Focus and Scope

Pacific Performing Arts Review [ISSN 3124-4777] is an international, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the study and practice of performing arts in the Pacific. It focuses on embodied, live, and mediated forms of expression across the region, including Papua, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, French Polynesia, Independent State of Papua New Guinea, Independent State of Samoa, Kingdom of Tonga, New Caledonia, Niue, Republic of Fiji, Republic of Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Republic of Nauru, Republic of Palau, Republic of Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, Eastern Indonesia, and Pacifican diasporic communities worldwide. The journal understands performing arts broadly: from ritual and ceremony, dance, theatre, storytelling, and music to experimental, interdisciplinary, and digital performance practices.

The journal aims to:

  • Document, analyse, and revitalize traditional and contemporary Pacific performance practices.

  • Explore how performance relates to identity, indigeneity, cosmology, ritual, gender, environment, politics, education, tourism, and the creative economy in Pacifican contexts.

  • Provide a dialogic space for artists, indigenous communities, scholars, students, curators, and policy makers engaged with Pacific performance and culture.

The journal welcomes work from performance studies, anthropology, ethnomusicology, theatre and dance studies, cultural studies, media studies, and other relevant disciplines.

Scope

The Pacific Performing Art Review welcomes contributions, including (but not limited to) the following areas:

  1. Forms and practices of Melanesian performance

    • Music, dance, theatre, ritual performance, storytelling and oral poetry, spoken word, body art, mask and costume, processions, and community festivals.

    • Contemporary, experimental, and hybrid performance forms that draw on Pacifican traditions.

  2. Performance, cosmology, and belief systems

    • Performance in relation to myth, cosmology, ritual, spirituality, and indigenous knowledge systems.

    • Symbolism of the body, costume, mask, sound, and movement in ceremonial and sacred contexts.

  3. Identity, indigeneity, and decolonial perspectives

    • Performance as a site for negotiating Pacifican identities, race, gender, sexuality, class, and generational change.

    • Decolonial, Indigenous, and community-based approaches to performance and research ethics.

  4. Modernity, hybridity, and globalization

    • Encounters between local performance traditions and global forms (popular music, film, social media, digital performance, global festivals, etc.).

    • Effects of colonial histories, missionization, migration, urbanisation, and new technologies on Pacifican performance practices.

  5. Education, transmission, and heritage

    • Teaching and learning of performing arts in schools, communities, cultural centres, and higher education institutions.

    • Performance as intangible cultural heritage, including projects of revitalisation, safeguarding, and intergenerational transmission.

  6. Cultural policy, creative industries, and tourism

    • Cultural policy and governance related to performing arts in Pacifican.

    • Festivals, cultural events, and tourism that centre Pacifican performance, and their impacts on communities and local economies.

    • Performing arts within creative and cultural industries.

  7. Archiving, documentation, and curatorial practices

    • Audio-visual documentation, digital archiving, and community-based archives of performance.

    • Curatorial practices for exhibitions, festivals, site-specific works, and cross-institutional collaborations involving Pacificanperformance.

  8. Interdisciplinary and theoretical approaches

    • Theoretical, methodological, and comparative work on performance in Pacifican.

    • Interdisciplinary dialogues between performance and fields such as environmental humanities, religious studies, history, sociology, linguistics, and visual arts.