Global Theatre Histories: Modernization, public spheres and transnational theatrical networks 1890-1960

Institute for Theatre Studies

The Global Theatre Histories project investigates the emergence of theatre as a global phenomenon against the background of imperial expansion and modernization in the late 19th and 20th centuries. The project will link two previously separate scholarly debates: ‘global or world history’ and recent discussions on the emergence of a ‘transnational public sphere’.

The project aims to provide a major corrective to existing theatre historiographical principles and research agendas by linking theatrical modernism (as an artistic practice) and modernization in its political, economical and institutional manifestations. The temporal coordinates of the project parallel the acceleration of colonialism and imperialism leading ultimately to political decolonization in the early 1960s and finally the end of the East-West division in 1990.

The main focus will be on hitherto under-researched phenomena: theatrical trade routes facilitating the movement of theatre artists and productions; the creation of new public spheres in situations of cross-cultural contact in multiethnic metropolitan centres and the dynamics of theatrical modernization in non-Western countries.