HowlRound and is now operating individually, and the International Presenting Commons. Learn more at www.howlround.com.

Lab #2 – Wednesday 17 December 2025, 6:30-8:30 PM (GMT) – Facilitated by Season Butler 

Season Butler is a writer, artist, dramaturg and teacher. Her work reflects on ideas of youth and old age; solitude and community; negotiations with hope and what it means to look forward to a future of elusive horizons. Butler’s artwork has appeared at the Whitechapel Gallery, BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Tate Exchange, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Hotel Maria Kapel and Zürcher Theater Spektakel. Her debut novel, Cygnet, was published in 2019 and won the 2020 Writers’ Guild Award for Best First Novel. She creates across forms including fiction, performance, comics, essays and poetry.

More info: seasonbutler.com 

Lab #3 – Wednesday 7 January 2026, 6:30-8:30 PM (GMT)- Facilitated by Fargo Nissim Tbakhi 

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian performance artist and the author of TERROR COUNTER (Deep Vellum, 2025) and ANTIGONE. VELOCITY. SALT. (Deep Vellum, 2027).

More info: fargotbakhi.com

More information about sessions to come! 

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Who is this for?:

• Artists, writers, performers, researchers, organisers and anyone working with writing and performance
  
• Border practitioners–including migrant and diaspora practitioners; thinkers; writers; organisers whose lived experience is impacted by political, economic, juridical and/or geographic barriers; and people whose creative expression and freedom are  restricted through racial, gendered, ableist and classist borders.
  
• Those at any stage in their practice, from emerging to established
  
• This is an international open call
  
• Please note that the course will be hosted in English, although multilingual participation is encouraged! 

You don’t need to have published writing or be affiliated with an institution. We value lived experience, curiosity, and care over credentials.

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How to Apply

To express your interest, please fill out this short form:

Deadline: 17 October 2025

If you’d like to submit your expression of interest in another format (audio, video, etc.), please let us know at [email protected] and we’ll be happy to accommodate.

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This project is funded by the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama through UKRI Impact Accelerator funding.

About us:
performingborders is a collectively run platform for artistic research and creation, centred on notions and lived experiences of intersectional borders through live art and performance practices. performingborders is a knowledge-sharing platform created in dialogue with its contributors. Since 2016 performingborders has woven a digital and live tapestry of interconnected, cross-border experiments through interviews, artist commissions, open calls, publications, residencies, workshops, conversations, events, newsletters, and pamphlets – all freely accessible online. Co-run by Alessandra Cianetti, Xavier de Sousa and Anahí Saravia Herrera.

Diana Damian Martin is a writer, artist and researcher working on questions of borders, performance, experimental practices as well as alternative critical cultures and collaborative work. She co-hosts collectives Something Other, Department of Feminist Conversations, Critical Interruptions, Generative Constraints and is a Senior Lecturer at Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. 

More about the lab hosts:
Ashley Malafronte is a director, dramaturg, educator, and editor who is utterly obsessed with stories and the people who tell them. She is senior editor of HowlRound Theatre Commons and formerly served as the Head of Theater Studies for the Waterwell Drama Program at NYC’s Professional Performing Arts School. As a scholar, Ashley focuses on theatrical adaptations and revivals, the economics of theatre, directing practice, and the performance of race and whiteness. She is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. 

Vijay Mathew is the Cultural Strategist and Co-Founder of HowlRound Theatre Commons. He also serves as the Accessibility Producer at Black Heart, a digital communications agency. Additionally, he is a board member of Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, Massachusetts. At Emerson College, he taught the undergraduate and graduate course HowlRound Seminar: Topics in Contemporary Theatre Practice. Over the past decade, Vijay has helped develop HowlRound Theatre Commons’ unique characteristics as a community-edited online space. His work has enabled numerous artists and nonprofit organizations worldwide to livestream their conferences, discussions, and performances—with a focus on accessibility and resource efficiency in digital environments. His expertise includes implementing digital accessibility standards and sustainable online practices.