I’m delighted to announce that a few days ago I joined the editorial board of “Backpages,” the back-of-the-book section of Routledge’s Contemporary Theatre Review devoted to current trends in international drama and theatre. In distinction to the essays that fill up the front of the book, “Backpages” is a series of shorter essays by theatre practitioners and critics. As it’s described in the journal’s welcome message, the section “strives for a greater degree of immediate, topical engagement than is usual in academic drama publishing, and aims to present a more expansive view of theatre and performance than is usually offered in general review-based print and digital media.”

I will be joined by other members of the “Backpages” editorial circle, both current and like myself new: Aleks Sierz, Chris Megson, Carl Lavery, Ian Rowlands, and our fearless leader Caridad Svich. I hope that we’ll continue to provide the provocative, rigorous, polemical, and passionate writing for which the section (not to mention the rest of the journal) is best known, and it’s not without a considerable amount of both pride and humility that I look forward to working with my illustrious comrades, as well as the writers I’ll be soliciting for the journal.

For a taste of the journal, you can click here to find the most recent edition of CTR, with the theme of “South,” edited by Svich and Roberto Gutiérrez Varea. While the rest of the journal lies behind a paywall for the moment (though a complete, free sample issue of the journal can be found here), the issue’s timely and provocative introduction is available online here. And, of course, there’s little doubt you should subscribe.