Foreword. On theatre in times of hyperpolitics and the challenges for theatre studies in Flanders.

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Toneelstof revisited “What kinds of theatre performances have appeared on Flemish stages over the past two decades and marked Flanders’ theatre landscape?” This simple, even naïve, question was the basis of this new issue of Documenta. What new poetics have developed in the Flemish performing arts since the turn of the millennium? Which theatre companies, directors, and productions contributed to these developments? How has a new generation of artists engaged with the legacy of its predecessors? And how do the developments and shifts in Flanders relate to the international performing arts landscape? In seeking to answer some of these questions, this issue follows in the footsteps of the Toneelstof series, published by Documenta between 2007 and 2010. This four-part series emerged from a three-year heritage project initiated by Thersites (the Association of Flemish Theater Critics). According to the guest editors’ preface to the first issue, Toneelstof was “the result of a naïve question” posed by young theatre critics who wondered “what theatre might have looked like in the past” (Hillaert, et al. 2007, 71). The younger members of Thersites observed that “although Flanders is known for its theatre, it appears mediocre in its public preservation of it” (ibid). A comprehensive history of Flemish theatre had, and is still is, to be written. With support from the Flemish Community and the then-called Flemish Theater Institute (VTi, now Kunstenpunt), a significant effort was made to close this gap. Through extensive research in the VRT archive and conducting video interviews with contemporary witnesses, a more nuanced picture emerged of the developments in the performing arts in Flanders and Brussels from 1960 onward.