Editorial

Abstract

“Touch and Training” as a special issue for Theatre, Dance and Performance Training takes up the call to (re)consider performer training for a changing performance culture as a result of recent global happenings, specifically #MeToo, #blacklivesmatter, and the Covid-19 pandemic. Out of these three quite defined moments in history, there has emerged an intertwined and complex understanding of touch in performer training studios and rehearsals. The swift response in forming intimacy coordination organizations and the introduction of intimacy practice suggests that this awareness and need was long in the making and more than ready to emerge quite robustly. Decolonizing curriculum movements across the globe further questioned power relationships and ethical principles; asking who has equal access to artistic resources; critiquing the positioning of bodies of knowledge in relation to indigenous epistemologies and lived experiences. Covid-19 then usefully pushed this awareness and focus into a different space: restriction, deprivation and absence. It seems that a mould has been cracked, if not broken and is ready to be discarded. The departure point for this special issue is that touch is simultaneously relational and personal as well as a socio-cultural event, a political act between two people. What is taking place when touch happens within a network of power positions, layers of institutional practices, systems and infrastructure? Who touches, how does/should one touch, why and when can/should touch occur? How did/do these happenings influence and cross-fertilize each other? How have recent human conditions provided us with a fundamental (re)thinking about touch in its epistemological and experiential terms? These questions when raised within performance training traditions in theatre, dance, film or television ask creative artists to critically interrogate “traditional” understandings of touch as well as propose new, other ways of (re)negotiated touch during creative exchange. As an editorial team of four we locate in three different countries: the Republic of Korea, the Republic of South Africa, and Great Britain and are situated in different performer training institutions and freelance experiences. This augments our understandings of global happenings and their nuanced impact into a larger conversation. Our Call, placed on different listservs and platforms internationally, garnered global contributions within disciplines as varied as puppetry, actor training, dance and movement practices, performance art, and virtual performance. We encouraged contributors to intentionally layer their impulses and responses, questions and practice as research and look across disciplines and cultural contexts. For this special issue, we have selected materials which can be read as singular contributions or read in relation to each other through our structured juxtapositions and groupings, and understood as a kind of meta-narrative on touch in training at this moment in time. Peerreviewed articles, essais, postcards and an edited conversation, as well as embedded links to video clips posted on the TDPT blog, sit in conversation with each other.