In the aftermath of the 2019 pro-democracy protests and amid the pandemic, Hong Kong theatre collective Zuni Icosahedron staged two productions, Bach Is Heart Sutra and 2 or 3 Things about Interrupted Dream. Bach draws on Buddhist concepts to retrain the senses and unlearn perceptions, inviting audience–participants to reflect on the forms and concepts that define Hong Kong. 2 or 3 Things revises a section of the kunqu opera Peony Pavilion to revisit the protests and offer an explicit statement on censorship. Both productions provide a space for experimentation and reflection within a city that has seemingly foreclosed on practices of questioning, exploring and gathering. Situating these works in relation to the protests, as a distinctly infrastructural movement, and drawing on Lauren Berlant's conceptualization of infrastructure, this essay examines Zuni's theatre as an infrastructure, of sorts, mediating a moment of transition and trying out new ways of moving within it.

Pān-toh is an ancient practice of collaborative roadside banquet in Taiwan, in which participants temporarily occupy a public space, arrange the meal and enjoy the anarchic feast. Although this custom has declined in frequency as a result of capitalist developments, the idea has seen a nostalgic revival in the past decade amidst international military tensions and domestic ideological battles. It has been appropriated into artistic productions to demonstrate an activist gesture of minority alliance that reflects the (post)colonial histories and reticent survival tactics therein. This essay takes Gather Theatre Group's Twelve Dishes Ballad as an example, to see how the pān-toh performance allegorized a reparative solidarity that departed from the paranoid interpretation of political scenarios and moved forward to a non-violent practice that emphasizes underground mutual dependence and intervulnerability. This apparatus of solidarity, nourished by Taiwan's experiences, contributes to a critique of the currently prevalent tendencies of defensive protectionism.

This article examines the COVID-era shift in the disability politics of sensory-theatre artists in the United Kingdom who create work for neurodiverse young audiences, arguing that the pandemic pushed them toward a more expansive and overtly political understanding of disability. I examine the work of three companies – Oily Cart (London), Frozen Light (Norwich) and Spectra (Birmingham) – who adjusted their practices to embrace their audiences’ shifting access needs, including those in caregiving roles. These changes move sensory theatre into a more politicized realm, echoing calls from crip studies scholars and disability justice activists to reimagine disability as a relational category from which solidarity can arise that does not hinge entirely on medical diagnosis. These artists’ renewed commitments to relational access provide lessons for performing artists and audiences navigating how to care for one another through the massive death and disablement of the ongoing pandemic.

The Naoshima Onna Bunraku, an all-female bunraku troupe on the island of Naoshima in Japan's Seto Inland Sea, has revitalized a puppetry tradition dating back to the Edo period (1603–1868). This article examines how the Naoshima Onna Bunraku negotiates the pull of its local, community-oriented past and its global present as a folk performing art on an island now known for art tourism as the site of the Setouchi Triennale. I trace Naoshima's puppetry networks from the Seto Inland Sea that nurtured their ancestors to new networks that extend globally to reveal the dynamic flows that animate and sustain puppetry on Naoshima.

The Oberammergau Passion Play – arguably the largest and longest-running Passion Play tradition in the world – depicts Jesus’ arrest, conviction and crucifixion at a spellbinding scale. It has also been at the centre of a controversy regarding its historic antisemitism and its efforts to reform, having engaged a director with a zeal for radically changing it. However, this article, informed by a large ethnographic study, argues that the feud that engulfed the town for decades – with reformers and traditionalists at loggerheads – has now abated. The 2022 Passion Play was made almost entirely by pro-reform locals, with traditionalists now outnumbered and sidelined, due to both their own choices and intentional exclusion by those at the helm. What remains of the feud has now changed shape, focusing not on the changes to the play but on the leadership style of the director.