December 2025 |
Julia Moriarty & Jennifer Goff
In 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write, Sarah Ruhl muses “that theater is at its roots some very brave people mutually consenting to a make-believe world, with nothing but language to rest on” (98). Though we would argue that “the text” goes far beyond Ruhl’s language, her point is well taken - that in that shared space and time, we agree to participate in a shared ephemeral moment. Whether those moments are spent in celebration, critique, or even exorcism, the transformations created in those liminal spaces are fundamental to the value of theatre, and the experience of humanity.
This year’s issue of Etudes, (our tenth anniversary issue!) is similarly celebratory of all that this journal might be. Over the past ten years, Etudes has featured the work of 108 scholars from 18 countries. Our hope when we started this adventure was that Etudes could be a transformational playground for emerging scholars to become their fullest professional selves and test out all that the world of scholarship might be. To become a site of celebration and promotion of those coming into being and the art they make along the way. In our very first letter from the editors, we identified “imagination, exploration, rigor, and risk” as the hallmarks of our efforts, a mission that remains as palpable today as we find ourselves enmeshed in our own professional careers ten years later– something we only hoped could be possible at the time!
With that spirit, we present to you the 2025 issue of Etudes, one that celebrates the transformative properties of the theatre, while acknowledging the history that haunts those same boards, a simultaneous reflexive examination of all that theatre has been, and what it still can become.
We start off with Amir Akbarpour Shiraz’s “Torches in the Dark: Embodied Acts of Utopian Hope in Iranian Women's Protests,” which examines embodied protest actions by Iranian women-led movements for the ways in which they engage physical and corporeal spaces as sites of resistance and hope for imagined futures. Joshua Lewis continues with an examination of a recent environmental protest in “Generative Disruptions-Ecological Activism and Theatrical Unpredictability Within Extinction Rebellion's Protests.” Lewis charts the heritage of performative protests that inspired XR’s recent action. With Cory Aoki Trachsel’s “Artificial Regeneration: A Metaphysical and Psychological Examination of the Forest as Theatrical Scenery, by way of Shakespeare’s As You Like It” we continue down the path of the hauntological potential of scenic design through an analysis of forest designs in three productions of As You Like It. Lucas Grant Skjaret puts constructivist theories into practice with his hypothetical take on a production in “Constructivism Meets Disney: A Scholar-Artist’s Directorial Approach to Newsies: The Musical.” Finally, Jennifer Marks’s “Reflecting on the Process: Devising an Interactive Murder Mystery Using Medical Improv” walks us through the devising and creation of an interdisciplinary performance-as-research medical improvisation event. This issue considers how history informs the semiotics of the stage, and how connected individual acts of creation truly are. Haunted by history, looking towards the new, this issue celebrates the transformative potential of the stage and the artists who embrace its spirit.
This year’s issue of Etudes, (our tenth anniversary issue!) is similarly celebratory of all that this journal might be. Over the past ten years, Etudes has featured the work of 108 scholars from 18 countries. Our hope when we started this adventure was that Etudes could be a transformational playground for emerging scholars to become their fullest professional selves and test out all that the world of scholarship might be. To become a site of celebration and promotion of those coming into being and the art they make along the way. In our very first letter from the editors, we identified “imagination, exploration, rigor, and risk” as the hallmarks of our efforts, a mission that remains as palpable today as we find ourselves enmeshed in our own professional careers ten years later– something we only hoped could be possible at the time!
With that spirit, we present to you the 2025 issue of Etudes, one that celebrates the transformative properties of the theatre, while acknowledging the history that haunts those same boards, a simultaneous reflexive examination of all that theatre has been, and what it still can become.
We start off with Amir Akbarpour Shiraz’s “Torches in the Dark: Embodied Acts of Utopian Hope in Iranian Women's Protests,” which examines embodied protest actions by Iranian women-led movements for the ways in which they engage physical and corporeal spaces as sites of resistance and hope for imagined futures. Joshua Lewis continues with an examination of a recent environmental protest in “Generative Disruptions-Ecological Activism and Theatrical Unpredictability Within Extinction Rebellion's Protests.” Lewis charts the heritage of performative protests that inspired XR’s recent action. With Cory Aoki Trachsel’s “Artificial Regeneration: A Metaphysical and Psychological Examination of the Forest as Theatrical Scenery, by way of Shakespeare’s As You Like It” we continue down the path of the hauntological potential of scenic design through an analysis of forest designs in three productions of As You Like It. Lucas Grant Skjaret puts constructivist theories into practice with his hypothetical take on a production in “Constructivism Meets Disney: A Scholar-Artist’s Directorial Approach to Newsies: The Musical.” Finally, Jennifer Marks’s “Reflecting on the Process: Devising an Interactive Murder Mystery Using Medical Improv” walks us through the devising and creation of an interdisciplinary performance-as-research medical improvisation event. This issue considers how history informs the semiotics of the stage, and how connected individual acts of creation truly are. Haunted by history, looking towards the new, this issue celebrates the transformative potential of the stage and the artists who embrace its spirit.
