The Theatricality and Reality Association Working Group (THEA) wants to combine the scientific and artistic research expertise in theater and theater science within the University Association Brussels and explicitly aims to build bridges between artistic practice, artistic research and scientific research in the field of theater , performance and theatricality. Both contemporary artistic practices and historical forms of theatricality are dealt with within this framework. The working group regards himself as the direct heir of the former VUB research group on Political Theater (o.l.v. Dina Hellemans), which carried out pioneering research at the intersection of practice, history and theory. The THEA working group specifically focuses on theater and theatricality. The central line of research within this working group is the tension ratio between theatricality (the research object is broader than theater strictu senso) and reality. The research profile of this working group is therefore explicitly contextual: how does a context and an associated meaning regime constitute the theater practice? The reverse question is equally relevant: to what extent and how do influences, influences, contaminate, question historical or contemporary forms of theatricality, the truth in which they act? Or formulated differently: how does a (cultural-historical context) structure theater practice and how can that practice make changes in the surrounding reality conceivable through representation and question them? Particular attention within this tension ratio goes to the following points: 1. The tension ratio between performative and documentary practices; 2. Theatricality and urban reality (a collaboration with the Cosmopolis group seems obvious to us); 3. Intermedial representations of the tension between theatricality and reality, both within a historical (see the research on historical reality and baroque theatricality) and a contemporary context. More concretely, this profile will lead to research on the following topics: - Truthfulness and authenticity as an artistic strategy and as a cultural code. - Social-artistic practice - Theatricality, urbanism and urban culture - Political and historical theatricality - Theatrical representation of violence - Documentary strategies and intermedial imagination - Theater and ethnography, theatricality and postcolonial imagination