As violence escalates around the world, its victims and perpetrators struggle to develop comprehensible narratives to present truthful accounts of history and experience. This special issue of Theater—a collection of theater artists’ responses to contemporary events—examines the human psyche and its capacity for violence and explores theater’s possibilities for political dissent.

In Theater and Violence, through interviews, play excerpts, and full-length plays—including the first American publication of two major German playwrights and directors—theater artists offer their own narratives for humankind’s violent psychologies. One full-length play, Falk Richter’s Seven Seconds (In God We Trust), probes the mind of an American pilot moments before he releases a bomb on a city below. Another, René Pollesch’s 24 Hours Are Not a Day, humorously explores the ironies and pathologies of globalization after September 11. The issue also includes a commentary on the National Endowment for the Arts’ Shakespeare presentations for the U.S. military; interviews with Russian theater artists on the first anniversary of the Chechen rebels’ siege of a Moscow theater; and Jonathan Kalb’s powerful adaptation of Heiner Müller’s Mauser, set in Tikrit.

Contributors. Josh Fox, Gitta Honegger, Jonathan Kalb, Anna Kohler, James Leverett, Mark Lord, Marlene Norst, René Pollesch, Falk Richter, Yana Ross, Scott Saul, Tom Sellar, Catherine Sheehy, Robert Woodruff