The concept of repertoire offers an ambiguous hinge between claims concerning the enduring and the ephemeral – identified with theatre as opposed to performance (rehearsal and repetition, distinct from the improvisational and the singular), and yet also conceived of (with Diana Taylor’s famous categories) in distinction from the archive (as performed rather than documented). From esoteric performer trainings to popular audience fandoms, repertoire manifests the diverse practices of cultural memory – not least, in their contestation (as with the idea of a canon). The articles gathered in the issue – some with a focus on specific acts, others ranging more broadly through theoretical issues – will reflect on performances (both experimental and traditional) from across the world. This diversity of approach, offering its own repertoire of possibilities, attests to the sense that the meaning of a term is, indeed, in its use(s) – including now, it is hoped, among readers of this volume.

This issue investigates the ways in which the performing arts construct alternative – to capitalism – social imaginaries. Through the critical analyses of a series of international authors, as well as through distinct artistic case studies, performance here is approached as a tool for engaging with or overcoming the current crisis of social imagination. By focusing on practices based on spending time together, mutual learning and respect, positive change, sustainability and endless curiosity, performance manages to deal with political complexities, challenge established norms and open space for the emergence of alternative social configurations. Such connective acts matter especially in post-pandemic times, for the qualities, complexities or urgencies they might create.

When we think of performance in terms of ‘In Extremis’, we conjure up Dante’s Inferno, Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, Beckett’s The Unnamable (L’Innommable), the works of Raffaello Sanzio and Romeo Castellucci, and great Greek tragedies. We imagine dismemberment, bodily fluids, torture, pain, loss and fiery excess. If, however, we read it as arriving at the point of ‘extreme hardship or suffering’ rather than at the point of ‘death’, what acts of performance, and art practice more broadly, assist us to understand these confronting scenarios as edges rather than endings? The contributions to this issue negotiate these different understandings of ‘In Extremis’ and in doing so engage us in important considerations of the necessity of art in the current fraught global context.