15Theatre and Performance.

The article reviews recent scholarly works focused on theatre’s engagement with utopian thinking and the staging of intimacy. It highlights Siân Adiseshiah’s *Utopian Drama: In Search of a Genre*, which examines plays that dramatize utopia to critique social dysfunction and imagine alternative futures, tracing this across historical periods and emphasizing theatre as a collective act of social dreaming. Selina Busby’s *Applied Theatre: A Pedagogy of Utopia* explores applied theatre as a practice that creates “utopic spaces” for social critique and empowerment, stressing ethical collaboration with communities and acknowledging the complexities of such work. Ryan Claycomb’s *In the Lurch: Verbatim Theater and the Crisis of Democratic Deliberation* critically reassesses verbatim theatre’s utopian aspirations amid contemporary political disillusionment, questioning its capacity to foster empathy and democratic dialogue today. On staged intimacy, Alexis Black and Tina M. Newhauser’s *Supporting Staged Intimacy: A Practical Guide for Theatre Creatives, Managers, and Crew* offers a comprehensive, practical framework for safely and effectively choreographing intimate scenes, emphasizing consent and collaboration across production roles. Alex MacConochie’s *Staging Touch in Shakespeare’s England* investigates the social meanings and negotiations of interpersonal touch in early modern drama, revealing how staged touch both reflects and resists contemporary norms of hierarchy, gender, and consent. Together, these works contribute nuanced perspectives on theatre’s role in imagining alternative social relations and addressing embodied experience.