A Note from the Editor

As you read this essay, COVID-19 has impacted theatre and higher education across the globe for over a year. For many of us working in the arts and in higher education, we remember and long for the experiences we miss—interacting with our students in the live classroom, making and seeing theatre, gathering at conferences in fellowship with our colleagues in order to imagine better worlds. For many faculty of color, the pandemic became one more calamity that demanded attention from ourselves and our BIPOC students who were already injured by racism and white supremacy made legible through the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, Manuel Ellis, and so many others killed and harmed by police violence. Many of our faculty have begun to examine their responsibility to their communities as academics, artists, and activists.

But amid crisis and a longing for personal connection, I also see how many of us are collaborating in ways that augur hope for the field's future. I have learned greatly from the social media groups pooling resources and strategies about teaching live performance and embodiment through online learning and the collective efforts to connect scholars to one another through digital lectures and open access to academic journals, as well as through virtual conferences that allow us all the opportunity to take in more sessions and see more work than we might have otherwise been able to access in live spaces. This is not to ignore the fact that the labor of teaching and staging work has grown more time-intensive as we navigate our hybrid classrooms and Zoom performances. We must also make greater efforts to ensure that students feel our care as they navigate precarious situations in their homes. This happens at a time when universities are eliminating theatre and performing arts programs across the country in the name of COVID-19–related austerity. There is still so much to do to ensure our collective survival as a discipline, but I hope that reading this issue of Theatre Topics can remind us why we do the work that we do and offer sustenance in the difficult times ahead.

As usual, our first issue of the year highlights moments from the previous year's ATHE conference, raising awareness of some of the themes and ideas that took place during our gathering. Although we could not congregate together in Detroit, several hundred of us convened in virtual space to share research and new practices. The conference theme, "Drive," invited theatre academics to "consider how various technologies—theatrical, automotive, political—work to keep our work going, keep our field driving (somewhere)." Vice President for Conferences CarlosAlexis Cruz and his conference committee scrambled to innovate the conference by creating space for sessions that featured techniques for moving classes and productions online. Additionally, BIPOC faculty insisted on sessions where ATHE could grapple with the racism and white supremacy that continues to make itself legible across the United States, theatre and performance studies, and the organization itself.

The first three essays in this issue draw from the conference proceedings, beginning with President Josh Abrams comments on the state of the organization. This address speaks to the uncertainty surrounding higher education throughout the year, while inviting us to expand "our pedagogy to incorporate new forms, modes, and globally distant collaborations" (2). At the same time, he commits the organization to expanding diverse leadership and to change the organizational bylaws in order to redress the organization's previous harms to Black and Brown peoples.

In a similar spirit of introspection and organizational reflection, CarlosAlexis Cruz reflects on the myriad changes to the conference that occurred over the spring and summer of 2020. He discusses his feelings about transitioning the conference from an in-person event to an online convening, while maintaining the presence of our original site of Detroit. Additionally, Cruz speaks candidly about collaborations with the Black Theatre Association (BTA) and the formation of an ad hoc subcommittee, giving recognition to their work planning plenaries and concurrent sessions addressing systemic racism.

The online component of the journal will feature videos featuring highlights from several...