Imagined Theatres: Publication Launch - LIVE ON THE LINE

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” -- Arundhati Roy

Imagined Theatres, Issue 05: Curating Performance asks a selection of curators, artistic directors, producers, and arts administrators to enter into dialogue about their hopes and dreams for the future of the performing arts. Adopting a call-and-response structure, the issue unexpectedly straddles a historic moment: with the initial contributions written before COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter protests, and the responses written in the wake of these events. This issue, which features a range of creative reflections, musings, and calls to action, invites us to step through the portal and imagine a set of possible futures for the field.

Imaginedtheatres.com began as a book that brought together conceptual events, hypothetical performances, and visions for the theatre written by theorists, artists, and critics of the contemporary stage. After the book was published, there was a desire to continue to expand the scope of the conversation, and so the online journal imaginedtheatres.com was founded, and has since published four issues each based on a different theme, the second of which focused on Australia.

Issue #05 will be launched during Liveworks in October 2020 and feature a series of readings by contributors.

Issue #05 was guest-edited by Fusebox artistic directors Anna Gallagher-Ross and Ron Berry and features contributions from: Aaron Wright, Amy Letman, Andrew Tay, Brian Rogers, Bronwyn Lace, Claire Malika Zerhouni, Drew Klein, Erin Boberg Doughton, Gideon Lester, Gundega Laiviņa, Ivana Ivkovic, Jane Gabriels, Jeff Khan, Joyce Rosario, Juliet Knapp, Katia Arfara, LJ Findlay-Walsh, Lane Czaplinski, Lia Gangitano, Lisa Gilardino & Eva Neklyaeva, Low Kee Hong & Silvia Bottiroli, Luis Guenel, Lumi Tan, Mariana Arteaga Vázquez, Matthieu Goeury, Maya Zbib, Meiyin Wang, Naomi Campbell, Philip Bither, Pia Agrawal, Reneltta Arluk, Shanta Thake, Shoshana Polanco, Tara Aisha Willis, Tobi Kyeremateng,Tom Sellar, Vincent de Repentigny, and Marie Casimir.

The Imagined Theatres book and website are edited by Daniel Sack, with editorial support from Maegan Clearwood.