Editorial Comment

As I prepared to write this editorial, I participated in an editing forum sponsored by Contemporary Theatre Review around the peer-review process. There were many editors and former editors from theatre- and performance-related journals, such as CTR, RIDE, Theatre Research International, Performance Philosophy, the online journal Platform, myself from Theatre Journal, among others. This was part of a series of ongoing events here in London and also at the IFTR conference focusing on publishing and peer review, and those organizing it are planning to collect the materials and work on a protocol for peer review to be shared more widely. Being a part of these events has made me reflect deeply on the peer-review process and its importance to editorial teams. When preparing a general issue such as this one, I am grateful for the expert peer reviewers who assist journal editors, giving their time to support and help in the development of each published essay. As this is my penultimate issue, and my last general issue, I wanted to take a moment to thank the peer reviewers I have engaged with over the past four years.

I am aware of the increasing demands on our time as academics and researchers, and it is not easy to fit in the many requests made. Of course, there are times when we must decline, but over the years I have been impressed with the generosity, skill, and depth of the reports we have received. I have seen peer review be an act of mentorship, of building the next generation of scholarship. I have seen peer review be incredibly rigorous, but at the same time necessary, and in the end, always productive and useful. I have seen peer review make me understand that what I championed as a well-crafted original idea needed further research to reinforce it. Mostly, I have seen peer review add a considerable amount of revision to the essays published in this journal. I honestly could not do my job without the peer-reviewer process. As an editor I can assess the strengths of an essay and have a sense of how to work with an author to develop it for publication. But given the breadth of topics we receive at Theatre Journal, I cannot always assess the quality of the scholarship or the factual accuracy of detail that an expert in a given area can. For this I rely upon and respect the work done by our peer reviewers, and I would hope this extends to the field at large.

In this issue alone essays range from mass Czech and German gymnastic performance to global performances of The Vagina Monologues and the “One Billion Rising” campaign; another returns readers to 1964 and analyzes the characters in Adrienne Kennedy’s and Amiri Baraka’s plays, Funnyhouse of a Negro and Dutchman, while the final essay introduced me to the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, an organization I was not familiar with. While each of these essays was selected by myself and coeditor EJ Westlake as an exciting possibility for publication, it was not until the peer reports were returned that we could officially invite them for publication. And then more work begins. Authors often face difficult decisions when confronting peer review, and I have been on both sides of this equation. One report wants to see the essay go one way, another one recommends a different direction. At times, authors argue vehemently with the reports or want to challenge an opinion within a report. Often, authors are made aware of other work they might consider to expand the essay’s direction. As a writer I have always found, sometimes once I have gotten past my frustration, that if I truly listen to the report and ask myself why this was the response, that my work is improved in the process. As an editor I am there to mediate between authors and readers when necessary, to help guide and shape, and decide which direction to go in if it comes to that. But time and time again, the peer-review process opens up a conversation that the author...