Report on the thirty-second edition of the revived ‘Theatre Meetings’ in Warsaw, April 2012.

In this article David Overend proposes a concept of ‘audience’ that accounts for a complex process of fluctuation between observing or spectating performance as part of a wider group, and becoming part of the aesthetic – forming individual relationships with the artwork and its environment. It is proposed that developing Nicolas Bourriaud's concept of ‘relational aesthetics’ as a model for ‘relational theatre practice’ responds to the continually shifting modes of engagement of those encountering and becoming part of a performance event. Focusing on the Arches arts centre in Glasgow, and drawing on the theory of clubbing, Overend develops a performance for a club night, comparing the experience of the clubbing crowd to that of a theatre audience in order to interrogate the relationship of two cultural practices that remain largely autonomous within the day-to-day operations of the site. Midland Street (September 2009) was a one-off performance for ‘Death Disco’, the monthly electro club night at the Arches. Using cars parked outside the venue, a chaotic poker game, and an array of overtly theatrical characters, including a clown and a pack of urban animals, the performance attempted to move outside the boundaries of the theatre programme as well as the studio theatre space, entering another dynamic relational realm, which is central to the Arches' cultural identity and funding structures. Combining a practical and theoretical approach, this research interrogates Bourriaud's relational aesthetic model through its application to the development of theatre practice within the specific context of an arts venue.

Taryn Storey believes that a series of letters recently discovered in the archive of the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB) makes it important that we reassess the genesis of the English Stage Company at the Royal Court. Dating from November 1952, the correspondence between George Devine and William Emrys Williams, the Secretary General of the ACGB, offers an insight into a professional and personal relationship that was to have a profound influence on the emerging Arts Council policy for drama. Storey makes the case that in 1953 Devine not only shaped his Royal Court proposal to fit the priorities of the ACGB Drama Panel, but that Devine and senior members of the ACGB then collaborated to ensure that the proposal became a key part of Arts Council strategic planning. Furthermore, she puts forward the argument that the relationship between Devine and Williams was instrumental to new writing and innovation becoming central to the future rationale for state subsidy to the theatre. Taryn Storey is a doctoral student at the University of Reading. Her PhD thesis examines the relationship between practice and policy in the development of new writing in post-war British theatre, and forms part of the AHRC-funded project ‘Giving Voice to the Nation: The Arts Council of Great Britain and the Development of Theatre and Performance in Britain 1945–1995’, a collaboration between the University of Reading and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

In Mnemonic, a play conceived and directed by Simon McBurney and devised by Theatre de Complicite, words are not only time capsules in which different fictionalized memories are preserved, but also mnemonic objects in their own right. The playtext they conform acts, of course, as a reminder of the show that this British company created in 1999 for the Salzburg Festival, and that toured internationally again in 2002: at the same time, the published text of the work contains the perspectives and potential techniques from which the notion of memory – and of individual and collective forms of remembrance associated with it – can be explored and semiotized. Núria Casado-Gual's article looks at the dramaturgical strategies and theatrical techniques used by the company in their particular theatricalization of memory. Mnemonic, she contends, is not only relevant as an outstanding piece of contemporary theatre, but also as a ‘memorable’ text that helps us decipher our enigmatic selves in apparently oblivious and eroding postmodern times. Núria Casado-Gual lectures in English language, literature, and theatre at the University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain. She is author of a PhD thesis on the the Caribbean playwright Edgar Nkosi White, and combines her academic work with creative theatrical projects as both playwright and performer with the company Nurosfera.

In this article Caroline Heim explores an avenue for the audience's contribution to the theatrical event that has emerged as increasingly important over the past decade: postperformance discussions. With the exception of theatres that actively encourage argument such as the Staatstheater Stuttgart, most extant audience discussions in Western mainstream theatres privilege the voice of the theatre expert. Caroline Heim presents case studies of post-performance discussions held after performances of Anne of the Thousand Days and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? which trialled a new model of audience co-creation. An audience text which informs the theatrical event was created, and a new role, that of audience critic, established in the process. Caroline Heim is a lecturer in Performance Studies at Queensland University of Technology. Her PhD examined the changing role of theatre audiences in recent years.

Report on the Prague Quadrennial, 2011.

In this article Owen Holland examines Ewan MacColl's early work in agit-prop theatre and his later activity as a songwriter, performer, and collector in the second British folk revival. He argues that his experience in the theatre provides a necessary route into understanding the problems of his later work – and what unites the ‘two halves’ is MacColl's consistent sense of the function of art (specifically his preferred media of drama and song) within a wider politico-cultural praxis. There is a contradiction in MacColl's praxis, however, in that while he wanted to create a popular culture of participation, his dogmatic textual strategies and exclusivist tendencies often became coercive enough to undermine his intentions. The discussion of MacColl's writing is situated within a critique of the problems that appear in his wider praxis, and Holland concludes by asserting that MacColl's agency as a writer was achieved through the development of a performance-oriented aesthetic. Owen Holland is a PhD candidate in the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge, affiliated to St Catharine's College. His research focuses on utopian fiction in the late nineteenth century, with a particular interest in William Morris.

A strong case can be made against world theatre history as a subject of scholarly study. This paper analyzes seven arguments that can be levelled against world theatre history as an academic subject. It then offers rebuttals to each of these arguments. In so doing, it seeks not only to establish the legitimacy of world theatre history as a subject of study, but also to clarify the methodologies and the goals of such study. Steve Tillis received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and currently teaches at St Mary's College of California. He has previously published articles on world theatre history in Asian Theatre Journal, TDR, Theatre Topics, and Theatre Survey.

Report on the PAZZ Performing Arts Festival, held in Oldenburg, Germany, 20–29 April 2012.

Symposium on the work of Teatr Pieśń Kozła (Song of the Goat Theatre), held at the Barbican Centre, London, on 20 November 2010.

Report on the Tbilisi International Festival of Theatre, held in Tbilisi, Georgia, 14 September to 8 October 2011.

Report on the National Theatre Festival in Bucharest, October–November 2011.

Tribute to the long-serving Advisory Editor of New Theatre Quarterly, who died on 30 January 2012.

Report on the seventeenth Conference of Performance Studies International in Utrecht, 25–29 May 2011.