It is the fourth year when the Border Roads volume accompanies the TESZT festival aiming to provide a survey – from a wider or more limited perspective – of the regional theatrical culture. This was assisted by different thematic areas that derived from the identity of the festival: the previous volumes had approached the communal and participative aspects of the theatre, the societal role of theatres and questions regarding the acceptance of roles; we also conceived a series of drama translations and comprehensive essays, a permanent and multilingual discourse regarding the contemporary theatre phenomenon.

The volume consists of three parts. In the first part one can read theatrical essays mapping the community/participatory theatre in a certain country. In Hungary its history is closely related to the activity of the TIE companies, in Romania to political and documentary theatre, while in Serbia, besides all this, to the numerous artistic performative initiatives derived from a complex avant-garde tradition. An essay also portrays the Scandinavian community culture and art in the form of analysing the work of a conceptual artistic based on performative perspectives – this writing is exciting for how it understands the notion of participation.

All the three plays in the present volume – Péter Kárpáti’s Ultonia; Tanja Šljivar’s Scratching or How My Grandmother Killed Herself; Gianina Cărbunariu’s Asparagus – focus on the phenomenon of emigration. Their selection was justified not only by the nature of texts, or the theatrical format, but also by the intricate process in which the editorial process is actually not a selection, but a reply to the questions formulated by these texts; the same way these plays can be regarded as answers to the world’s phenomena.

The idea of a multilingual festival publication came from the TESZT`s international trait and orientation. From the thought to present the participant countrie`s theatres, culture and artisits. The publication conains Hungarian, Romanian and Serbian theatre critic`s essays, interviews with different artists, theatre directors and translators. Beside this intellectual panorama the goal of this volume would be to map the region`s theatrical institutions. The Hungarian State Theatre Timisoara intents with this publication to help the communication between the region`s theatres and to support all kind of artistic partnerships, for the sake of a broader perspective, which leads to more and more coproductions.