This second collection of hand-picked articles from Contemporary Theatre Review‘s archives celebrates the journal’s 25^th anniversary year.  These articles will be freely available for the next six months, until June 2016.

From a close reading of a recent playscript to an analysis of interventions in spectator relations, and from configurations of femininity in Japanese Butoh to the use of ‘play’ in the ceremonies of the Shona people of southern Africa, this latest journal reflects a breadth of contemporary theatre practices as well as a variety of scholarly modes of engagement with them.

This issue of Interventions focuses on the relationship between ‘practice’ and ‘research’, offering four different case studies in which these concepts are configured in quite different ways.

In this cross-disciplinary forum, the research project and interactive performance World Factory, directed by Zoë Svendsen, is discussed from multiple perspectives ranging from social geography to marketing.

Brian Lobel and Hannah Maxwell assess The Sick of the Fringe, a Wellcome Trust-funded programme of talks and events exploring the relationship between medicine and the arts at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

In ‘Infecting Archives’, Johanna Linsley talks with Martin O’Brien about his collaboration with Sheree Rose and their work with the Bob Flanagan archive at the ONE Lesbian and Gay Archive.

Following ‘duet residencies’ with Chris Goode and Lucy Cash, performance-maker Karen Christopher reflects on how the artistic residency might remain open to collaboration, surprise, and even mayhem.

Special Issue: Theatre, Performance and Activism: Gestures towards an Equitable World
Edited by Jenny Hughes and Simon Parry
The latest print issue combines scholarly articles with contributions from artist-activists to explore the theatrical gestures of protest: gestures that traverse the private and public realms, gestures that manifest the labour of care, gestures of migration and movement, and gestures of solidarity.

This issue of Interventions is focused on activism and performance and accompanies the print journal’s special issue ‘Theatre, performance and activism: gestures towards an equitable world’.

Jenny Hughes and Simon Parry reflect on a collectively authored blogging project on activist performance, in which ‘domestic gestures’ emerged as one of its core themes.

In this interview Shane Boyle and Larry Bogad reflect on the relationship between performance and protest through a critical exploration of the ‘irresistible image’.

Speaking of I.M.E.L.D.A and Robert Leach contribute to a reflection and celebration of Irish writer and performer Margaretta D’Arcy’s ongoing activism.

‘How do we imagine something other than what there is?’ This short film is an edited version of an interview with the vacuum cleaner, an ‘art activist collective of one’.

Special Issue: Electoral Theatre
Edited by Stephen Bottoms and Brenda Hollweg
This edition of Contemporary Theatre Review is timed to coincide with the UK General Election of May 2015. It deals in part with theatre about electoral politics, but also considers electoral politics as a kind of theatre, taking an interdisciplinary approach to affective dimensions of voting, dramaturgical strategies of address, and critiques of broadcast media.

This issue of Interventions looks ahead to the UK General Election on 7 May 2015 and accompanies a newly published Special Edition of the print journal on ‘Electoral Theatre’.

In this ‘parallel interview’, Jonathan Petherbridge from London Bubble and Tom Bowtell from Coney reflect on electoral democracy and acts of voting as core themes in their recent work.

Marilena Zaroulia and Philip Hager compile a ‘lexicon’ on acts of voting, presenting contributions from 26 scholars who explore the ambitions, achievements and economies of voting in Europe.

A short film by Laura Bissell and David Overend on theatre, performance, and the Scottish Referendum, featuring interviews with Christine Hamilton and Scottish theatre-makers.

The topics of demography and representation are foregrounded in Daniel Koczy’s interview with Rimini Protokoll, which focuses on the challenges of staging populations in their 100% City project.

The Politics, Processes and Practices of Editing, guest-edited by Maria M. Delgado & Joanne Tompkins
This special issue brings together 33 short essays offering critical reflections and commentaries on the myriad practices, problems and provocations of editing. It is a conversation about how – as editors in formal and informal capacities – we write, how we curate, how we fashion and formulate, how we shape and feedback, and the changes and challenges that the digital era has introduced.