With this double issue Theatre Research in Canada will have produced three years of publication in fifteen months. Following the mid-year distribution of the next issue — the last of four consecutive double-issues, a theme volume focusing on Atlantic Canadian Theatre and Drama — the journal will once again be up to date, and we will return to the traditional publication schedule of two single issues per year. This pace, combined with the rate of change in terms of administration, orientation, and design, has been both daunting and energizing. This general issue aptly demonstrates these evolving and expanding parameters, boasting a further increase in visual documentation and conspicuous diversity in subject matter, theoretical approach, and critical perspective.

The first half of this volume features a broad spectrum of scholarly experience and interests. Representing contributors that range from a post-doctoral fellow through new and mid-career academics, to one of Canada's most established and recognized academic authors, these entries demonstrate the current health and emerging promise of Canadian theatre and performance scholarship. Intriguingly, despite the distance in terms of experience, these authors share an engagement with the interface between theatrical form and social performance. Each of the articles tackles a challenging, multifaceted dynamic that bridges aesthetic and political discourses; each addresses this dynamic with both focused priorities and a broader appreciation for its elusive complexity; and each argues, convincingly, the significant and facilitative roles performance and interpretation play within diverse cultural contexts. Fittingly, the first of two Forum pieces picks up on this topic and articulates it, in the mode of memoire, with an air of grace and wit that emphasizes, rather than distracts from, the inseparable relationship between performance, politics, and personal experience.

The second half of this issue is claimed by a collection of related essays that approach the topic of women artists — their lives, works, and legacies. More specifically, all focus on the creative processes and products of a set of Canadian women play-makers. As the thoughtful introduction to the collection indicates, all also scrutinize the operation of biography and/or autobiography within the creative works explored. This collection, revisited and revised over several years, began in a common context — a joint panel at the Association for Canadian Theatre Research in 2002 — and it is fitting that they now reconvene here in these pages. The diversity of approaches and intentions remains conspicuous; indeed, it has only increased with time. Drawing, variously, on complex theory, historical analysis, and personal account, these essays, along with the second Forum piece, deny group categorization. This is, of course, indicative of the diversity of the subjects and subject matter explored. Yet while these contributions enact distinctly different methodologies and analytical strategies, they share a common passion that has sustained them from their inception to publication.

Following the distribution of the next issue of Theatre Research in Canada — volume 26.1-2 — I will be moving out of the general editor position at the journal. Glen Nichols, Chair of the Département d'anglais at the Université de Moncton and current president of the Association for Canadian Theatre Research, will assume that set of responsibilities, while I will take on the role of the journal's executive editor. Glen comes with noteworthy qualifications for the job, and all of us at TRiC welcome him enthusiastically. I personally look forward to traveling with him on the journal's continued evolutionary path. As the penultimate issue of my tenure as editor, this volume represents another stage in the development of our collective, emergent vision for the future. As always, we also welcome you to participate in that process.

Comments, questions, and suggestions can be sent to the editor at tric.rtac@utoronto.ca.