Editorial European Theatre and Performance Studies Christopher Balme (Munich) I am writing this editorial in the immediate aftermath of attending a planning meeting of the newly formed but not yet officially registered organisation EASTAP (European Association for the Study of Theatre and Performance). The idea for the new organisation was born out of both political and academic ‘ shocks ’ according to the driving force behind it, Josette Féral, currently professor of theatre studies at Paris 3 and before that head of the theatre department at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She is also a former president of IFTR. The political shock was Brexit, the academic one a recommendation by a European-trained but US-based academic that a leading graduate school in the US for theatre studies should abolish its foreign-language requirements. This ‘ call ’ for disciplinary monolingualism masks another more pervasive disciplinary one where the linguistic dominance acts as a vehicle for mainly US trends being transported as the dominant intellectual ones. European theatre studies because of its linguistic multiplicity also feature a richness of perspectives and intellectual traditions that threaten to be obscured. Féral ’ s initial call generated a remarkable response from across the continent and the UK (there are currently 400 registrations) and in the course of two initial meetings various task forces have been formed to hammer out a constitution, establish a journal and perform all the other tasks necessary for such an undertaking. This work is still in progress but will hopefully culminate in a first conference this autumn in Paris. This initiative poses questions of a very fundamental nature regarding our discipline. The inexorable march towards English as the only 'acceptable' academic language for publication is a widely debated and highly controversial topic. Where English is concerned, pragmatism tends to rule (the meeting I attended was conducted in English although I was one of only three native speakers in attendance). The more interesting question concerns disciplinary multilingualism. Although I would be hard put to identify a particular German understanding of theatre studies (Theaterwissenschaft) which is not hopelessly out of date, this is not necessarily the case in other European countries. The Italian representative at the meeting insisted - and I think rightly so - that historiography is at the centre of the discipline there (although a few fringe elements may indulge in performance studies). A conference topic that only privileges contemporary performance would effectively exclude research perspectives from a whole country. From a German perspective it would probably be the opposite. Despite outside perceptions that German Theaterwissenschaft is indebted to the historiography of Max Herrmann, his research into mediaeval and Renaissance theatre finds little resonance in contemporary curricula and research agendas. The recent conference of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft on ‘ Kritik/ criticism ’ was almost exclusively contemporaneous in its papers. The historical/ contemporary divide is certainly one of the divisions running through our discipline but it does not appear to map exactly onto European cultural geography. In Poland for example there are strong ‘ fortresses ’ of historical research Forum Modernes Theater, 28/ 2 (2013 [2018]), 103 - 104. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen and at the same time ‘ progressive ’ centres devoted to performance studies. France seems to be split somewhere down the middle, a division often going through whole departments. If Europe defines itself in terms of its cultural heritage (which most EU propaganda does relentlessly), then where does this position European theatre and performance studies within the global map? The famous immediacy of the theatrical event suggests a clear privileging of the contemporary (the scholar has direct access to the object of research), but cultural politics would seem to push us in a different direction. Respect for languages and cultural traditions is a central tenant of the European Union (all official documents are translated into all languages), and I am sure that the projected new association will endeavour to accommodate this multiplicity as best it can. But as an academic discipline engaged hopefully in proverbial 'cutting-edge' research, it would be counter-productive to define research trajectories along national-cultural boundaries. Otherwise we run the risk of foregrounding cultural specificity over theoretical and methodological perspectives. This would be a repeat of the mistake that IFTR fell into in its early meetings in the 1960 s and 1970 s when representatives essentially engaged in nationally inflected 'show and tell' papers. The Nigerian representative spoke about theatre in Nigeria, the Croatian about Yugoslavia, the Indian about India and so on. There may have been a need back then to showcase national differences and indeed the understanding of 'international' in the spirit of the United Nations was indeed additive: from Afghanistan to Zambia. There is no doubt that we are currently confronted with a move to 'renationalise' after the heady years of globalisation. Recent elections in Poland, Hungray, the UK and the USA indicate a triumph of the 'Somewheres' over the 'Anywheres' in David Goodhart's controversial formulation The Road to Somewhere, 2017). Goodhart argues that in advanced countries a vertical split has emerged between an economically challenged majority who are rooted in their communities (the Somewheres) and a mobile, liberal, affluent elite which has lost strong attachment to place (the Anywheres). There is no doubt that an organisation such as the IFTR reveals aspects of anywhere-ism as it moves around the world in its annual conferences. Although it does this with the firm intention to encourage local engagement, hence its understanding of bilingualism as English plus the local language of the conference. The challenge for EASTAP will be to position itself both academically and politically around these two divides: 1) How to encourage disciplinary multiplicity without falling back into nationally inflected discourses which could be equally conducted within national organisations. 2) How to create an institutional framework that enables fair participation from countries across Europe where the economic divisions may preclude such participation. Christopher Balme, Munich February 2018. 104 Christopher Balme