The editor’s foreword to Theatron’s 2021/1 thematic edition analyses the process through which, by the early 21^st century, the concept of theatrical education gained a place on the discursive map of Hungarian theatre scholarship. The paper aims to help theoretical and historical reflection on the phenomenon and relies of the contexts of social turn and applied theatre to pose questions on the drama- and theatre pedagogical aspects of the functional definition of theatre, and the social (non- or hetero-hierarchal) nature of theatrical apparatus.