Introduction: a capacity to be moved: performance and its affects

The power of theatre and performance lies in its ability to address something beyond the form itself, and this editorial contextualises and introduces this themed issue which is concerned not only with the practicalities of theatre and performance, but that demonstrate how theorising performance is a socially engaged and affective practice. The work collected here (drawn from five different national contexts in both the global north and south) represents a range of diverse engagements with affect and performance that, taken together, constitute an ecology of ways of engaging with performance scholarship through multiple interpretations of affect theory.