Periodic Reporting for period 1 - THEAGENT (Theatre and Gentrification in the European City)
Reporting period: 2023-09-01 to 2026-02-28
Since the European Middle Ages, the fates of theatre and the city have been intertwined. Mystery plays thrived amidst the urban guilds of medieval Paris, city comedies accompanied merchant capitalism in seventeenth-century London, and Ottoman shadow puppetry shaped coffeehouse culture in nineteenth-century Istanbul. The emergence of the modern European city in particular was linked to the development of both state-sponsored and independent theatre institutions; theatre and performance practices drew on the human proximity that city living made possible, and shaped the visions of cultural heterogeneity that emerged from urban cohabitation. Today, unprecedented dynamics of migration, globalization, and rapid gentrification are fundamentally changing theatre’s role in the urban environment. However, theatre and performance practice are all but absent from urban studies. In turn, theatre and performance scholarship often views the urban question through a limited analytic lens.
Combining multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, THEAGENT will focus on the key cities of London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul to analyze the complicated and often contradictory relationship between theatre practices and urban transformation in twenty-first-century Europe. Following key thematic threads like migration and memory, the project’s original case studies will illustrate the diversity of urban transformation across the European continent, as well as the complex roles that theatre and performance practices play in producing urban subjectivities and structuring the cultural politics of gentrification. Groundbreaking in its use of theatre as its vantage point, THEAGENT’s objective is to demonstrate that theatre is central to understanding the cultural politics of contemporary urban transformation. Similarly, the global city and its new productive economies are central to understanding contemporary theatre.
Starting Hypothesis and Preliminary Observations:
THEAGENT argues that understanding the relationship between theatre and gentrification requires a three-pronged approach that encapsulates theatre’s material and symbolic dimensions. We focus on:
• Theatre-going as a practice of urban subject formation,
• The aesthetic medium as a space for the creation and circulation of novel representations of the urban,
• Theaters themselves as social institutions and creative arts enterprises.
Preliminary investigation using this three-pronged approach reveals a number of trends:
1) In each of the five cities in question, theatre and performance practices from the past twenty-five years track fundamental changes in the representation of the urban environment, including changes in the articulation of claims to urban belonging and property ownership, resistance to experiences of urban exclusion and displacement, and emerging imaginaries of urban history. These theatrical representations depict the city in relation to the themes of memory, migration, property, and publicness.
2) In each of the five cities in question, theatre institutions are materially embedded in processes of urban transformation. Some are located in neighborhoods that have experienced rapid gentrification and are themselves participants in this process, often through the role they play in city marketing, as well as in the practices of consumption that they promote. Conversely, other theaters either themselves fall prey to processes of urban displacement or their explicit mandate is to take part in practices of local/political resistance to gentrification.
3) In each of the five cities in question, theatre institutions and their artistic and everyday practices are shaped in relation to changing cultural and municipal policy discourses. Theatre administrations respond to changes in centralized visions for the theatre, including new funding structures explicitly sponsoring theatre and performance practices responsive to changing urban situations.
Combining multi-sited ethnographic and archival research, THEAGENT will focus on the key cities of London, Paris, Berlin, Warsaw and Istanbul to analyze the complicated and often contradictory relationship between theatre practices and urban transformation in twenty-first-century Europe. Following key thematic threads like migration and memory, the project’s original case studies will illustrate the diversity of urban transformation across the European continent, as well as the complex roles that theatre and performance practices play in producing urban subjectivities and structuring the cultural politics of gentrification. Groundbreaking in its use of theatre as its vantage point, THEAGENT’s objective is to demonstrate that theatre is central to understanding the cultural politics of contemporary urban transformation. Similarly, the global city and its new productive economies are central to understanding contemporary theatre.
Starting Hypothesis and Preliminary Observations:
THEAGENT argues that understanding the relationship between theatre and gentrification requires a three-pronged approach that encapsulates theatre’s material and symbolic dimensions. We focus on:
• Theatre-going as a practice of urban subject formation,
• The aesthetic medium as a space for the creation and circulation of novel representations of the urban,
• Theaters themselves as social institutions and creative arts enterprises.
Preliminary investigation using this three-pronged approach reveals a number of trends:
1) In each of the five cities in question, theatre and performance practices from the past twenty-five years track fundamental changes in the representation of the urban environment, including changes in the articulation of claims to urban belonging and property ownership, resistance to experiences of urban exclusion and displacement, and emerging imaginaries of urban history. These theatrical representations depict the city in relation to the themes of memory, migration, property, and publicness.
2) In each of the five cities in question, theatre institutions are materially embedded in processes of urban transformation. Some are located in neighborhoods that have experienced rapid gentrification and are themselves participants in this process, often through the role they play in city marketing, as well as in the practices of consumption that they promote. Conversely, other theaters either themselves fall prey to processes of urban displacement or their explicit mandate is to take part in practices of local/political resistance to gentrification.
3) In each of the five cities in question, theatre institutions and their artistic and everyday practices are shaped in relation to changing cultural and municipal policy discourses. Theatre administrations respond to changes in centralized visions for the theatre, including new funding structures explicitly sponsoring theatre and performance practices responsive to changing urban situations.
The THEAGENT team currently consists of five core researchers, including the Principal Investigator and four Postdoctoral Fellows, each of whom will be responsible for working on one of the project’s five case studies. The project’s research team is comprised of international members from Austria, Poland, Germany, France, Turkey and the United Kingdom.
During Months 1-12, we established co-beneficiary status for three institutions (the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama of the University of London, in the UK, the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, in Poland, and the American University of Paris, in France) whose collective expertise joined that of the project’s Host Institution, the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Additionally, we developed a shared conceptual framework drawing on insights from both Theatre and Performance Studies and Urban Studies, as well as a methodological strategy capitalizing on social science methodologies such as the semi-structured interview and systematic participant observation. We then began our preliminary research and concluded the selection of each city’s individual case studies.
During Months 12-24, the THEAGENT team built on the preparations of the previous year to conduct its core research activities. Additionally, we planned a series of workshops and public events (including both online and in person activities) that will take place from 2024 to 2026 and are designed to both sharpen the project’s analytic framework, and to share its emerging results with civil societies and research communities in the project’s five research sites. We also began to engage in dissemination activities, such as conference presentations, that presented the project’s starting objectives and preliminary observations.
During Months 1-12, we established co-beneficiary status for three institutions (the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama of the University of London, in the UK, the Adam Mickiewicz University of Poznan, in Poland, and the American University of Paris, in France) whose collective expertise joined that of the project’s Host Institution, the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Additionally, we developed a shared conceptual framework drawing on insights from both Theatre and Performance Studies and Urban Studies, as well as a methodological strategy capitalizing on social science methodologies such as the semi-structured interview and systematic participant observation. We then began our preliminary research and concluded the selection of each city’s individual case studies.
During Months 12-24, the THEAGENT team built on the preparations of the previous year to conduct its core research activities. Additionally, we planned a series of workshops and public events (including both online and in person activities) that will take place from 2024 to 2026 and are designed to both sharpen the project’s analytic framework, and to share its emerging results with civil societies and research communities in the project’s five research sites. We also began to engage in dissemination activities, such as conference presentations, that presented the project’s starting objectives and preliminary observations.
THEAGENT’s multi-sited orientation and theoretical commitments promise to break new ground.
First, in Theatre and Performance Studies, theatre’s relationship to urban transformation is often framed through a binary analytic framework. Theatre is either celebrated for its ability to constitute innovative political practices, identities, and possibilities or identified as an instrument (or extension) of structures of political and economic governance. THEAGENT’s goal is to think through the terms of this binary by placing questions of agency, performativity, governance and materiality under scrutiny.
Second, the theoretical innovation outlined above is premised on the development of a shared research design drawing on mixed methodologies. While Theatre and Performance Studies boasts a growing interest in different methodological strategies, multi-sited, collaborative research design continues to be rare. THEAGENT’s goal is to document the possibilities as well as limitations of a multi-sited research project employing a range of social science methodologies.
Finally, THEAGENT is in conversation with an increasingly rich body of scholarship from Urban Studies that seeks to evaluate the relationship between the arts and urban change. Foundational scholarship on gentrification identifies a specific role for artistic practices and institutions, yet later work has often retained these presumptions. THEAGENT will provide much-needed evidence for how “the arts” can foster both proximity and hierarchy in urban change. The project’s comparative structure will also speak to the tension between universal models of globalized urbanization and the specificities of urban cultures.
First, in Theatre and Performance Studies, theatre’s relationship to urban transformation is often framed through a binary analytic framework. Theatre is either celebrated for its ability to constitute innovative political practices, identities, and possibilities or identified as an instrument (or extension) of structures of political and economic governance. THEAGENT’s goal is to think through the terms of this binary by placing questions of agency, performativity, governance and materiality under scrutiny.
Second, the theoretical innovation outlined above is premised on the development of a shared research design drawing on mixed methodologies. While Theatre and Performance Studies boasts a growing interest in different methodological strategies, multi-sited, collaborative research design continues to be rare. THEAGENT’s goal is to document the possibilities as well as limitations of a multi-sited research project employing a range of social science methodologies.
Finally, THEAGENT is in conversation with an increasingly rich body of scholarship from Urban Studies that seeks to evaluate the relationship between the arts and urban change. Foundational scholarship on gentrification identifies a specific role for artistic practices and institutions, yet later work has often retained these presumptions. THEAGENT will provide much-needed evidence for how “the arts” can foster both proximity and hierarchy in urban change. The project’s comparative structure will also speak to the tension between universal models of globalized urbanization and the specificities of urban cultures.