Editorial

The marking of the New Year 2021 felt both strangely muted, through socially distanced imperatives, and frenetically high energy, fuelled by eagerness to box up the painful experiences of a pandemic year and step out into better times. But the line between the new and the old is a fragile imaginary and, as we complete the first TDPT issue of the year in January, it is already clear that the intense challenges of Covid 19 observe no such markers. The fact that the virus respects no borders has been invoked as a cautionary lesson in attempts by governments across the world to discipline behaviour. Simultaneously, the virus, through exactly this characteristic of moving fluidly, whilst replicating and mutating, has done much to expose the societally created fissures and inequalities in power, wealth and status. Such enduring local, national and global disparities, although revealed with new intensity now, are long enduring and require action and change not just naming. It was interesting therefore, in reviewing the articles submitted with no pre-planning for this open issue, that this collection shares an interest in challenging inequities and divides. The authors’ research was begun prior to 2020 but demonstrates prescience in their analyses of how theatre, dance and performance training practices can respond through action in the present, offering new models of international communality, rigorous reviewing of training histories, embracing of technological potential and agency in bringing attention to undervalued indigenous theatre...