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In preparation for the 30th World Congress of the International Association of Theatre Critics, I offer my name as a candidate for President of the association.
Since our online General Assembly in May 2021, I have had the honor of serving as the 14th President of AICT/IATC. During these past three years, working with our General Secretaries and the Executive Committee, we have begun the process of emerging from the pandemic mindset that has challenged our field of endeavor since the early days of 2020.
Beginning in the summer of 2021, we created a working group of international theatre critics that eventually spanned 13 countries and 5 continents to reconsider the structure of our organization. From that work, AICT/IATC developed a thorough overhaul of our statutes aimed at building on the strengths of our past and leading us into a future populated by the next generation of thought leaders in the performing arts.
By 2022, we began planning a “New Beginning” as we sought proposals for hosted Executive Committee meetings and for the first post-pandemic World Congress. Late in the autumn of 2022, we knew there would be competing bids for the 2024 World Congress. We looked forward to Executive Committee meetings in Prague during the 2023 Prague Quadrennial in summer and in Tokyo in September 2023. We will soon meet again at our World Congress in Brno, Czech Republic.
As these past three years have unfolded, we have restarted our Young Critics’ Workshops and our conferences while working to build bridges among our cultures. We have sought to grow our association, our journal Critical Stages, and to create new opportunities for our global membership. We have taken these actions amid the turbulence of continuing international discord and developing threats to free expression.
If you feel AICT/IATC has made progress and is moving in a positive direction, I humbly ask for your support to be re-elected President of the association. Thank you for your support.
Jeffrey Eric Jenkins
Professor and Chair of Theatre Studies | Director of Graduate Studies
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Executive Editor | Critical Stages/Scènes critiques