This issue of Theatre Research International features six articles focusing on three distinct sets of issues in theatre and performance studies. These issues – or maybe the best term to use is ‘points of departure’ for research – are closely interrelated. The first two articles, by Patrice Pavis and Jerzy Limon, examine some of the constitutive features of the stage event. Pavis sets up a general theoretical perspective for re-examining the multi-dimensional and troubled/troubling notion of the ‘mise-en-scène,’ problematizing the understanding of faithfulness as it has been reflected in these discussions, and Limon, in conjunction with developing a set of theoretical concepts for the analysis of theatrical space, analyses one particular production of Hamlet and the unconventional visual strategies of this production. The directorial practices of contemporary theatre have provided the point of departure for both of these articles.
In the two following articles, by Cláudia Tatinge Nascimento and Ioanna Papageorgiou, the art of acting has served as the point of departure, but with vastly different objectives in mind in each of them. Tatinge Nascimento investigates the practices of traditional chanting within theatrical performances, reflecting their ritual and mythic dimensions, while Papageorgiou examines the guest appearances of the Italian actress Adelaide Ristori in several East Mediterranean cities and how they became integrated within the discourses fostering the nineteenth-century Greek national cultural revival, focusing mainly on its social and economic contexts.
Finally, the last two articles featured here, by Friedemann Kreuder and Laurence Senelick, present two forms of theatrical performance where extreme bodily practices constitute a central feature, from two very different historical contexts. Kreuder examines and contextualizes cruelty and violence in medieval Passion Plays while Senelick focuses on pornographic plays from the eighteenth century and discusses theoretical and historical issues connected to the staging of these plays. Both these articles remind us that in all theatre the links between word and flesh are crucial. In these two particular cases, however, they are literally the heart of the matter.
The articles in this issue of TRI examine a broad range of European theatre traditions and theoretical topics. The extent to which they map issues which are unique to the research of European theatre and performance, and the question of whether it is at all useful and/or necessary to make a distinction between European and non-European performance traditions, is up to each individual reader to judge. But in comparison with previous issues, like TRI 33, 1, where five of the six articles were about non-European theatre, as well as those issues that focused on Asian theatre, this issue of TRI intentionally presents a different perspective. It is also important to mention that, as far as I know, only one of the authors contributing to this issue has English as a native language. The role of English in sharing our research is indisputable. But the ways in which the barriers between English and the other languages influence that research is an issue that needs separate and careful attention.
Correction
In Femi Osofisan's article ‘Literary Theory after the Generals’, published in TRI 33, 1, the following correction needs to be made. The reference on p. 6 to L'Entrevue de Samory et du Capitaine Peroz quoted by John Conteh-Morgan is from Martin Banham, ed., A History of Theatre in Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 120.
