Performance against erasure

This editorial, ‘Performance against erasure’, places Performing Ethos ( PEET ) 15.2 within a global context shaped by war and genocide. When silence becomes unbearable and human lives are systematically erased for the benefit of authoritarian greed, theatre, dance and performance emerge as fragile yet resilient symbols of presence across borders – embodying acts of resistance, survival and life itself. To perform is to testify; to listen is to bear witness; to endure is to build solidarity beyond borders. The contributions in this issue highlight performance as an ethical and political duty: from expressing Blackness and exposing its vulnerabilities to staging disability and trauma, and developing innovative methods of dance and playwriting. At its core, the new Special Section, ‘Performance as Witness, Memory and Resistance in Times of War’, honours and offers space for those who continue to create amid devastation, such as in Palestine and Ukraine, where poetry opposes annihilation to reframe remembrance, and a refusal to allow hope to be extinguished.