PAJ SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Forward all correspondence, submissions, and file transfers to [email protected]. PAJ does not read abstracts. Send queries for article ideas to the editors or submit the completed article. Do not embed images in articles: see instructions below on how to send your texts and images to PAJ. Send only Word documents, not PDF files. Prospective contributors should familiarize themselves with recent issues of the journal before submitting their work. PAJ articles, plays, and reviews are available on the journal website: https://direct.mit.edu/pajj.

All submissions must follow the journal’s submission guidelines. Submissions that do not conform to the requirements below will be automatically returned for revision.

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

1. PAJ publishes articles and essays of varying length, typically between 2,000 and 5,000 words. In general, book reviews and Art & Performance Notes range from 1,000 to 2,000 words in length.

2. Prepare the text in Times New Roman, 10-point type, one-and-a-half spaced, with numbered pages. Use Microsoft Word. Refer to Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition). All articles require original titles, including reviews.

3. Align text on left margin; text should be ragged right. Do not justify margins. Leave a space between paragraphs. Indent long quotes using one tab.

4. Use a single space after all punctuation marks. All periods and commas should be inside end quotes. Colons and semicolons are always outside of end quotes.

5. Italicize all book titles and foreign words.

6. PAJ does not use in-text (parenthetical) citations or footnotes. List endnotes under “NOTES” at end of text. Number endnotes sequentially and make sure they correspond to numbers in text. Leave three spaces between the far-left margin and the number where the note begins. Keep endnotes to a minimum and incorporate essential information into the main body of your text. Do not send a list of references or bibliographies.

7. Please do not submit British-style essays—no single quotes; check U.S. spellings.

8. Do not place images directly into your manuscript. Send all image files separately.

9. All submissions are to be accompanied by a brief bio (2–3 sentences) at the end of the manuscript. Include your mailing address and telephone number in the body of your submission email.

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Illustrations should be submitted using a transfer platform such as Dropbox or WeTransfer. Do not embed images in emails or Word documents. Send high-resolution TIFF or JPEG images, no less than 300 dpi.

2. All photos should be accompanied by captions and photo credits keyed to images. Format these according to the journal’s caption guidelines listed below.

GENERAL GUIDELINES

1. Decades or Periods of Years
   2010s, 1880s, etc. (no apostrophe)
   60s, 90s, etc. (no apostrophe); sixties, nineties
   twentieth century; twentieth-century theatre
   
   
2. Possessives
   Philip Glass’s (’s follows names ending in “s”); exception is old Greek names: Sophocles’; Greeks’
   
   
3. Italics
   names of plays, book titles, periodicals, operas, symphonies
   foreign words
   titles of short poems, songs, and essays are placed in quotation marks—no italics
    
4. Commas
   Use serial (Oxford) commas: e.g., “plays, operas, and essays.”
    
5. Numbers
   At the beginning of a sentence, all numbers are spelled out.
   Whole numbers one through one hundred are spelled out, as well as any round numbers (numbers followed by “hundred,” “thousand,” etc.). For all other numbers, use numerals.
   If spelled-out numbers cluster thickly in a sentence or paragraph, use numerals instead.
    
6. Directions
   Direction words used to identify a geographic location are capitalized: e.g., the West, the South.
    
7. Dates and Time
   Month, day, year: October 5, 2022. Months are always spelled out.
   Centuries are spelled out; hyphenate century when it is used as a modifier.
   10:00 a.m.; ten o’clock
    
8. Ellipses
   Do not start a quotation with an ellipsis.
   Leave one space between each period of ellipse.
   If an ellipsis coincides with the end of sentence, use four periods.
   
   
9. Translations
   Foreign titles are italicized.
   When a translated word or title follows in brackets, it is not italicized: Die Dreigroschenoper [The Threepenny Opera]

PLAYS

1. All character names should be flush left, in caps, and followed by a colon. Dialogue should follow directly after colon on the same line. Put character names within stage directions in caps.

2. Between speeches by different characters, leave extra line.

3. All stage directions within dialogue should be placed within parentheses, italicized, and followed by a period: (She shut the door.). Italicize text but not parentheses. Also, if character names appear inside stage directions, do not type them in all caps, but in small caps, and italicize, except for the parentheses.

4. Do not type stage directions on separate lines unless the play requires it. PAJ style is to have stage directions precede, follow, or be inserted within the dialogue.

FORMATTING SAMPLES

1. Title, Subtitle, and Author Name

LITTLE AMAL’S NEW YORK JOURNEY
The Big Puppet in the Big Apple
Claudia Orenstein

2. Body of Essay: Paragraph Style

As happened after corona, art and performance took on new meanings beginning in February. For their May issue, Theater der Zeit put an image of the destroyed Mariupol theatre on its cover, the Russian for “children” in huge letters still clearly visible in front of the building. An attack on children, an attack on families, and an attack on Ukrainian culture. “What should the theatre do now?” Theater der Zeit asked twenty-two artists, all of whom gave different, contradictory answers.

3. Sections and Subheads

Any subheads within an essay put in boldface and all caps: THE CULTURE WARS

4. Extended Quotations in Essay

As he writes in his review essay of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968):

Nature once again has become an open empire as it was in the days when man thought of the earth as flat and extending on to infinity … we’ve left the boundaries of earth and again have entered an open empire in which all manner of mysteries are possible. Beyond infinity lurk demons who guard the secrets of the cosmos. We are children embarking on a journey of discovery.

5. Endnotes

Indent second line of endnotes three spaces. Do not use excessive endnotes. Incorporate as much information as possible in the body of the article, such as titles of books, essays, or productions. Do not include footnotes or in-text citations within the body of your essay.

NOTES

   1. Alexander S. Reed, Laurie Anderson’s Big Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 15.

   2. Meryl Borato, “Examining Martin Crimp’s Political Aesthetic in The Country and The City,” Modern Drama 64, no. 3 (2021): 326.

   3. Minou Arjomand, “Animal Friendship: A Docudrama,” in Imagined Theatres: Writing for a Theoretical Stage, ed. Daniel Sack (London: Routledge, 2017), 28.

   4. Laura Cappelle, “Martyrs, Converts and Pious Frauds: Religion Takes Center Stage,” New York Times, January 27, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/theater/moliere-taertuffe-ivo-van-hove.html.

   5. Elevator Repair Service, “Solidarity Commitments,” accessed December 9, 2022,    https://www.elevator.org/solidarity-commitments/.

6. Interviews

All interviews should be accompanied by an introductory, biographical paragraph on the person being interviewed. Include the date of interview (day, month, and year). Interviewer questions are in italics and answers by interview the subject are in roman. Below the title, list the speakers as follows:

FROM MEDIEVAL ROMANCE TO CONTEMPORARY OPERA

Kate Soper in conversation with Joseph Cermatori

That reminds me of Aristotle saying in the Poetics that humans are by nature an imitative species: we enjoy and also learn from imitations. It seems a very classical idea in your work.

In one part of the Metaphysics, he talks about some supreme being which is just contemplation, basically, and how that’s the state we want to be in, that level of just thought. Not just because it’s good or something, but because that’s peak human experience: contemplation.

7. Interview with Three or More People
If the interview includes three or more speakers, do not put any responses in italics. Preface each statement with the last name of each speaker, as follows:

THOMPSON: It seems that much of the dynamic of re-presentation is really a question of translation. That is an interesting model for thinking about what it means for, say, a filmmaker to document a performance, which is really reinventing that event in a different material. There are certain elements that are always untranslatable.

ABRAMOVIC: Yes. Germano [Celant] said a really interesting thing, when you’re re-making Manet paintings, you’re not making Manet, you’re making something else. And that is really what is the interesting point to discuss.

WESLIEN: For audiences re-experiencing these re-performances there will be interesting questions raised about seeing them again. In this way we’re almost anticipating the response to you doing Vito Acconci’s Seedbed. I think the future of what you are doing is going to present some really interesting questions.

8. Art & Performance Notes

After the title of review and reviewer’s name, identify the event in separate paragraph before the body of article.

• Single performance: it’s alive, IT’S ALIVE!, a theatrical cabaret written and performed by John Fleck, directed by David Schweizer, Odyssey Theatre, Los Angeles, CA, February 19–March 20, 2022.
• Festival: Avignon Festival, Avignon, France, July 5–25, 2021.
• Single performance at festival: The Persiansby Aeschylus, performed by Bread and Puppet Theater, directed by Peter Schumann, Chicago International Puppet Theatre Festival, January 28, 2022.
• Artist show at a gallery/museum: The Medium Is Not the Only Message by Suzanne Lacy, exhibition, Queens Museum, Queens, NY, March 13, 2022–August 14, 2022

9. Plays/Performance Texts

Put title of play in all caps. Character names are in all caps in both dialogue attributions and stage directions. Note the formatting below for stage directions.

The puppeteers enter stage right in all-white suits. There is the sound of cold wind; they are fighting the wind with a bunraku puppet named KIRKTD who is bundled up in a survival suit and covered in snow and ice. All we see of him is his mustache sticking out. He is wearing goggles and carrying a bucket and a fishing pole. He struggles against weather and old age as he crosses stage left and approaches a hole in the ice. He sets up a fishing rig.

KIRKTD: (Voiceover.) Signal Tender Log: Journal Entry 702. Performed routine maintenance on all signal beacons, as expected, still no contact from Planet B recon mission.

10. Book Reviews

Book reviews, like other essays in the journal, should have an original title. Directly below the title and your name, include the following publication information about the books being reviewed.

• BOOK REVIEWED: Anne Carson, H of H Playbook. New York: New Directions, 2021.
• BOOK REVIEWED: Modern Theatres 1950–2020, edited by David Staples with drawings by David Hamer. New York and London: Routledge, 2021.
• BOOKS REVIEWED: Barbara Fuchs, Theater of Lockdown: Digital and Distanced Performance in a Time of Pandemic. New York: Methuen, 2021; Marco Pustianaz, Surviving Theatre: The Living Archive of Spectatorship. New York: Routledge, 2021; Caridad Svich, Toward a Future Theatre: Conversations During a Pandemic. New York: Methuen, 2021.

11. Illustrations, Captions, and Photo Credits

• PHOTOS 1 and 2: Trajal Harrell, Dancer of the Year Shop #4 (2022), Kunsthalle Zürich in collaboration with Schauspielhaus Zürich, installation view. Photos: Gina Folly. Courtesy Kunsthalle Zürich.
• PHOTO 3: Jerry Killick, Richard Lowdon, Terry O’Connor, Cathy Naden, and Claire Marshall performing in Under Bright Light, directed by Tim Etchells. Photo: Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy Forced Entertainment.
• PHOTO 4: Susie Sokol as Masha in Elevator Repair Service’s Seagull, directed by John Collins. Photo: Ian Douglas.

12. Short Bios
ARNOLD ARONSON is Professor Emeritus of Theatre at the Columbia University School of the Arts. His books include Ming Cho Lee: A Life in Design and The History and Theory of Environmental Scenography; he also edited The Routledge Companion to Scenography. He was a founding co-editor of the journal Theatre and Performance Design.

 

(1/2023)