Marvin Carlson will be among us. Making the most of his presence at the TNSJ, where he will deliver the opening conference of the international event Teatros Nacionais, the US essayist honours us by presiding over the launch session of Palco Assombrado, the third volume in Empilhadora, our book collection. Carlson, a Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York, is one of the most influential theatrologists in recent years. His books include Theories of the Theatre (1993) and Shattering Hamlet’s Mirror (2016). Palco Assombrado [The Haunted Stage] won the Joe A. Callaway Award for Best Book in Drama or Theatre. In it, Carlson argues that the theatre is an activity that is haunted in all its dimensions (text, body, performance, stage), an inexhaustible repository of humanity’s cultural memories. “Paradoxically, by invoking the ghosts of the past – be they facts or fables, people or characters –, the stage turns everything into a phantasmal present”, writes poet Regina Guimarães in her foreword. Where there’s memory there’s theatre: such is one of Palco Assombrado’s great lessons.