Editorial Christopher Balme (München) Sometimes miracles are possible. So it is with Forum Modernes Theater. Careful readers may have noticed that the journal has now been renumbered. For some years now the editorial team has been struggling to fill in gaps that were caused by delays in publication. We have been slowly reducing a five year time lag with the help of double issues but ultimately there was no way to produce enough issues of the journal to catch up. The exact reasons for this delay have receded into the mists of time and are probably only understood or remembered by one or two people, and, like the notoriously complex Schleswig-Holstein question of the nineteenth century, at least one of those, myself, has meanwhile forgotten the answer. Thanks to the persistent questioning and complaining of a young contributor, who was unable to explain to her university why an article published in 2018 and which she submitted in 2017 appeared with the year 2014 on the cover, a decision was taken. After some deliberation the editors and publishers decided to “ o ’ er leap ” the five years between 2013 and 2018 and recommence numbering in the latter year. While this may seem somewhat odd, it is in fact not unusual with journals, which, for whatever reason, suspend publication for one or more years, and recommence after a delay. We have had a short transitional period which has resulted in a discrepancy between the dates on the hard copy and those on the digital versions (https: / / elibrary.narr.digital/ journal/ fmth). For example, the physical copy of Volume 29, issues 1 - 2, ‘ Theatre as Critique ’ , displays the year 2014 on its cover, the ejournal library of the publisher, December 2018. Scientific journal indices such as Clarivate Analytics and other platforms require consistent unambiguous numeration. Such indices cannot cope with double dating such as 2019 (2015), which would be a more accurate representation of the actual dates whereby the journal bears the year 2014 but appears in 2019. Fortunately, perhaps, this is not possible in the brave new world of analytics and citation indices, which do, indeed, register Forum Modernes Theater and its articles. For this reason, the physical copy of volume 31 (2020) that you are holding was actually published in 2020! My thanks to the executive editor, Berenika Szymanski- Düll, for her tireless work and determination, to Kathrin Heyng at Narr Verlag for making the change possible, and to Isabella Draghici, without whose persistence we would not have been motivated to make the change. This volume is presented as a double issue. Number 1 contains a combination of freely submitted articles (Wagner, Zorn, Quick) and a focus section curated by Birgit Peters (Vienna). The latter is entitled „ Ich sehe was, was du nicht siehst “ , and comprises five papers by emerging scholars, which were originally presented at the Frankfurt congress of the Gesellschaft für Theaterwissenschaft in 2016 (so finally! ). For an introduction to the articles themselves, see the foreword by Birgit Peters. The second number is a focus issue on the topic of ‘ Staging Europe ’ , guest edited by Nicole Haitzinger (Salzburg) and Stella Lange (Innsbruck). The authors engage with the question Europe today and how it is represented on stage. The editors identify three trends which are reflected in the articles: Forum Modernes Theater, 31/ 1-2 (2020), 5 - 6. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ FMTh-2020-0001 through the forms of documentary or investigative theatre; through reflection on Europe ’ s multiple histories, and via political activism. The articles themselves demonstrate that these three trends are often in fact interwoven and do not represent genres so much as different emphases found in combination in the works examined. 6 Christopher Balme