Several years ago we published Theatre Matters: Performance and Culture on the World Stage (Cambridge University Press, 1998), a collection of essays which argued – forcibly, we hope – that ‘theatre, in a variety of forms and contexts, can make, and indeed has made, positive political and social interventions in a range of developing cultures across the world’. The present book rests squarely on the same conviction: to its contributors as well as to its editors, theatre still matters.

It matters in its power to bring together divided communities of different kinds (and in one case described here, perhaps to save a particular community from outright extinction) and to engage creatively, productively and meaningfully with a wide range of issues from extreme poverty to AIDS, violence, human rights, sexual, racial and political intolerance and the power of the state. As in the earlier book, diversity is celebrated. Material is drawn from a wide and varied geographical range: from Ethiopia and South Africa, from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Nepal, and from the British Isles, Italy and America. The inclusion of the three essays from the ‘developed’ world is important because it is our contention that the kinds of performance often referred to as ‘Theatre for Development’ (TfD) are by no means relevant only to the political South. It is assumed far too often that development is something which needs to be ‘done’ (economically and/or ideologically) to the South, whereas the West has already achieved some higher level of enlightenment.