A Note from the Editor

The five essays included in this issue of Theatre Topics speak to a broad range of issues in the field of theatre studies, all the while focusing on research questions and subjects that are of particular interest to practitioners and educators. Specifically, the authors of three of the works published in the pages that follow are concerned, to a certain degree, with how research might be applied to and / or emerges from their teaching. Significantly, this teaching, in all its various forms and arrangements, occurs not only in the traditional classroom, but also in more remote sites such as the crowded streets of London and the mountain wilderness of Wyoming.

In the first essay, Megan Sanborn Jones suggests that the summer re-enactment of a fateful 1856 Mormon Handcart Trek in central Wyoming—a journey that ended in the deaths of nearly two hundred travelers—serves two purposes. On the one hand, it works to venerate those from the past who lost their lives. However, for the Mormon youth and their adult leaders re-enacting the trek in the present, the performance of the past helps in the endeavor of the Church of Latter-day Saints to define the shape and scope of its community. Jones's meticulous and moving reading of the re-enactment is a product of her own presence in the performative landscape. While the author speaks from a position of membership within the Church, she nonetheless proffers a balanced and nuanced evaluation of the embodied, historiographic procedures utilized by the Church, and a resolute consideration of the effect those procedures have on the participants. In light of this, then, Jones indirectly argues that the teaching and learning that occurs in the classroom of the Intermountain West, as with all teaching and learning, is laden with the values of those who control and fashion the educational procedures and goals.

The two pieces that follow also deal with the processes, joys, and challenges of teaching in various contexts. In the first of these, Kathleen Juhl and Sue Mennicke recount and evaluate their structuring of a study abroad program in London. At the core of their consideration is a discussion of how their framing of the course was informed, in significant ways, by a focus on the process of performing cultural identity. As a result, the authors rightly argue that by thinking beyond the typical educational methods and aims in their creation of this study abroad course, they were able to invest the course with a heightened sense of "intellectual rigor and self-reflection."

Similarly, in her essay, Julia Guichard recounts the particular pleasures and anxieties born of the process of restructuring the voice and speech curriculum at her institution—a process that arose following an elemental shift in focus within her department. In seeking to align her dialect course with the new-found concentration on critical thinking, Guichard argues that her students' understanding of the course content deepened. Moreover, by shifting the focus away from skills acquisition and toward the processes of examining evidence, analyzing arguments in written form, and building conclusions, the students developed proficiencies that would serve them outside of the theatre as well.

In the last two essays, Jeffrey Ullom and Amy Pinney move in slightly different directions. In the first of these, Ullom discusses the 2003 national manifesto competition. In his balanced consideration of the contest, Ullom not only explicates the processes involved in the development of the contest, but also offers a critique of the structures that often stymie new play development. Additionally, Ullom offers a reading of the winning entries, accounts for the often severe criticism of the competition (from both academics and artists working in the professional theatre), and contemplates the ways in which the competition has been, and might continue to be, used as a point of discussion and reflection in the classroom.

Amy Pinney's essay on directing solo performance rounds out this issue. In this piece, Pinney explores the contours unique to the relationship between the director and a cast of one. She convincingly argues that this one-to-one relationship is fundamentally different from a collaboration involving...