With its hip-hop aesthetics and colour conscious casting, Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical is an international phenomenon – but, Clare Chandler asks, what agency does it give its female characters?

“Because softness means being careful with one’s self”, an audio work by Jessica Worden, both describes and enacts an aesthetics (and ethics) of softness, vulnerability and care.

Duška Radosavljević introduces this special issue of CTR Interventions on the controversial European theatre director Oliver Frljić.

Oliver Frljić discusses his early encounters with the theatre in Split and Zagreb, key productions in his oeuvre, and international collaborations.

Andrej Mirčev explores the controversy that greeted Our Violence and Your Violence (2016) when it premiered in Split, Croatia, through Jacques Rancière’s concept of dissensus.

Aljoscha Begrich, dramaturg at Gorki Theater Berlin, reflects on the many Frljić productions and many Frljić’s he has encountered before working on the new Gorki – Alternative für Deutschland.

Agnieszka Jakimiak, dramaturg on The Curse, reflects on that production and its controversy, arguing that Frljić’s work attempts to dismantle the complicity of representation with power.

Bryce Lease discusses the protests that followed the premiere of Klątwa (The Curse) in Warsaw, in the context of political transformations and firings of artistic directors in Poland.

Anna McMullan introduces the set of Interventions published alongside this special issue on Staging Beckett and Contemporary Theatre and Performance Cultures, co-edited with Graham Saunders.

Derval Tubridy explores questions of neurodiversity and agency in the performance of Beckett’s Not I by Jess Thom of Touretteshero.

Jonathan Heron discusses his series of projects with the late Beckett theatre scholar and performer, Rosemary Pountney, and the digital iterations and traces of that collaboration.

Nicholas Johnson and Néill O’Dwyer reflect on a series of projects that use virtual reality and other twenty-first century technologies to creatively interpret Beckett’s plays.

Reporting on a symposium they co-organised, Trish McTighe and Kathryn White argue that an analysis of festival culture is an important aspect of the consideration of Beckett’s place within contemporary art.

This issue probes questions of ‘the civic’: the space where citizen meets public. A series of provisional reports from Broderick Chow, Jen Harvie, Simon Bayly, Elaleh Hatami & Sepideh Zarrin Ghalam

Simon Bayly, with Johanna Linsley, probe the state of ‘contact’, relation and non-relation, and the limits of writing for approaching all of these.

Jen Harvie discusses her experience as specialist advisor to an inquiry into skills for theatre for the House of Lords Select Committee on Communications.

Elaheh Hatami and Sepideh Ghalam explore how women dancing in public spaces in post-revolution Iran challenge a state regime that regulates and controls women’s bodies.

Broderick D.V. Chow, Melissa Blanco Borelli, Bryce Lease, Royona Mitra, Grant Peterson, Jennifer Parker-Starbuck, and Joshua Abrams reflect on gaining Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK.

This issue of Interventions accompanies the Encountering the Digital in Performance special issue. The four pieces explore new approaches to performance and audiences in a changing cultural and political landscape.

Alex McLean and Kate Sicchio reflect on their collaborations around dance and code, focusing on their piece Sound Choreographer <> Body Code, which here uses your computer’s microphone to generate choreographic instructions.