A Note from the Editor

In contemporary culture, "rules of engagement" refers us directly to Iraq, Jerusalem, the streets of Brooklyn. These battlefields have inspired the authors in this issue to consider the term in a different context as they debate the ways in which actors and audiences alike are actively engaged in the necessarily political act of making theatre. What are the rules of engagement that allow theatre to effectively battle injustice, misogyny, apathy, segregation? How can we refine the engagement between director and cast, between actor and actor, between critic and artist, to ensure the place of theatre as a primary generator of social change?

Julie Jackson's exploration of the work of Frank Galati opens this issue. In examining the staging of one of our foremost directors, Jackson focuses on the unique way that Galati engages and challenges those who witness his work through his manipulation of objective and subjective presentation. She considers Galati an "intellectual provocateur" and questions how our perception is engaged "when disquiet and uncertainty are the intended effect." Rules of engagement in two contemporary political hotbeds influenced the rules for engagement within performance as explored by Lucy Winner and Ellen Kaplan. For Winner, a crisis in American democracy, as exemplified by the conditions in Guantanamo, led her to create a theatre class in which personal engagement in a redefined theatrical arena led its participants to recognize "that performing democracy is key to the health of our society."

Ellen Kaplan's visit to the Middle East encouraged her to examine theatre intended to engage opposing forces in attempts at reconciliation. Examining the work of Arab and Jewish Israeli teens, along with that of apartheid survivors in South Africa, Kaplan considers the importance of distance in our ability to tell and retell stories in an effort to heal.

The next three articles in this issue focus on feminism and the theatre. For me, the resonance of this ongoing engagement is clear, but I wondered about its resonance for a younger generation and queried my students. The majority of those who responded think of feminism as existing in a bygone time, although they simultaneously recognize that some of its basic ideals have not yet been realized (and indeed may actually be slipping out of our grasp). One student noted that studying feminism would be like studying a different culture. While compassion and discontent clearly drove the answers I received, these students by and large do not consider themselves to be involved in "feminist activities," and feel no empowerment to make change.

At the conclusion of my study, I felt all the more compelled to include the writing of Beth Watkins, who explores "how performance practices provide a framework for understanding the construction of gender, identity, and authority." Watkins describes the struggle to reconcile her political and artistic agen das as she considers the profound impact of engaging students in different rehearsal models intended "to raise questions about gender constructions for all students and to empower women students in particular."

Watkins's work leads directly into Ann Armstrong's study of Split Britches' Lois Weaver's residency at the College of William and Mary. Armstrong notes that "the rehearsal process was guided by a feminist ethic that required students to embrace the uniqueness of their identity on multiple levels that included regional identity, class, sexuality, gender, religion, and race." Armstrong's description of Weaver's "pedagogy of coalition," one that "that builds alliances while encouraging students to recognize the multiple contradictions that exist within their own subjectivity," is perhaps a powerful model for redefining the rules of engagement within a society whose sole use for "coalitions" is to justify rules of engagement on the battlefields.

The building of coalitions is also the focus of Lara Shalson, who argues that "[c]ommunity-based performance has extraordinary potential to effect social change when criticism is viewed as integral to the community, rather than as something imposed upon it from outside." Again, the traditional rules by which engagement occurs within the theatrical arena are...