Introduction to the Special Section Brian E. G. Cook (bio) As I write this, the United States is undergoing a radical test of its democratic structures and the very notion of "truth" is increasingly questioned. The White House often functions more as a reality show catering to big personalities, ratings, and large crowds, and so I'm going to take the opportunity of this introduction on "rousing theatre" to attempt to read the political and cultural landscape in terms of performance as I saw it in fall 2017. Though Sara Freeman and I didn't know when we put out the call for papers that the mood in the United States would so profoundly change in the fall of 2016, global politics will likely influence the immediate understanding of this section, and for someone picking it up in twenty years, such reflection might be necessary to provide context. And, since each issue of Theatre History Studies has a long production time line, at least a year will have passed between the period when I wrote this introduction and the time you are reading it, so given the tremendous instability of the current US administration and the rapid apprehension of its every nuance by the national media, I expect the world you're currently experiencing to be different than mine. Political events are riper for performative analysis than ever before. From my couch in July 2017, I witnessed the media's clamor over the "dramatic" vote of Republican Senator John McCain against the "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act.1 Earlier this week I lived through the fallout from and breathless media analysis of Anthony Scaramucci's phone call to New Yorker journalist Ryan Lizza, wherein, amid trying to get Lizza to identify a confidential source, the gregarious Scaramucci also claimed he had no interest in gaining publicity for himself, because, as he said so eloquently, "I'm not Steve Bannon, I'm not trying to suck my own cock."2 Scaramucci was fired days later, and Bannon left the [End Page 89] White House in August 2017. I'm sure you and future-me will have lived through stories even more compelling as the Reality Star Presidency continues its bewildering quest for viewership and ratings. For this special section, we called for papers that focused on "plays, productions, processes, and/or people which have been rousing: specifically, where theatre and politics have intersected to embolden, comfort, or incite artists or audiences, or which have piqued curiosity, exasperation, or anger," and we offered a definition of "rousing" that included "to startle out of inactivity." Like many of you, I teach about theatrical riots in my theatre history classes, and my students are often surprised by the importance placed upon what appeared onstage and bemused by the raucousness in the theatre and adjacent spaces during the Old Price, Hernani, or Astor Place Riots, having never encountered any such thing in their own lives as audience members. My students are also usually surprised by Piscator and Brecht's desire to use theatre to provoke an audience into action, because, for them, theatre has never had such impact. Multiple events that have occurred over the past few months and others that will happen in the future are likely to shift their understanding, and I predict having very interesting conversations with my students about the modern impact of theatre. Though I'll dig into these more deeply later, the attendance of Vice President-elect Mike Pence at a performance of Hamilton in New York City in late 2016, performances of Robert Shenkkan's play Building the Wall, and the reaction to the New York Public Theatre's 2017 production of Julius Caesar with a distinctly Trump-like Caesar have all brought theatre into national headlines.3 Beyond the theatre, Saturday Night Live's continued lampooning of the Trump administration and its central figures have brought home the important role that cultural reflections of the political have come to play in our modern society. If nothing else, as Vulture's Mark Harris writes, "In search of believable oracular leadership that politicians and pundits have failed to provide, it's tempting to turn to art."4...