This special issue is unique in that it is the first time that this journal has collaborated with another to share the same set of questions ramified through the two journals’ different missions. Editor Esther Kim Lee and I proposed to link Theatre Research International and Theatre Survey in order to explore how the ‘2008 worldwide economic crisis brought scholars of theatre and performance to re-examine how neoliberalism, economic nomadism, and transnationalism affect artistic practices’, as we wrote in the call for papers. The response was impressive and demonstrated that performance scholars around the globe are thinking about these pressing issues in contiguous and contradictory ways.

Because South Korea's national sovereignty is a matter of cultural production, Seoul boasts an energetic programme of world-class performances that educate both foreigners and Koreans about the nation's struggle to assert its subjectivity throughout centuries of invasion, colonization and displacement. Three musicals re-present episodes from Korea's mythical past in ways that demonstrate a ‘primordial’ uniqueness of Korean global presence. The Celestial Clock addresses a Korean audience, unfolding outdoors against the backdrop of Gyeonghuigung Palace. Miso: The Original Korean Musical – Love Songs from Chunhyang, a showcase for traditional performing arts, uses pantomime and subtitles to guide an international audience through a popular legend; and Miso II: Land of the Gods stages Korean mythical history in breathtaking spectacle. The musicals, by arguing for the ‘always already’ global viability of Korean national sovereignty, also work to destabilize current ‘mythologies’ of what it means for a state to achieve ‘global’ status.

Maritime performance inherently links to economies of commerce. Its history and practices reorient theatre within broad frames of transnationalism. Maritime performances – theatre, music and dance activities on ships, along shipping routes or within port environments – immerse participants in interactive cultural play. This article uses the lens of the cruise industry as a microcosmic study of identity formation through maritime performance praxis. Performances at sea enable roleplaying of passengers and crewmembers, activating all sectors of the ship. Collectively sea acts pass time, provide a forum for recognition of talent, and allow for cultural exchanges across social boundaries. The maritime subject considers the port as a temporary layover point before the next long journey. For maritime performers, notions of voyage and destination invert. Knowledge travels in circles when performers ride ocean currents and old histories resurface within contemporary practices. Megaships support performance economies where the voyage dominates even as economies of power persist.

Since its 2003 Broadway debut, Wicked's international audiences have embraced productions of the musical in a variety of countries. Wicked has thus conquered the world with its ideological framework of American values, as much as with its story of friendship between two young women. In transcending national borders, Wicked becomes a transnational commodity. We interview Dutch actress Willemijn Verkaik, who discusses her multiple, multilingual and transnational performances as Elphaba in Wicked, and analyse Dutch–American relations and the Netherlands’ lasting role as cultural middleman, suggesting that Verkaik's multinational Elphabas, constructed through a Dutch filter, make her a cultural diplomat, one consistent with the Netherlands’ larger role since the Pilgrims migrated there prior to crossing the Atlantic. The pilgrimages made by the actress, as well as by her international fan base, offer insight into Wicked's powerful position in constructing identities and communities that may no longer be bound by borders.

I examine the art labour of three Japanese women butoh artists living and working internationally. They are foreign at home and abroad: when these artists return to Japan, they are erased from the current arts scene or they are cast as outsiders in a separate category from ‘Japanese artists’; they are also compelled to keep their butoh designation in foreign places because it lends an exotic, economically viable Japanese-ness to their art labour. The artists complicate any simple outsider/resident status or national/cultural representation. They also take on an in-transit-ness, in which they are always on the move and always ‘at work’. I argue that their art-labour-under-duress amplifies their physical intensity, arising from interrelated pressures such as economic conditions and relationships with butoh and Japanese art labour practices. This art labour intensity sustains creativity and initiates a ‘stranger community’ that is a vital part of their radical art labour and survival.