KFIR LAPID-MASHALL
research
My research is situated in the intersection of theatre and law, legal performance, tribunal theatre, verbatim theatre, theatre of the real, performance of violence, and political theatre. I am particularly invested in queer performance and queer theory, practice as research, and the performance of resistance and decolonization.
Publications
Book Chapters
“The Naked Truth: What verbatim theatre using court transcripts can say that the court cannot,” International Handbook of Legal Language and Communication: From Text to Semiotics, section 40: Law and Theater: The Performance of Justice (ed. Dr Sean Mulcahy) (Springer, 2027) [forthcoming].
“A Cruising Pedagogy,” Queering the Curriculum in Higher Education: Multidisciplinary Perspectives and Best Practices for Transformative Queer Pedagogy (ed. Sebastian Cordoba) (Emerald Publishing, 2027) [in press].
“‘But What If We Lose?’ On the dangers of enduring conflict in theatrical mock trials,” Making Revolution Irresistible in Socially Engaged Art (eds. Drs H. “Herukhuti” Sharif Williams and Otto Muller) (Routledge, 2026) [in press].
Articles
“The Freedom of Movement: A Choreo-Critique” Amicus Curiae (Dance/Law special issue) (2027) [forthcoming].
“Truth or Dare: How to make an impossible choice in contemporary performance,” introduction for “Trial and Error: An Interview with Blaue&Poppy on The Trial Against Ourselves,” Theater, issue 55, vol. 3 (2025).
“Queering Show Trials: The judge’s body as a site for the metamorphosis of violence,” Documenta, vol. 43, issue 1 (2025).
“The Irruption of Real Violence: the Open Dramaturgy of Theatrical Mock Trials in Milo Rau’s ‘The Moscow Trials',” Documenta, vol. 41, issue 2 (2023).
Reviews
“Performing Law: Actors, Affects, Spaces,” Performance Research, vol. 31, issue 7-8 (2027) [forthcoming].
“Law and Justice in Song,” Amicus Curiae, Issue 8, Volume 1 (2027) [forthcoming].
“Documentary Theatre and Performance,” Contemporary Theatre Review (2026) [forthcoming].
“On Conflicted Activist Performance” Performance Research, vol. 30, issue 3 (2026) [in press].
“Imagine a Review,” Performance Research, vol. 29, issue 2 (2025).
“Ashes to Ashes: Is Expression of Female Violence Just Too Much?,” Performance Research, vol. 28, issue 3 (2024).
Conferences & Public Talks
Invited Keynotes and Workshops
2027
SHOW.TRIAL., Goethe University Frankfurt
2026
A Review of an Academic, Ghent University
Outrageous: a Ritual against Respectability Politics, Theatre and Performance Research Association, University of Manchester
Select Conference Papers
2026
Penetrative Justice: performing the radical pleasures of fucking with the law, Theatre and Performance Research Association, Queen Mary University, London
Conflicted: Judicial Theatre and the Risky Act of the Endurance of Conflict, Four Nations Forum, The Law and the Humanities Hub, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
Dancing on the Edge of Legality: Choreographing Resistance to Law, Socio-Legal Studies Association, University of Sussex
2025
Carnivalizing Show Trials: SHOW.TRIAL. and the pursuit of queer justice through the body of a judge, International Federation for Theatre Research), Cologne University
2024
On Becoming an Audience-Jury: The Cases of Please, Continue (Hamlet) and Karaoke Court, The 29th annual conference of PSi (Performance Studies international), London
Experimenting with Academic Liberation, Theatre and Performance Research Association
2023
Writing in Cafés: How I Resist Disembodied Writing, University of Glasgow
Strained Mercy: Censorship and the Search for Guilt in the 1936 Self-Imposed Trial of HaBima, the Shakespeare Institute, University of Birmingham
Public Talks
2024
The Power of Verbatim Theatre, Fountain Theater, Los Angeles
On a Yet-To-Be-Resolved Queer Performance, University of Glasgow
2022
The Trial of Ham: A Micro Mock Trial, Scottish Graduate School for Arts & Humanities