Francophone Theatres of the Americas: Text, Performance, Reception is a title that outlines a multifaceted project, only a few aspects of which are treated within this journal number, leaving many important areas and issues unexplored or only briefly touched upon. All six key terms–francophonie, theatre, the Americas, text, performance, reception–are, in their own right, the subject of wide-ranging fields of primary and secondary investigation, and when brought together, they engender a further plethora of creative and critical material, born of the different interstices of historical, geographical, political, social, linguistic and cultural particularity. Francophonie, as has been frequently pointed out, is not a single homogeneous entity, and in relation to the spaces of the Americas, as elsewhere, it covers a complex series of political and linguistic realities, and their attendant socio-economic and cultural experience. Guadeloupe, Martinique and Guyane as départements d’outre-mer of the French Republic have French as their official language, but have also in diglossic parallel their popular vehicular creoles and regional cultures. Haiti, a French colony from 1697, but an independent republic since 1804, still has French as an official language but also since 1961 its own vernacular Haitian Creole French. Meanwhile, in North America, French is the mother tongue of the vast majority of Quebeckers, and also sole official language and vehicular language of Quebec where it is vigorously supported and defended by Quebec provincial legislation. Elsewhere, however, the diasporic French Canadian communities of Ontario, and even more so those of central and western Canada in Manitoba, in Saskatchewan and in Alberta, face strong, not to say overwhelming, competition from English, a situation even more fully experienced by the diasporic francophone communities of the United States, in Cadien and Cajun Louisiana, and also in the Acadian or Québécois communities of Maine and the north-eastern states (Conrick 2002: 237–63). Theatre, locking into and compounding these complexities, contributes its own diverse facets as written text, performance, public spectacle, each with its many implications for individual and collective identity in the creation and reception of the actual plays, and in the development of supportive frameworks of canon creation, professionalization and institutionalization–all of them playing out in different manners according to the diverse contexts and resources of their respective communities.