Editorial Note

Theatre in a World in Crisis

Savas Patsalidis*

We have happily reached the 30th issue of Critical Stages/Scenes critiques, continuing our journey through the paths traced in the theatre communities around the world, a world that refuses to calm down. Before we could understand what was going on in the war in Ukraine, another war broke out in the Middle East, and before that one ended, a new troubling development began to unfold in Syria.

In the political arena, the marks of extreme neoliberalist practices are increasingly visible through the election of far-right politicians who care little for culture, focusing instead on the economy and the brutal game of displaying power and exploiting the weak.

Amid all these terrible events, theatre continues to fight not only for economic survival but also for understanding a world that is becoming increasingly less comprehensible and humane. With this in mind, what could be more relevant for meaningful discussion than the work of the great Czech writer Kafka, chosen as the focus of the Special Topic for this 30th volume?

The selected articles were first presented in a very brief and oral form at the World Congress of the International Association of Theatre Critics, held in Brno during the month of May, 2024. Seven months later and in a reworked and much lengthier version, many of those same articles are presented here. From Japan to the Czech Republic, from China to Sweden and Finland, the 14 featured authors show how closely today’s world resembles Kafka’s dark world. Sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, they express their anxiety and concern about the current state of affairs. They speak of controlling mechanisms, faceless structures, intimidating bureaucracy, panopticon surveillance, violations of human rights and convictions without evidence. They describe a surreal and simultaneously tragic world, an incoherent world where people experience a profound crisis of identity, displacement, imprisonment and absurdity, a world seeking truths that it cannot find, a world even more isolated than the one Kafka imagined, and later the authors of the Theatre of the Absurd imagined.

Tragic or comic?  Kafka raised this question many decades ago, and theatre continues to explore the same question with even greater anxiety. As the articles show, the answers are many, yet none with the certainty that they provide the right answer.

In addition to the contributions to the Special Topic, the 30th issue hosts 18 additional articles covering a wide range of topics, such as the text by Patrice Pavis, in which the great scholar discusses how certain aspects of gender theory lead us to other important concepts if we wish to move beyond classical methods of semiotic performance analysis.

Annelis Kuhlmann‘s article “Strawberry Fields (Not) Forever? ‘Iceberg Reflections’ on Performing Greenland” examines how Greenland in contemporary theatre performances addresses climate issues and internal colonization. Vesma Levalde‘s contribution explores the representation of twentieth-century Latvia in contemporary Latvian theatre, focusing particularly on the events of the last decade of Soviet occupation (1980–90). Eva Leick discusses Khaita, Joyful Dances, a project developed by the Tibetan Buddhist scholar Namkhai Norbu. Michel Vais, in his article “John Florio, also Known as Shakespeare,” focuses on the question of Shakespeare’s authorship.

Charlie Ely, in “Decolonising Performance and Unmasking Ethnology: Tanzanian Dance in a German Museum,” uses the example of Vinyago: Dancing Beyond Colonial Biographies, a live performance, video installation, and museum exhibition, to argue how Tanzanians are increasingly vocal about the need to recover their precolonial heritage, while Germans are becoming more aware of their obligations to address colonial wrongs. In “My Exotic Girlfriend: Independent Hungarian Art in Hellerau,” Noémi Herczog argues that the financial crisis in Hungarian cultural policies can and likely will radically change and narrow down (if not cancel) the experimenting performing arts sector in the country.

Two articles from Japan and India, respectively, examine the importance, peculiarities and difficulties of utilizing theatrical archives, while another two assess the first decade of the Wuzhen Festival, and two more attempt their own evaluation of contemporary theatre in Slovenia, among others. Also included is an extensive text on theatre criticism by Karen Fricker and Nathaniel Hanula-James. Drawing on examples from Canada and the United States, the authors aim to define the practice of equitable theatre criticism. The two authors argue that “in the wake of the global racial reckoning in 2020, a renewed surge of calls to action, initiatives, and training programs have emerged that aim to make the practice, institutions, and demographics of theatre criticism in North America more equitable, with a particular focus on anti-racism.”

The current issue also features three interviews, fourteen  reviews of performances and festivals from Canada, Greece, Finland, Portugal, Romania and Serbia, among others, five book reviews, and an obituary by Margareta Soerenson characterizing the great Swedish director Suzanne Osten, who significantly influenced the development of Swedish theatre, primarily for children and adolescents.

In total, this issue hosts 57 texts from 27 countries, most of which are written by female authors. We hope you find in this issue contributions that interest you.


As I have stated many times, the organization and operation of a journal of the size of Critical Stages/Scènes critiques cannot be the work of one person: it takes teamwork and team spirit to make it function properly. That said, I would like to thank the section editors for their enthusiasm, commitment and hard work, the authors who entrust us with their texts, our external peer reviewers whose opinions help us immensely and of course our language readers, namely Ian Herbert, Linda Manney and Michel Vais, who ensure that every issue is free of errors and problems. All these people make Critical Stages/Scènes critiques what it is today: an inclusive and democratic publication devoted to quality in each and every issue, as it strives to be close to theatre communities around the world and to the realities that shape the theatre.

I would like to encourage those interested in having their articles, performance and/or book reviews, interviews, case studies and empirical research considered for publication to contact the editor of the respective section (click here).

Once a manuscript has been peer-reviewed and recommended for publication, it undergoes further language copyediting, typesetting and reference validation, following the latest guidelines of the MLA style sheet, in order to provide the highest publication quality possible.

Submissions should not be published earlier or be under consideration for publication elsewhere while being evaluated for this journal. They must also adhere to the style and ethics of the journal (for more on the journal’s Publication Ethics/Procedure please click here).

If you have any other queries about the journal, or if I can be of help with anything, please do not hesitate to contact me (spats@enl.auth.gr).

Please forward the link (www.critical-stages.org) to anyone who may be interested. Thank you.

Our doors are open to all. Please join us as we continue producing new ideas for the ever-evolving theatre arts around the world.

I wish you all a happy and prosperous new year, filled with peace, promise and brightness.

Cover photo: From the performance K inspired by Kafka’s Report to an Academy. Director Daniel Gulko, Cirk La Putyka, Jatka 78, Czech Republic 2023. Photo: Lukáš Bíba. From the article included in this issue, “Kafka as a Starting Point for Circus Art,” by Hana Strejčková. 


*Savas Patsalidis is Professor Emeritus in Theatre Studies at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. He has also taught at the Drama School of the National Theatre of Northern Greece, the Hellenic Open University and the graduate program of the Theatre Department of Aristotle University. He is the author of fourteen books on theatre and performance criticism/theory and co-editor of another thirteen. His two-volume study, Theatre, Society, Nation (2010), was awarded first prize for best theatre study of the year. In 2022 his book-length study Comedy’s Encomium: The Seriousness of Laughter, was published by University Studio Press. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Hellenic Association of Theatre and Performing Arts Critics, a member of the curators’ team of Forest International Festival (organized by the National Theatre of Northern Greece), and the editor-in-chief of Critical Stages, the journal of the International Association of Theatre Critics.