FOR THE ART OF THOUGHT                                                      

The journal Amfiteater opens up a forum for theoretical discussions about the performing arts. It is named after the amphitheatre – a space where, from antiquity to our contemporary times, diverse games and forms of spectacles, theatre pieces and public performances have been held. Thus the pages of the journal Amfiteater unveil the intersections of the performing arts with various related disciplines and their fields as well as their heterogeneous practices. We have tried to capture this spectrum already in the first issue.

By using interdisciplinary approaches to performing arts research, we wish to offer a multiple perspectives of the complex relations between the discourses and practices merging in the fields of performing arts. We wish to promote new theoretical approaches to this research within the context of diverse media, cultures and arts, and simultaneously encourage authors to tackle head-on the challenges generated by art in its present-day globalised and multicultural reality. We intend to pay attention to the radical revolutionising of artistic means, procedures and forms, as well as to the tradition of art and its changes through time. The openness towards different standpoints and interdisciplinary approaches is to be provided by the editorial board, comprised of colleagues from various fields of research, who share numerous experiences in scholarly activities and artistic projects. Our desire is to make Amfiteater a space of dialogue among diverse voices that represent a range of profiles and orientations, a site for their constructive and meaningful confrontation that will stimulate the productive conditions for the development of theoretical (self-)reflection. This was the very purpose of establishing the journal. It arose from the desires and needs of researchers for the consistent exchange of information, standpoints and discoveries which have so far – in light of the existing publishing context for scholarly research in Slovenia – been scattered across periodic publications from different disciplines.

Amfiteater is the first Slovene journal for performing arts to follow the academic practice of publishing peer reviewed articles. It is to be published biannually by the Academy of Theatre, Radio, Film and Television of the University of Ljubljana. We especially wish to thank the Academy’s leadership and Dean Aleš Valič for all their goodwill and support of our work. In cooperation with the Slovene Association of Theatre Critics and Researchers, we aim to establish within the pages of Amfiteater an integrative context to performance research and to provide the conditions for the vital and continued development of performance studies. We will strive to connect art with science and theory with practice. We are convinced that there can be no theory without imagination and no practice without the art of thought; with a wish for them to intertwine and enrich each other in a lively manner, we kindly invite you to join us in creating the Amfiteater journal.

Barbara Orel,
Editor-in-chief