Collaboratively led by researchers and stage practitioners, the online journal Agôn combines theory and practice: the direct experience of the stage cross-fertilizes a more distanced approach to performance, and vice versa. Two types of contributions are published at a different pace: a yearly theme-based issue, and a continuous stream of reviews, interviews, investigations, points of view, and portraits. The journal aims at reflecting on performing arts today: what are their current forms, structures and themes? What can they achieve? What do people expect from them?

Agôn invites an open-ended variety of voices, methods and trends. It fosters dialogues between different theatrical practices: the practical experience of stage practitioners and the textual and theoretical approach of authors and scholars; dialogues also between different perspectives and approaches at the crossroad of various academic fields and disciplines; and, finally, dialogues between stories and voices, with the ambition of mixing academic papers and artists interviews that ring out and respond to each other.

When Agôn was created in 2007, it was the first French academic online journal entirely devoted to the performing arts. Initially driven by postgraduate students from the ENS (École Normale Supérieure) of Lyon within the junior research laboratory Agôn – Dramaturgies of the performing arts (2007-2012), the journal now includes members from diverse backgrounds. Entirely collaborative and independent from any academic institution, it is nevertheless a top-level peer-reviewed journal, which follows high standards in academic writing and offers an open space for reflection that respects the specificity of living arts. The choice of online publication only is strongly endorsed as a stimulus for the board’s collaborative work and a way to generously give free access to the journal’s integral content.