f Editorial: The afterlives of performances

How do documents matter in theatre performances? Do documents perform? How do ‘events’ become documents? What can be known about those events through documents? And what are the political and economic implications of acts and regimes of documentation? – By taking up these questions, this issue investigates performative practices of collecting, displaying, reconstructing and disseminating documents in order to reconsider the relationship between performance and documents as well as to examine the role documents play in shaping artistic modes of writing history. The contributions by scholars, artists, and curators assembled in this issue manifest that exploring documents in and through performance as well as exploring performance in and through documents is not primarily about reconnecting to and preserving a past that is irretrievably lost or displaced. Instead, they advance an epistemological understanding of the relations between performance and documents – characterised by constant translations and shifting constellations – as the basis for outlining a contemporary theater of documents and for bringing into view the processes of historicisation within the performing arts.