Between 2023 and 2025, the ARTHE – Archiving Theatre project carried out a consequent mapping of the state of recent theatre archives in Portugal – tracing national and international affiliations, intersections and influences and proposing conservation and transmission measures – carried out as part of a study of independent theatre and decentralisation that used primary sources and the collection of oral testimonies. Following on from a research programme that was intended to be plural and comparative, the electronic edition of the book Archives, performing arts and knowledge infrastructures: today’s challenges for historiography and artistic creation is being prepared.
To this end, we invite you to submit essays that may focus (although not exclusively) on:
1) historiographical, cultural and political issues surrounding archives and archiving in the sphere of theatre and the performing arts;
2) archival research methodologies based on artistic creation and/or research;
3) materialities and technologies involved in recording creative processes and the archival and conservation problems they may pose;
4) survival, rescue, critical use of the concepts of independent theatre and decentralisation;
5) the care and the use of documentary collections by theatre companies, museums and production structures.
