14th journal of The Open Page

The 14th journal of "The Open Page" will be published in August 2025 and presented in Denmark, Greece and Spain. The issue includes 18 articles on the theme of "Theatre-Women-Memory".

If you would like to contribute by buying a hard copy in advance you can write to Transit Next Forum info@transitforum.dk

Editorial note

My duty is to remember
My urge is to understand
My mind is wordless; it resides in the body
My understanding lives deep down in the heart

The Open Page journal published its first issue in 1996, and continued with one journal a year until 2008. The themes of the journal reflected interests emerging from women theatre practitioners and scholars of different ages, experience and cultural backgrounds and from women involved in The Magdalena Project network. Instead of producing the journal, from 2008, Open Page Publications produced three books: Magdalena@25 - Legacy and Challenge, Future Conditional - Notes for Tomorrow and Risking Hope - An Anthology of Women in Theatre.

Two hundred and eighty-six women from sixty-one countries have written for The Open Page journal and books over the years. An achievement that deserves remembering and celebrating: this is one of the reasons behind our choice of the theme Theatre - Women - Memory for the 14th issue. The Open Page has given support to women working with theatre in different corners of the world and contributed towards giving them both a voice and a place in theatre history. The inter-generational transmission and expansion characteristic of The Open Page have also been achieved by now including women in the Editorial Board who were not even born when we started this adventure.

In this issue, articles on memory open to an array of questions concerning craft, family, community, research, and the passing on of experience, looking back at important events and fundamental relationships in our working lives. The authors often move from one theme or subject to another, making a clear distinction between them impossible. We have chosen an order for the articles that aims to facilitate a journey for the reader between ages, countries, and the different logic and interpretations of the complex meanings of memory.

One of the starting points in the journal is that the work and lives of women in theatre should be remembered, and our task has always been to build memory and create lasting references. Memory exists because we cultivate, exchange, speak, paint, write it down and pass it on. Memory exists in all times: the past, present and future. It draws a timeline of what has been accomplished, not completed or even, that which is still to happen. It is a fiction we constantly recreate to keep it alive and present, a future that lies behind our shoulders and keeps us on the move.

The questions we asked the authors published here range from how we preserve the past, to the ways in which we can leave traces for others to follow and then take further. From how we can best structure the time we have left, to how our archives can remain accessible and transformative. The articles we received addressed these questions and also give us more challenges to pursue.

Our identity is the result of those who came before us. We must give voice to the silenced history of women we have inherited. There is an urgency for our actions to continue to exist, beyond just the three generations who might remember. Time is running on and running out. Our experience today offers a different meaning, logic and justification to what has happened before us. We rely on women’s intimate, emotional and physical memory as we enjoy the stories told by our grandmothers.

We e are bearers of tradition, and we need to discover a way to remember and preserve our memories. We owe this to The Magdalena Project network, to those who have left us and those who are yet to be born, who might follow in our footsteps. We owe it to ourselves as women who want to live and give, dance and sing, struggle for justice, create beauty and uphold hope.

Cardiff, 15 February 2025

Gilly Adams
Geddy Aniksdal
Antonia Cioază
Brigitte Cirla
Maggie B. Gale
Giovanna Michaliadi Sarti
Amaranta Osorio
Julia Varley