Editorial

This issue emerges out of CTR's long-standing commitment to arguing for the transformative potential of performance, to championing theatre as a space for disrupting dominant ways of knowing and for creatively remaking the world. Working together as an editorial collective—as a group of editors, teachers, and artists with strong commitments to social justice—we join our voices to those calling for an active reimagining of theatre's world-making potential in response to difficult dialogues about sexual violence that have emerged in recent years. Our goal in assembling this issue is to open a space for theatre artists and scholars to consider shifts brought about by the #MeToo movement along with other significant historical and cultural developments—from the outcry against gender, sexual, racial, and economic inequity staged by millions at Women's Marches throughout the world in 2017 (and following the election of harasser-in-chief Donald Trump), to the rise of sexual abuse allegations against major public figures, to the adoption of anti-harassment and respectful workplace policies such as Not in OUR Space! at arts organizations and educational institutions. At the same time, the issue insists that confining this topic to a narrative of recent rupture and reverberation has the unfortunate effect of forgetting much longer histories of resistance that gave rise to this moment of social change, and risks eclipsing the human rights work of Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, and trans and disability rights activists who have fought for many years to end forms of racial, sexual, gendered, and ableist violence.

It is our contention that performance can serve as an ideal space for grappling with these past and ongoing struggles, and for generating alternative models of community that address abuses of power and privilege. As our contributors suggest, theatre is a unique working environment in that it fosters close, collaborative relationships and, quite often, demands a high level of emotional intimacy and vulnerability within group contexts. Put differently, theatre's promise (and sometimes its peril) is its enactment of support, a material necessity born out of the inescapable interdependence of artists within any theatrical process; as Shannon Jackson puts it, "Performance is an art of interpublic coordination" (13). Nikki Shaffeeullah, Artistic Director of The AMY Project, here reflects on metaphors that subtend this model of interdependence—specifically by considering how theatre environments, and even the wider theatre community, come to be defined as a family. So too the word family emerges in Thea Fitz-James's description of the fringe festival community, which she fondly calls "the home I didn't know I needed." Yet both also highlight conflicts that follow from the family paradigm. For Shaffeeullah, treating theatre groups as family can mask the very real power held by those in leadership positions (e.g. the power "to help and hurt careers"); it also threatens to replace calls for accountability with obfuscating offers of "unconditional love." This idea is echoed by Fitz-James in a co-authored letter sent in 2017 to the Canadian Association of Fringe Festivals, which asked for the development of clear reporting mechanisms and consent training that would move sexual assault out of the realm of "family secrets or whispered gossip." Both insights chime with National Theatre School Artistic Director Alisa Palmer's observation that "[a]buse thrives in contexts where there is secrecy and dependence."

How, our authors ask, can we hold on to the idea of theatre as a space of safety and trust, warmth and affection, while also remaining vigilant about the potential dangers that this framing of the environment presents for those working within it? In what ways might newly emerging frameworks of sociality within the artistic process both facilitate and impede creative risk-taking? And how might we think about the inevitable frictions that emerge when appeals for safety chafe against conceptions of theatre as a vital site of political resistance—arguments that the role of theatre is to generate unease, to unsettle. As Darrah Teitel passionately argues in the "Theatre Feminist" manifesto that appears here, political theatre needs to embrace, rather than shy away from, the "anger...