Alfonso Reyes's Ifigenia cruel has long been recognized as a personal hymn of liberation, which adapts Euripides’ Iphigenia in Tauris to the convulsed Mexican shore of the early twentieth century. The dramatic poem Ifigenia cruel by Alfonso Reyes was first performed in Mexico in 1934. The next documented performance, by the company Teatro de Ensayo Escena and directed by Aitor Goiricelaya, took place at the Instituto de Cultura Hispánica in April 1958 − during Franco's regime. The purpose of this article is to put the 1958 production on the map of performances of Reyes's dramatic poem, and thus to fulfil a research niche regarding the scholarly work on this poem, which has traditionally focused on its historical context and literary legacy. Drawing on the Spanish political history of the period, the article reveals a performance history of Ifigenia cruel, which is essential for its reception.

This study explores the relationships of El año en que nací (The Year I Was Born) (2012) by the Argentine Lola Arias, within the social context of post-dictatorship Chile. Chile was characterized by a repressed and traumatized population whose governments aimed to depoliticize society in an effort to avoid the presumed cause of Augusto Pinochet's seventeen-year authoritarian government – the extreme polarization of politics and the population reflected in media, documents and political rhetoric. By showing the play's strategy of collapsing the binaries that define Chile's polarization, the author posits that El año en que nací not only provides a model that questions what Diana Taylor and others have called the ‘archive’ or stable retainer of memory, but also models an alternative of the social, creating an opening for personal agency on the part of the actors and audience that offers an alternative to the official narrative of polarization.

This article examines the status of counterhegemonic knowledge in art institutions – such as the theatre and the gallery – by analysing Forensic Architecture's investigation into the murder of Halit Yozgat in Germany. We argue for paying close attention to claims about art institutions’ inherent counterhegemonic potential. As evidence, we present a critical experiential account of our visit to Forensic Architecture's gallery exhibition Counter Investigation at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Following this, we discuss how the investigation was presented at the civic tribunal Tribunal NSU-Komplex auflösen, whose organizers took over and reassembled the municipal theatre Schauspiel Köln in Germany (2017). Drawing on an expert interview, we explore how the tribunal actively positioned itself against the potentially violent structure of the theatre space. Ultimately, our discussion considers the requirements for supportive and effective political alliances by art institutions and thus contributes to the debate in performance studies on institutional critique.

The aim of this paper is to analyse Laetitia Dosch's play Hate, first performed in Lausanne in 2018, in light of recent theories on female nudity, interspecies sexuality and non-human animal subjectivity. Featuring a completely naked woman and a white stallion, the show revolves around the possibility of interspecies communication and the need to re-evaluate the meaning of humankind and animality through theatrical performance. I begin by drawing on Derrida's writings on the subject of shame and nakedness as a means to explore interspecies identification. I then turn to recent ecofeminist theories in order to discuss Dosch's performative criticism of industrial exploitation of non-androcentric ‘others’, as well as the implications behind her dramatization of interspecies sexual intercourse. Finally, I examine how her ‘ventriloquist’ techniques to provide the horse with a voice invite considerations regarding Levinas's concept of ‘the face’ and how that affects animal subjecthood and subjectivity.

This article offers a critically reflective discussion of and suggestions towards the role of embodied cognitive science within theatre and performance discourse. Through a critical analysis of literature that takes its lead from within the framework of embodied cognition, this article argues that theatre and performance discourse may need to re-examine how embodiment is conceptualized within practical and interdisciplinary accounts of cognition. By exploring specific foundations and driving premises of embodied and classic cognition respectively, this article suggests that if researchers are going to use scientific accounts of embodiment to better understand embodied cognition in theatre and performance, then they must, by their own estimations, accept that all research, and not just practice, is an embodied act.

The picture of the group of scholars on the steps of the University of Helsinki in 1993 is typical of Thomas Postlewait and depicts at the same time an important moment in the history of the International Federation for Theatre Research (Fig. 1). Tom keeps in the background, furthest back in the top row, next to Selma Jeanne Cohen and Martine de Rougemont, then the vice president of IFTR. This position was in a way typical of Tom. He remained in the background and at the same time he supported and pushed those around him. This characterized his role as the editor of the University of Iowa Press series called Studies in Theatre History and Culture. During twenty years he published forty books by authors from many countries. Some of them can be seen assembled around him on the photograph. Anyone who was lucky to be coached by Editor Tom will easily confirm the strong directions that were given with a soft hand, preserving the particularities of the author within the overall framework of the series.

In 2002, I published an article in Theatre Research International called ‘Heiner Müller as the End of Brechtian Dramaturgy: Müller on Brecht in Two Lesser-Known Fragments’. I had written my doctoral dissertation on Müller, and, in the course of my studies, had come across two shorter pieces that, to my knowledge, had not been discussed by scholars. The first was Philoktet 1979 (Philoctetes 1979), a short, parodic and grotesque treatment of the Philoctetes myth, something very different from Müller's more sombre adaptation of the same material, published in 1965. I had heard Müller read the comic piece at the Berliner Ensemble in March 1995 and located the source in a copy of the German weekly newspaper Die Zeit, printed in December 1978. The second piece was also parodic and also appeared in a newspaper. Nachleben Brechts Beischlaf Auferstehung in Berlin (Brecht's Afterlife Intercourse Resurrection in Berlin) featured in the Volkszeitung in July 1990.1 The title suggested that Müller was ironically quoting his own back catalogue, echoing his play Leben Gundlings Friedrich von Preußen Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei (Gundling's Life Frederick of Prussia Lessings Sleep Dream Cry) (1977) and Germania Tod in Berlin (Germania Death in Berlin) (1978). Stylistically, it looked like a heightened version of the technique employed in Philoktet 1979, in that it drew on and collided more Brechtian intertexts, and referenced Müller's own work more extensively. My doctoral supervisor had found the short playlet in the Volkszeitung. It was one of five responses to Brecht from prominent German literary figures, including Peter Handke and Martin Walser, collected under the title ‘Brecht: Stimmen der Dichter’ (Brecht: The Writers Speak). In my article's fifth footnote, I observed that while Philoktet 1979 appeared in the only extant bibliography of the playwright at the time, Nachleben Brechts did not. It would be hard to conceal an amount of smugness in my observation. But such self-satisfaction is not a quality worth airing too publicly, as will become evident soon.