A Note from the Editor

This collection of Theatre Topics essays is a testament to the vitality of current thinking about pedagogy and practice in theatre. Each essay investigates an interdisciplinary reformulation of theatre. The array of interdisciplinary interventions is extremely impressive, as these essays span connections among law, cognitive science, African studies, race theory and US literary history, identity politics and postcolonial theory in Israel, business and theatre in higher education, and theatre and translations of political and cultural histories in a transnational context. In each specific instance, these essays address ways that theatre is often the necessary stage for cultural and political dialogue, as well as the ways in which it exerts its power to build bridges between communities. At the center of these discussions is the efficacy of theatre: the importance of the imagination, the role of empathy, and theatre's power to invoke new understandings of our relationship to ourselves and to one another.

But these essays are more than that. Given the troubling conversations we face in a variety of contexts about "why do the performing arts matter?," these discussions help us take heart. They offer provisional blueprints for new ways to speak to the interdisciplinarity of theatre or new forums for engaging in theatrical work.

Jessica Hillman's essay, "Tradition or Travesty? Radical Reinterpretations of the Musical Theatre Canon," addresses the need for a more fluid and substantive dialogue between the professional spheres and university campuses regarding the practice of putting on what she terms "challenging," or "transgressive," versions of standard musical theatre. While indeed many of these renditions do lead to innovation in musical theatre, these fairly common artistic decisions also lead to numerous infractions of the licensing agreement and the tendency to try to "fly under the radar" with the changes. This essay sets the context for the range of considerations about what tends to constitute an "infraction" across a range of staging variations. While a considerable portion of the essay focuses on questions regarding boundaries between "artistic license" and remaining faithful to the original, the case studies also help orient the musical theatre director toward ways to think successfully about navigating the terrain of musical theatre and the range of possibilities for adaptations.

Rhonda Blair's essay, "Acting, Embodiment, and Text: Hedda Gabler and Possible Uses of Cognitive Science," investigates the application of cognitive science to a reworking of the actor's rehearsal process. A complex study of the links between science and the moving body and its expressive capacities, this work develops important connections about how actors can train themselves to move out of habitual responses to acting tasks by "shifting their initiation point." Because consciousness, as a manifestation of the body, grows out of perception and action, then actors must increase their range of approaches to acting that explore the relationships of acting to the self, other performers, and to the performance environment. The twinning of perception and action leads, Blair shows, to a greater palpability in the acting.

"'We Cry on the Inside': Image Theatre and Rwanda's Culture of Silence" by Brent Blair and Angus Fletcher addresses their image-theatre work in Rwanda during two phases with the AERG (Association de Etudiants Rescapes du Genocide de 1994), first in 2007, and next, "funded by the NGO Step Up Rwandan Women in partnership with the Kigali Health Institute," in 2008. In brief, the work provided opportunities to explore alternative ways of sharing one's stories about the genocide in Rwanda. The authors note that despite the widespread sense of trauma and cultural haunting, a culture of silence is nonetheless still promoted. The authors also note both the efforts and insufficiencies of the Kigali Memorial Centre and the gacaca courts, instituted in 2005 by the Rwandan government, to provide sufficient and continuous opportunities for communities to meet and account for the violence and trauma. Although the courts were originally acclaimed by many as a success, many others have considered the courts not to be as fully participatory as hoped for. Consequently, the authors' work attempts to provide opportunities—drawing on modifications of Augusto Boal's image-theatre work—to create and develop...