As anyone who has dealt with bureaucrats or authoritarian regimes knows, sometimes it pays to act a little dumb. Glazing over good-naturedly in the face of a petty or corrupt demand can occasionally bring to light the inanity or cruelty of the situation in such a way as to prompt a momentary softening, be it through pity, impatience or even embarrassment. The stakes in such situations can be high: in the domain of the international with which this this journal is preoccupied, it might concern free passage on the one hand, or the right to remain, unhindered, on the other. More often the circumstances are banal, though not, for all that, without complexity. They point not only to the importance of stupidity as an enabling feature of life in complex and diverse modern societies, but also to the myriad forms it can take, from strategic ignorance, through the stupefaction necessary to manage the teeming stimuli of urban environments, to willing, if circumspect, participation in whichever confederacy of dunces makes up our place of employment, the organizations with which we affiliate, or the communities in which we participate.

Since the 1980s the Taiwanese theatre troupe Contemporary Legend Theatre (CLT) has been devoted to transforming jingju by way of adapting world classics. Through an analysis of its adaptation of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot (2005), this article considers how CLT pushes the boundaries of jingju acting, which is made up of singing, speaking, dance-acting and combat. To meet Beckett's challenge of performing comic failure, CLT integrates jingju restraint and Western slapstick. In so doing, CLT liberates the actors’ bodies from jingju conventions to produce a new aesthetic, which also gives the original play a new metaphysical interpretation.

In this essay, I argue that human performers and technological media can work together as equal partners rather than as rivals competing for the audience's attention. Understanding presence in the ‘strong’ sense of the word – namely the actor's ability to draw the spectators’ undivided attention as opposed to the ‘weak’ sense of simply being present – I substantiate this claim with a model of intermedial presence in The Marionette, a popular Korean b-boy show that combines live dancing with video and black light. The show's central motif of puppetry puts the live dancers and the media elements in a highly integrated relationship while their distinct ontological identities are maintained. Understanding the show's intermedial dynamics in terms of collaboration and hypermediacy challenges the conventional binary between the live and the mediatized, as well as the assimilationist position that regards the two as fused in intermedial performance.

This article examines a significant change in the hierarchies of value in cultural production in urban Cape Town, where there has been a bifurcation of theatre in the urban centre and on the township periphery. Theatre at these two sites differs in aesthetic character, themes and infrastructural resources, which derive from a history of legislated racial separatism that is still evident today socially, culturally, educationally and in the development of the city itself. Here, I identify changes that have come about in recent years not so much because of the government's policy of redress, but because leading artists are using their pre-eminence and institutions to catalyse educational experiences, performance platforms and a positive marketing environment for theatre and artists from the townships. The Baxter Theatre and its Zabalaza Festival serve as a case study.

If spectacles are effects of power, designed to win wars, win elections and win customers, then how can these spectacles be better understood, so that we can better understand how they seek to work on us and others around us? And what part can theatre play in developing this understanding? In this article I explore Jean-Luc Nancy's notion of ‘violence without violence’, as set out in his essay ‘Image and Violence’ (2003). The synthesis of life's variety and disarray into an artwork is a violent act for Nancy. But if this violent act itself explodes the very seams which hold it together, it can enable ruptures or openings that prevent its violence from becoming ideologically oppressive. In this way the image inevitably participates in the ‘violence’ of representation, but simultaneously avoids the ‘violence’ of ideology. By way of an example I analyse the singular ways in which Lola Arias's production MINEFIELD – first staged at the Brighton Festival in 2016 before transferring to the Royal Court Theatre during the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) – disarticulated the spectacles of power, heroism and virtuosity that are often weaponized by leaders and by the dominant media for the purposes of fighting and winning wars.

This essay reflects on the different spectatorial, political, cultural, affective and bodily experiences of attending Lola Arias's MINEFIELD/CAMPO MINADO, both at the Royal Court in London and at a university auditorium in Buenos Aires. Drawing upon the 1982 Malvinas/Falklands War, the Argentine internationally recognized director's production featured six former soldiers who used to be enemies on the battlefield telling real stories about the conflict. Although there was almost nothing that could be called traditional theatre onstage, the production received standing ovations on both sides of the Atlantic. But what was applauded at the end of each performance? The audiences’ reactions, including my own, were very different at the two venues. I argue that Arias's production hinged upon a high-risk, highly exposed public encounter that envisioned a change of perspectives, not only for the ex-soldiers involved but also for the spectators. Rather than staging veterans as war heroes, Arias's social experiment exposed both teams on a common ground of vulnerability. MINEFIELD constructed a spectacle of intimate power that delineated a naked form of transnational citizenship.

This short dossier on contemporary Brazilian theatre offers the reader a snapshot of how artists have responded to the ongoing political crisis. The massive protests that erupted across the nation in June 2013 paved the way for the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and left the economy in a shambles. Though flawed, the leftist political projects of former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003–10) and of Rousseff, his successor in the presidency (2011–16), privileged social inclusion. A great part of the Brazilian middle and upper classes resented the resulting socio-economic ascension of historically underserved populations. Much like the reactions sparked by the spike in popularity of conservative leaders in Europe and the United States, the Brazilian opposition's political manoeuvre to oust Rousseff in 2016 has divided the nation. A solid majority of the artistic class has sided with compatriots who call the impeachment a coup, albeit not a military one.