{"id":1018,"date":"2018-12-23T18:00:37","date_gmt":"2018-12-23T18:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/?page_id=1018"},"modified":"2019-01-07T20:16:03","modified_gmt":"2019-01-07T20:16:03","slug":"editorial","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/editorial\/","title":{"rendered":"Editorial"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Savas Patsalidis<\/strong>*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Issue # 18 of Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> is now available online and on time, as usual, with a special \u201cgift\u201d to our readers from all over the world. For the first time we have taken the risk of carrying two big special topics in one edition of our journal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although seemingly dissimilar, these topics share one thing; namely, a\nquestion mark, an aporia.<\/em> The first\nasks \u201cwhat is the state of contemporary Chinese theatre and performing arts?\u201d\nand the other \u201cwho is Shakespeare?\u201d We may know many things about the current\nChinese economy, about Mao and his Cultural Revolution, and about Peking Opera,\nbut what do we really know about the current state of theatre affairs in this\nhuge country where communism and capitalism come together in a way that is\nfound nowhere else in the world? We may also know many things about Hamlet<\/em> and King Lear<\/em>, but are we very sure about the person who brought these\nmasterpieces to life? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to an official report quoted by Raymond Zhou, a Beijing-based\nwriter and critic, (American Theatre<\/em>,\nMay\/June 2017), \u201cBeijing alone saw 24,440 live performances for the year 2016,\nregistering 1.7 billion yuan (247.7 million US dollars) in box-office receipts\nand 10.7 million total viewers.\u201d In the largest country in the world, its\ntheatre core still lies mainly in Beijing and, to a lesser degree, in the more\ncosmopolitan Shanghai. The rest of the country enjoys a good number of large\nscale, mostly state-sponsored variety shows. However, there is not much\nexposure to international theatre, particularly where the more demanding spoken\ndramas are concerned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for traditional Chinese opera and its numerous variants, its presence and relevance is very much felt but also debated among local artists; as can be seen in the papers in this special issue, put together by Professor Peng Tao, the blending of classicism and contemporary aesthetics is a burning issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the last two decades the private sector has grown rapidly in Chinese theatre, although the state-funded companies still enjoy the lion\u2019s share. Audiences have also grown substantially, with young people standing out as the fastest growing (and, significantly, the most influential) section of the theatre-going public. The young audience is better informed, more extrovert and readier to welcome the new, the fresh and the challenging. They exert pressure on local theatre producers and creators to be inventive and to take risks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the second special topic, on the Shakespeare authorship question,\nProf. Don Rubin gives us a very succinct and accurate umbrella title for our\nseries of essays on this hotly debated subject: \u201cDid the Man from Stratford\nReally Write the Plays?\u201d If not, he asks, who did, and what are the\nimplications?  Does \u201cauthorship\u201d still matter? Should it\nmatter? These are questions that have been raised over many years,\nand they will not go away. They still haunt scholars from all over the world.\nProfessor Rubin makes the point very nicely: \u201cThe\nauthorship issue in Shakespeare studies is one that is literally leading\nthousands of scholars, critics and theatre artists, and hundreds of other\nresearchers in fields such as history, law and medicine to question the\ntraditional attribution of the name \u2018Shakespeare\u2019 to a man who had no proven\neducation, whose family was illiterate and who never actually claimed that he\nwas the author. Really? Really. So shouldn\u2019t we be at\nleast curious enough to look into it?\u201d Prof. Rubin\u2019s question is an apposite\none,  and, in addition to publishing this\nspecial edition on the Shakespeare authorship question, Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> is ready to accommodate a\nfollow-up discussion, should there be an appetite for further debate on this\nfascinating subject.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Due to the large\nnumber of essays included in these two special topics we have decided to\npublish them in two separate installments. The first consists of the Chinese\nspecial topic, the Interview section, the Performance and Book sections and a\nspecial section devoted to the latest of Thalia Prize winners, the renowned\nProf. Hans-Thies Lehmann. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second installment,\nwhich will be published four weeks later, carries the special issue on\nShakespeare\u2019s authorship, plus the Essay section and the National Reports\nsection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edition #18 of our journal will carry a total of 43 articles, written by 40 authors, plus nine interviews conducted by nine people and three laudation speeches delivered by Peng Tao, Emmanuel Dandaura and Deepa Punjani on the occasion of Prof. Lehmann\u2019s Thalia Prize award and Mr Lehmann’s acceptance speech. This is a rich concentration of contributions (57 altogether) from all over the world: West-East, North-South, from India, Nigeria, Australia, China, Greece, Germany, South Africa, Martinique, Turkey, Romania, Sweden, Canada, England, Hong Kong, Bulgaria, Russia, Israel, Scotland and many others. The three editors of the journal (executive director Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, managing director Don Rubin and myself, as editor-in-chief) have good reason to be proud of what we are able to offer our worldwide readership in this latest edition. I am sure you will find many things of interest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Professors\nPeng Tao and Don Rubin did an exceptionally good job selecting and editing the\ntwo special topics. I cannot thank them enough. Matti Linnavuori and Don Rubin\nhave, once again, generously contributed their valuable time selecting and\nediting the performance and book review sections. I owe them many thanks. I\nalso owe much to Yun Cheol Kim and Deepa Punjani for their support. My special\nthanks also go to Michel Va\u00efs, Mark Brown and Lissa Tyler Renaud for their\nmeticulous reading of all articles. I should also like to acknowledge my\ngratitude to all the authors of this issue whose contributions open Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes\ncritiques <\/em>to new perspectives and new theatre worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SPECIAL THANK-YOU\nNOTE:<\/strong> For the completion of this issue, all members of the\nEditorial Board of Critical\nStages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em> and all members of IATC\u2019s Executive\nCommittee owe special thanks to Ms Jin Xing and her Dance School for their most\nvaluable financial support. We are most grateful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also owe thanks to Jeffrey Eric Jenkins, Executive Editor of Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes Critiques <\/em>and ExCom member, and the Theatre Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana, who have generously supported the publication of issues #8 through to #16 (June 2013 to January 2018) and to the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, which hosts our journal and provides the technical support free of charge. All these people and organizations make the publication of our journal possible. <\/a> <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n
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*<\/a>Savas Patsalidis<\/strong> is Professor of theatre and performance history and theory in the School of English (Aristotle University, Thessaloniki), the Hellenic Open University and the Drama Academy of the National Theatre of Northern Greece. He is also a regular lecturer on the Graduate Programme of the Theatre Department at Aristotle University. He is the author of thirteen books on theatre and performance criticism\/theory and co-editor of another thirteen. His two-volume study, Theatre, Society, Nation<\/em> (2010), was awarded first prize for best theatre study of the year. In addition to his academic activities, he works as a theatre reviewer for the ejournals lavart<\/em>, parallaxi<\/em>, and the greekplay project. <\/em>He is currently the president of the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Arts Critics, member of the curators\u2019 team of Dimitria Festival and the editor-in-chief of Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>, the journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Savas Patsalidis* Issue # 18 of Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques is now available online and on time, as usual, with a special \u201cgift\u201d to our readers from all over the world. For the first time we have taken the risk of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1018","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","","tg-column-two"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/Pam472-gq","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1018\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1287,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1018\/revisions\/1287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/18\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}