Eugenio Barba’s letter of farewell to several main responsibilities for the Nordisk Teaterlaboratorium in which the Odin Teatret was deeply rooted was not altogether unexpected, but came as a jolt, nevertheless. Eugenio has served for more than two decades as a contributing editor of NTQ, sending us such marvellous pieces as those to be found in NTQ 86 (2006) and issue 102 (2010), which complement his prolific writing. The latter, crowned by The Five Continents of Theatre and written with long-term co-author Nicola Savarese (English edition, 2019), is another of the rich, multifarious activities that he initiated and steered through with his tireless ensemble of actors and other devoted collaborators to world renown. The unique and diverse achievements of this group are widely known and can be gleaned from Eugenio’s modest account below, but also from NTQ articles, which focus on specific aspects of his massive contribution. So we meet him in the journal’s pages in conversation on his early innovations with Maria Shevtsova (NTQ 90, 2007), Erik Exe Christoffersen’s discussion of the Eurasian Ur-Hamlet (94, 2008) and Shevtsova’s and contributing editor Ian Watson’s records of the fiftieth anniversary of the Festuge, which the Laboratorium creates with the communities of Holstebro (119, 2014; 122, 2015). Eugenio’s letter of love and solidarity for and with the theatre is by no means his last act, and we look forward to his continuing collaboration with NTQ.

In 1981 Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal established the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT). While the Festival is generally recognized as having been highly influential in the field of British theatre over the past twenty-five years, it has received little academic attention. In this article Phoebe Patey-Ferguson examines the founding of the event, arguing that the specific socio-political circumstances of its early years gave shape to the innovative form of a city-based international theatre festival. The bureaucratic conflict between Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government and Ken Livingstone’s Greater London Council (GLC) is identified as a central factor in the creation of LIFT, with reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of the bureaucratic field and Loïc Wacquant’s development of this model in relation to neoliberal market capitalism. The article is derived from Phoebe Patey-Ferguson’s recently completed PhD on LIFT in its social, cultural, and political context at the Department of Theatre and Performance, Goldsmiths, University of London.1

Rose Fenton and Lucy Neal were the Artistic Directors of LIFT – the London International Festival of Theatre – from its conception in 1979 until their joint resignation in 2004. In this interview they discuss with Phoebe Patey-Ferguson the initial motivations and challenges of establishing an international festival in London and how these changed in maintaining the organization over twenty-five years. This conversation took place in London on 15 February and 14 March 2018, and complements the preceding article in this issue of NTQ by Patey-Ferguson, analyzing the socio-political circumstances of its early years.

In this article Hanife Schulte discusses Thomas Ostermeier’s Ein Volksfeind, a German version of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People that toured to the International Istanbul Theatre Festival in 2014. In borrowing Maria Shevtsova’s notion of the sociology of performance, Hanife Schulte offers a sociological examination of Ein Volksfeind’s Istanbul performances and demonstrates how the first anniversary of Turkey’s Gezi Park protests at the time of the festival influenced the performances. These protests, which began in 2013, were in resistance to the Turkish government’s urban development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Park. In her examination of the dramaturgy and stage design of the production and its Turkish reception, Schulte argues that Ein Volksfeind’s political dramaturgy-in-progress allowed Ostermeier to adapt its touring performances in Istanbul and transform them into events in which the Turkish audiences became fellow performers and adaptors who reflected on the Gezi Park protests. She also suggests that Ostermeier showed solidarity with the Turkish people resisting political violence and oppression in tackling their local politics. Hanife Schulte has completed three years of doctoral research in Theatre and Performance Studies at Tufts University and is an alumna of the Mellon School of Theater and Performance Research at Harvard University, where she participated in the 2019 Session on Migrations.

Thousands of amateur theatre groups performed regularly in Britain during the 1930s but their activities have generally been overlooked by historians. Important features of the amateur world were the regional and national festivals organized by the British Drama League and the Scottish Community Drama Association. In this article Don Watson examines how the festivals could provide opportunities for progressive drama by groups outside the organized Left, and considers the League in relation to the Left theatre movement of the time. It broadens our understanding of where politically engaged theatre took place in the 1930s and thus the appreciation of British amateur theatre as a whole. Don Watson is an independent historian and holds a PhD from Hull University. His theatre research has been published in Labour History Review, Media, Culture and Society, and North East Labour History.

The contemporary post-truth environment imposes limitations and ethical consid erations upon the political theatre-maker’s ability to highlight political leaders’ exceptional acts of deception. By unpacking and applying Giorgio Agamben’s writing on the State of Exception to post-truth political performances, Alex D. Wilson discusses in this article how political deception is an exceptional act of sovereign power and how the state of exception is an inherently performative phenomenon. The inherent challenges this state of affairs presents to the theatre are discussed with particular reference to David Hare’s Stuff Happens (2004), which, it is argued, falls into its own state of exception in terms of its approach to truth. Alex D. Wilson is a PhD candidate in Theatre Studies at the University of Otago, who recently completed an MA which explored ethical authorship of British theatrical work produced in response to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He is the artistic director of Arcade, a Dunedin-based performing arts company.

Much theatrical work that calls itself ‘immersive’ uses tropes of the erotic to achieve its intended effects. In this article Rose Biggin identifies structural and performative strategies in the use of the erotic in this genre. What does it mean to identify the process of performed seduction as central to much immersive dramaturgy? Through readings of contemporary productions that draw upon (or appropriate) pre-existing erotically charged environments, the inevitable responsibilities for makers working in this context of immersion are considered, as is the importance of considering the consequences for those working in immersive spaces. Stress is laid on the crucial role that this form of performative labour often plays in immersive performance, and a continued recognition of its influence is emphasized. Rose Biggin is an independent scholar and theatre artist based in London. She received her PhD from the University of Exeter, researching audience immersion and the work of Punchdrunk, and both writes and makes work on gender, history, and language. She is author of Immersive Theatre and Audience Experience (2017).

In this article the authors offer an analysis of Jean-Paul Sartre’s 1946 play Huis Clos (No Exit) and Reginald Rose’s 1954 play Twelve Angry Men, with particular attention paid to exploring the insights from each theatrical text about communication. The process of communication may be ambivalent or Janus-faced, and one of the objectives of this analysis is to consider communication in terms of its duality and incisive power. In doing so, the aim is to explore its antithetical tensions by amplifying the mythological, deliberative and philosophical dimensions of communication praxis. In particular, the archetype of the knife provides a useful metaphor for understanding the potentials and pitfalls of communication in human interaction. Scott Haden Church is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communications at Brigham Young University. He has recently published in Critical Studies in Media Communication. Jesse King Jones is in the Masters Programme of the School of Communications at Brigham Young University.