The essays published in the first issue of 2020 compose a whole linked by deep, if non-obvious bonds. The philosophical, aesthetic, and anthropological contexts discussed in the issue open new perspectives on theatre and drama problems and present an opportunity to reconsider the relationship between the past and the present.

The reflections on theatre themes in the eighteenth-century treatise by Jean-Baptiste Dubos introduce a question that will return in most of these texts: whether a convention limits or expands our freedom. The authors of the articles on Dubos, Marivaux and Evreinov invite us to reflect on the vitality and strength of commedia dell’arte, a convention that is particularly important in the history of theatre. The text dedicated to the stage adaptations of the myth of Phaedra considers how contemporary Polish theatre deals with the convention and language of tragedy and how it explores the creative freedom involved in interpretation. The question of the liberating and formative power of illusion and art, posed in the texts about Evreinov, Chekhov and Żuławski, is also related to the analysis of the relationship between convention and freedom. The figure of Don Quixote, the character Mikhail Chekhov never get to portray on stage and the protagonist of a play that Jerzy Żuławski never managed to finish, provokes us not only to reflect on illusion and utopia, but also to look critically at modernity.

An important place in this issue is dedicated to the memories of the recently deceased: Janina Ludawska, a Polish theatrologist and translator of Tairov based in Sweden, Lech Raczak, one of the creators of The Theatre of The Eighth Day, and Ewa Guderian-Czaplińska, a Poznań-based scholar who taught us how to differ beautifully.

Jarosław Komorowski and Patryk Kencki were also involved in the process of selecting some of the texts published in this issue.