Editorial Comment: Theatre and Activism

On March 3, 2003, in a collective, globalized act that foregrounds the possibilities and problems of conjoining theater and activism, protestors against the United States' then-impending war in Iraq read Aristophanes' comedy "Lysistrata" aloud at over 1,000 locations worldwide. The engagement of systems of information dissemination profoundly shaped this antiwar action as the Lysistrata Project became a global movement in a relatively short time due to the power of the Internet. Several articles in the December 2003 issue of "Theatre Journal" are tied together with this theme of "Theatre and Activism."