A Note from the Editor

A Note from the Editor Susanne Shawyer Why theatre? I ask all my students this question on the first day of class. Whether they are majors eager for a career in the arts or non-majors who have elected to spend a few months studying theatre, the answer is often the same. Why theatre? Because at some point in their lives, they found connection, community, or inspiration through a live performance experience. The artists and practitioners speak of the joy of ensemble and backstage camaraderie. Those who see themselves primarily as audience recount collective gasps, communal tears, and energy exchange with performers. Why theatre? Because theatre is an artform of collaborative storytelling. Theatre connects. This issue of Theatre Topics explores how we connect through theatre and examines how we could connect better. It takes its inspiration from the 2023 Association for Theatre in Higher Education conference theme "Building from the Rubble: Centering Care" and corresponding call to action that challenged the profession to "see what we might become and achieve collectively when the entire field centers equity, empathy, and historically marginalized voices" ("ATHE 2023"). The authors who contributed to this issue ask big questions about the state of the profession and how we can center care in our professional relationships. They call for us to examine how we connect to our students and wider communities through the everyday work that we do, from selecting a season to teaching script analysis. They examine systems that replicate bias and privilege. They offer alternate structures that support broad definitions of scholarly and artistic excellence and feature relationships of connection and care. In her article "Critical Conversations: Emerging BIPOC Critics Reimagine Theatre Criticism through the Digital," Michelle MacArthur explores how the field can resist the historical inequities of legacy media theatre criticism by centering connection, conversation, and collaboration. MacArthur's case study is Taking on the World, a mentorship program for emerging BIPOC critics created in collaboration with Toronto's Intermission magazine and Soulpepper Theatre's pandemic audio play series Around the World in 80 Plays. The project was built around conversation with artists, BIPOC mentors, and participants, resulting in dialogic critical responses that experimented with form and offered a plurality of voices. MacArthur argues that this model can not only "unsettle entrenched hierarchies between critic and artist, artist and audience, and critic and reader" but also produce "work that reflects the range of responses invited by any performance." I encourage readers further interested in ways that arts criticism can resist structures of privilege and inequity to engage this essay in conversation with Adam Versényi's "Arts Criticism Pedagogy for the Twenty-First Century," published online in our last issue, which takes up similar issues in the theatre classroom. In "Factors Affecting Theatre Faculty Job Satisfaction: A Thematic Analysis," Kevork Horissian, Biliana Stoytcheva, and Wei You discuss their findings from 2022's Theatre Faculty Job Satisfaction and Campus Climate Survey. Perhaps unsurprisingly, what theatre faculty enjoy most is what theatre does best: connection and collaboration. Relationships with students, creative collaborations, institutional cultures of shared goals and transparent communications, and a diversity of identities and perspectives all contribute to job satisfaction. Job dissatisfaction comes from heavy workloads, inadequate financial support, and murky promotion and tenure guidelines. As they dive deep into questions of institutional culture, faculty evaluation, and DEI initiatives, the authors provide a valuable snapshot of the state of the profession. By providing quantitative and qualitative analysis of job satisfaction, this article is essential reading for chairs, deans, program heads, and other administrators who advocate for the value of educational theatre programs. [End Page 1] The first of our Notes from the Field is Claire Syler's "Visit to a Familiar Planet: Some Questions to Ask Before Season Selection." Inspired by Elinor Fuchs's well-known script analysis model "EF's Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play," Syler challenges us to consider our "regional, institutional, and local world as a social text that is worth reading before (or alongside) selecting plays for a theatrical season." Her provocation asks us to examine intentionally and thoughtfully our spaces, communities, and local histories in order to produce theatre that truly connects...

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