Join us for the 2026 Comparative Drama Conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, July 9-11, 2026
We are delighted that the 2026 Comparative Drama Conference will be hosted by the University of Wisconsin–Madison, from July 9–11, 2026. We look forward to welcoming colleagues to this dynamic campus in the heart of the American Midwest for another year of rich, international dialogue in drama, theatre, and performance studies.
Contact
Baron Kelly & Ann M. Shanahan at cdc2026@theatre.wisc.edu
Location
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus and the Concourse Hotel, 1 W Dayton St., Madison, WI, 53703
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The Conference
The Comparative Drama Conference is an international, interdisciplinary conference founded by Dr. Karelisa Hartigan at the University of Florida in 1977. Every year, approximately 175 scholars are invited to present and discuss their work in the field of drama and 2 new plays receive a staged reading. The conference draws participants from the Humanities and the Arts, as well as other fields. The papers delivered range over the entire field of theatre research and production. Over the past 40 years, participants have come from 32 nations and all 50 states. Each year a distinguished theatre scholar or artist is invited to address the participants in the Keynote event.
From 2025-2030, the conference is hosted by the University of Wisconsin, Madison (UW-M) and the London Academy for Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA) in alternating years (2025, 2027, and 2029 in London, UK and 2026, 2028, and 2030 in Madison, WI, USA) and is co-directed by Baron Kelly and Ann M. Shanahan in Madison, and Nick Holden and Mark O’Thomas in London.
CDC 2026 Keynote: A Conversation with Jill Dolan
Jill Dolan is the Annan Professor in English and Professor of Theater at Princeton University, where she served for nine years as the Dean of the College, until summer 2024. She is the author of many books, including The Feminist Spectator as Critic and Utopia in Performance: Finding Hope at the Theatre. In 2011, she received the George Jean Nathan Award for dramatic criticism for her blog, The Feminist Spectator. In 2025, she received Princeton’s Howard T. Behrman Award for sustained achievement in the humanities. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. Read more…
Registration Now Open: Comparative Drama Conference, July 9-11, 2026
We look forward to welcoming scholars, artists, and students from around the world for three days of panels, discussions, and events exploring drama and performance across contexts.
The conference will feature a keynote conversation with Jill Dolan, Annan Professor in English and Professor of Theater at Princeton University.
Presenters are required to pre-register and should register for the attendance type (in-person or virtual) indicated in their acceptance notification.
For registration details, hotel information, travel guidance, and presenter guidelines, please see the information below on the website.
Questions may be directed to cdc2026@theatre.wisc.edu.
2026 Early Bird Rates
Available through May 15, 2026
| Ticket Type | Rate (USD) |
| Presenter, Reader (Faculty) | $145.00 |
| Presenter, Reader (Independent Scholar) | $125.00 |
| Presenter, Reader (Student) | $115.00 |
| Non-presenter Session Chair | $95.00 |
| Guest/Attendee | $80.00 |
| Student Guest/Attendee | $47.00 |
| One Day Pass | $40.00 |
| One Day Student Pass | $25.00 |
2026 Virtual Rates
Available through July 11, 2026
| Ticket Type | Rate (USD) |
| Virtual Presenter | $80.00 |
| Virtual Independent Scholar/Student | $65.00 |
| Virtual Attendee (Non-Presenter) | $40.00 |
2026 Standard Rates
Available May 16 to July 11, 2026
| Ticket Type | Rate (USD) |
| Presenter, Reader (Faculty) | $170.00 |
| Presenter, Reader (Independent Scholar) | $135.00 |
| Presenter, Reader (Student) | $125.00 |
| Non-presenter Session Chair | $115.00 |
| Guest/Attendee | $95.00 |
| Student Guest/Attendee | $55.00 |
| One Day Pass | $50.00 |
| One Day Student Pass | $35.00 |
Conference Venue
The 2026 Comparative Drama Conference will be held at The Madison Concourse Hotel (1 W Dayton St., Madison, WI, 53703) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Campus.
Lodging
The Comparative Drama Conference is thrilled to announce that the 2026 conference has secured a reduced lodging rate for attendees at the Concourse Hotel, which already offers competitive pricing. We are also exploring the possibility of further reduced lodging opportunities for graduate students as part of our commitment to ensuring an accessible conference experience for scholars and artists at all career stages.
Location: The Madison Concourse Hotel
1 W Dayton St., Madison, WI, 53703
Rate: $138/night + tax*
*Rooms at this rate are located on the Concourse Premier Level, while rooms on the Governor’s Level will be available at the standard rates listed on the hotel website. Please see The Madison Concourse Hotel website for current pricing and details.
Booking details will be included in the registration confirmation email sent to attendees upon successful registration.
Parking: Guests who book through the Comparative Drama Conference block are eligible to receive the reduced parking rate of $10.00 per night
Airport Access
The 2026 Comparative Drama Conference boasts convenient access to multiple airports—MSN, MKE, and ORD—offering attendees a wide range of flight options and price points. This connectivity helps ensure flexible, affordable travel for participants coming from across the country and abroad.
Public Transportation
Madison Metro Transit provides convenient route options from the airport to the downtown/campus area and is a reliable way to explore Madison. Riders can purchase fares using contactless payment with Mastercard, Visa, or Samsung, Apple, and Google virtual wallets directly on the bus, or at ticket machines located on most BRT platforms.
The Van Galder bus provides convenient route options from the Chicago O’Hare International Airport to the Madison campus area (250 N. Lake St.).
Co-Directors
Baron Kelly (Co-Director) is both the Marilynn R. Baxter and Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of Theatre and Drama. He has a joint appointment with the UW-Madison Department of Liberal Arts and Applied Studies. Baron concurrently holds the Colin Cook Professorship of Acting at the London Academy of Music and Art. A former Harvard faculty fellow, he recently received the American College Theater Festival (ACTF) Gold Medallion and the University Resident Theatre Association (URTA) Excellence in Undergraduate Training Award. In 2023, he was formally invested into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.
Baron has performed internationally for the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain; Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada; National Theatre of Norway; Yermelova Theatre, Moscow, Russia; Constans Theatre, Athens, Greece; Academy Theatre Dublin; Edinburgh Theatre Festival; Bargello, Florence, Italy; among others. Broadway: credits include Salome and Electra. He has performed numerous classical (major genres of Shakespeare, Greek Tragedy, Chekhov, Turgenev, Musset, and Ibsen) and contemporary roles (Wilson, Fugard, Williams, Piñero, Hansberry, Coward) for over 30 of America’s leading regional theatres including the Oregon, Utah, Dallas Fort Worth, and Southern California Shakespeare Festivals; Yale Repertory; The Guthrie; Shakespeare Theatre Washington; Actors Theatre of Louisville; among others. Film and Television include A Day Without a Mexican, Bird, Loving, Law and Order, and Frasier. Baron has been a participant at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. He is also in the psychological thriller The Coming, directed by Aaron Greer. His accolades include an Emmy Award (won), Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award (nominated), and an Audelco Award (nominated).
He is a four-time Fulbright Scholar and has traveled extensively as a Cultural Specialist for the United States Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairs, teaching and lecturing on the theatre on four continents. Professor Kelly has authored numerous essays, articles, and book chapters in journals and anthologies and has written two books. His most recent book is Building Embodiment: Integrating Acting, Voice, and Movement to Illuminate Poetic Text with co-author/co-editor Karen Kopryanski (Routledge, 2023). Dr. Kelly earned his PhD in Theatre Research from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a diploma from London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and an MFA in Acting from California State University Long Beach.
Ann M. Shanahan (Co-Director) is a professor of directing and acting in the Department of Theatre and Drama at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she recently served as chair and artistic director. She is a Core Faculty of the Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies Program (ITS).
A scholar-artist specializing in feminist pedagogy, directing, and representations of domestic space on stage, she has directed over 60 productions, and writes about her own and others’ directing practice. Recent publications include “Changing Landscapes in Directing and Choreography in Higher Education” with Emily A. Rollie (SDC Journal, 2026); Active Speech: Critical Perspectives on Teresa Deevy (Open Book Publishing, 2025); Landscapes of Perception: Meredith Monk, Robert Wilson and Richard Foreman (Methuen, 2023); “‘A Visor for a Visor’: Two Approaches to Staging Romeo and Juliet in a Divided Country” in Playing Shakespeare’s Tyrants and Rebels, Vol. 4 (Peter Lang, 2021); “Making Room(s): Staging Plays about Women and Houses,” in Performing the Family Dream House: Space, Ritual and Images of Home (U of Iowa, 2019). Professional directing includes: Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (Room(s)), Vagabond and The Turn of the Screw (City Lit Theatre), Lies and Legends, Wasp, Warrior, The Living, and On Golden Pond (Buffalo Theatre Ensemble). Numerous productions at the university level include: original adaptations of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Mansfield Park, Romeo and Juliet, A Doll’s House, Twelfth Night, The House of Bernarda Alba, The Trojan Women, Hedda Gabler, Our Country’s Good, Arcadia, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Mother Courage and Her Children, The Crucible, Ghosts, Fefu and Her Friends, and Abingdon Square.
Prior to UW, Ann was on the faculty at Purdue University and Loyola University Chicago where she founded Room(s) Theatre, an interdisciplinary organization devoted to performance-based research related to gender. Ann was a member of the Brecht Company in Ann Arbor, MI from 1987-1992 and performed in Stockholm and Prague with the American Drama Group and British Festival Theatre Company. Ann is founding co-editor of the Peer-Reviewed Section of the SDC Journal (Stage Directors and Choreographers Society) and an elected member of the National Theatre Conference (NTC). She holds a BA in Drama from the Residential College of the University of Michigan, and an MFA in Directing from Northwestern University.
Lora Werner (PLACE Event Manager) is an event management professional with over a decade of experience leading high‑impact events, operational strategy, and stakeholder engagement across higher education, non‑profit, and corporate environments. She currently serves as an Event Manager for the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s School of Education at PLACE, where she oversees comprehensive event operations—from strategic planning and budgeting to vendor management, and on‑site execution. In this role, Lora partners closely with internal and external stakeholders to deliver high‑quality educational programs that strengthen community engagement and advance the School’s mission.
Previously, Lora managed large‑scale initiatives within UW–Madison’s Division of Diversity, Equity & Educational Achievement, where she supervised staff and volunteers, executed campus‑wide programs like the Diversity Forum, and enhanced operational policies to improve efficiency and impact. Her work included designing event websites, creating branded marketing materials, and creating unique escalated events.
Lora holds a Bachelor of Science in Technical Management from DeVry University, graduating Summa Cum Laude, as well as an Associate of Arts from Suomi College. With expertise spanning event logistics, stakeholder engagement, budgeting, digital design, and CRM systems, Lora is known for her strategic mindset, exceptional organizational skills, and commitment to creating meaningful, high‑impact experiences.
Jared Lee (Graduate Assistant) is a PhD student in Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. With a background in directing, producing, marketing, and artistic leadership, his research focuses on how immersive and interactive theatre has the potential to create financially sustainable, community-centered models for U.S. regional theatres—seeking theatre experiences that move beyond traditional infrastructure and focus on civic dialogue, flexible storytelling, and environmental adaptability.
Prior to joining UW-Madison, he was the Marketing Director for Milwaukee Film, a local non-profit in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that operates two historic cinemas and two yearly film festivals, and before that was the Associate Director of Marketing for Milwaukee Repertory Theatre where he was tasked with developing, and measuring new audience development plans and initiatives.
Jared holds an MFA in Theatre Management from Wayne State University, an MFA in Directing from the University of Portland, and a Bachelor of Science in Education in Speech and Theatre Education from Missouri State University.
The Comparative Drama Conference (CDC) is hosted by the Department of Theatre and Drama and the office of Professional Learning and Community Education (PLACE) in the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. This partnership was made possible by the generosity of the School of Education Dean’s Office. The conference is also supported by the Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies Program (ITS) in the College of Letters and Sciences.
*PLACE is committed to creating inclusive and accessible events. If you need accommodations, please make sure to include this information when you register for this event. If accommodation needs arise after registration, please contact us at conferences@education.wisc.edu at least two weeks before the event. While we will do our best to fulfill late requests, we may not always be able to guarantee them.