Editorial Comment

Abstract

What are the conditions that enable meaning production? This is a question that the five essays contained in this general issue engage from divergent directions. For each, this question raises issues of context, as the authors ask us to consider not only the contexts for the dramatic texts, the performances, and the theatre histories that they examine, but also the analytical contexts in which they situate these works. For John Bak in "'sneakin' and spyin" from Broadway to the Beltway: Cold War Masculinity, Brick, and Homosexual Existentialism," it is a matter of viewing sexuality in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof through an unconventional theoretical lens. Meanwhile, Jody Enders's examination of French medieval theatre history not only elucidates a significant historical incident, but also advocates for a reconsideration of the processes through which meaning is made and in which history is gathered. The last essay, Yong Li Lan's thought-provoking "Ong Keng Sen's Desdemona, Ugliness, and the Intercultural Performative," moves this debate over meaning-making to the contested space of intercultural performance. Thus, when read together, the purposefully divergent articles of this issue offer a dynamic, polyvocal dialogue on the conditions critical to our collective project of meaning production and interpretation as theatre scholars, artists, and historians.