Editor's Note

Abstract

Editor's Note Rebecca Rovit, Associate Professor In his seminal essay, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" (1973), Clifford Geertz cautioned that to counter the "ever-present" danger of losing touch with the realities of our times, cultural analyses must engage what he referred to as "the hard surfaces of life—with the political, economic, stratificatory realities within which men are everywhere contained—and with the biological and physical necessities on which those surfaces rest."1 Forty-five years later, many of us in theatre and performance studies have adopted Geertz's call for social engagement, relying on interdisciplinarity to inform our scholarly analyses and our performance practices. Moreover, the visual and performing arts provide us with a natural site for social action. In this first issue of 2018 I am pleased to feature an array of authors whose articles—particularly in our special section on Dramatic Theory—resonate with our turbulent times. As a prelude to our guest-edited section, two authors consider the theoretical and practical potential of the dramatic work and its implications for performance. In "'Ulysses' Craft': Euripides and Levinas," Dylan Shaul takes up ancient strife in his examination of the satyr play genre, using the work of Emmanuel Levinas to explore the work of art as a site for ethical transformation. The art work also serves as a locus for a series of negotiations: between self and other, the individual and the masses, being and becoming, and war and peace. Significantly, the author emphasizes the ontological drama that Levinas establishes with the notion of hospitality in welcoming the other in a face-to-face encounter between Self and Other. Amy Steiger shifts our focus from the theoretical to the practical, while also incorporating the experiential in "Paradoxical Sleep and Flights of Imagination: Sleep Rock Thy Brain and the Performance of Research." She elucidates the transdisciplinary process by which a public university collaborated with the Actors Theatre of Louisville (2013) to produce a triptych of plays about sleep. Informed by the insights of sleep scientists and psychologists, the performance project created what the author suggests could be a model for new forms of public scholarship in theatre. Further, the Louisville artistic experiment exemplifies how communities can provide networking opportunities for institutions (including universities) and businesses to forge working relationships across the arts and STEM fields. When Geertz advocated that we create meaningful frameworks in which to examine aspects of social action, he suggested that such an examination would "plunge" us into "the existential dilemmas of life."2 At the core of our special section, titled "Dramatic Theory?" and guest-edited by Eero Laine, lies the idea of theatre as a site for cultural and theoretical intervention. I would like to acknowledge those people who continue to make the publication of JDTC possible. Thank you to the College of Arts and Sciences for your sustained support of the journal. My gratitude also goes to Michelle Heffner Hayes, Chair of the newly-formed (as of 1 July) Department of Theatre & Dance. New to our [End Page 1] editorial staff is Jocelyn Buckner, who begins her two-year term as Book Review Editor with this issue. I also am pleased to welcome Chris Hall as our new Managing Editor. Chris is a second-year doctoral student in the English Literature Department at KU. A recipient of the Hall Center for the Humanities Doctoral Fellowship, Chris researches modernism in light of imperialism and colonialism. His dissertation examines modernity through the lens of "worlds"—frameworks for discourses, material realities, and art—in order to erode oppressive boundaries of separation and difference. Finally, I extend my heartfelt thanks to each of you who so willingly has reviewed for the journal. Your active engagement in the peer-review process helps us to keep our standards high in publishing new scholarship in each issue. We encourage new authors and returning ones to send your submissions to jdtc@ku.edu. My four years as Editor will come to a close with the Fall 2018 issue. Be on the lookout for our announcement of my successor. In the meantime, we at JDTC wish each of you a happy and productive summer. Rebecca Rovit, Associate...