Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging Countries after 1945

Project Information

DevelopingTheatre

Grant agreement ID: 694559

DOI

10.3030/694559

Project closed

EC signature date 22 August 2016

Start date 1 October 2016

End date 30 September 2022

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 2 150 083,00

EU contribution

€ 2 150 083,00

Coordinated by

LUDWIG-MAXIMILIANS-UNIVERSITAET MUENCHEN
Germany

Periodic Reporting for period 4 - DevelopingTheatre (Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging Countries after 1945)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2022-09-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

The ERC AdG ‘Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging Countries after 1945’ is devoted to examining the institutional factors behind the emergence of professional theatre in the post-war period in selected areas of the decolonizing world. It proposes to investigate largely unknown institutional factors that contributed to the spread of particular concepts and practices of theatre, which intersected with highly politicized concepts of ‘development’, ‘modernization’ and cultural nation-building. As a theoretical framework DevelopingTheatre will introduce the concepts epistemic community, expert networks and techno-politics to theatre historical research as a means to analyse theatre within transnational and transcultural paradigms. The project will investigate these transnational processes around topic areas that highlight different aspects of institution-building: 1) the impact of philanthropy; 2) the formation of international theatre organizations such as the International Theatre Institute; 3) the diffusion of theatre-pedagogical knowledge from both sides of Iron Curtain; 4) the impact of international arts festivals on postcolonial performance practices; and 5) the heterotopian implications of theatre-buildings. All these activities were driven by expert networks which enabled new types of knowledge flows. This institutional and transnational focus will provide a corrective to enable theatre studies to overcome its still strong national and local biases and connect the discipline to current cutting-edge historiographical discourses.
The societal importance is predicated on the shifting relationships between the global North and South. By investigating the history of these relationships in terms of its cultural and artistic imbrications, the project hopes to make clear how North and South have a history of collaboration which is not just determined by exploitation and dependency.
The overall objectives include a fundamental readjustment of theatrical historiography of the global South requiring a significant shift in focus away from individual playwrights or directors, who have stood in the centre of most research into postcolonial theatre. If theatre is understood as a form of cultural infrastructure, then it is logical that it was included in the social engineering projects of international development and modernization. A second objective is to demonstrate the need for qualitative and quantitative historiographical research supported by extensive data collection and visualization that will maximise opportunities for dialogue between individual researchers and across disciplinary perspectives. This will involve in turn a deeper engagement with methodologies of network analysis.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

Work on the research program has been severely affected by the Corona crisis which led to the last-minute cancellation of a major international conference, the closure of all archives and libraries, the stranding of two PhD students over a period of many months, and a slow recovery and adaptation of the research program to accommodate the restrictions. Details of the disruptions will be outlined in the individual topic areas. Overall, the subprojects have had to redefine some of their objectives and redesign expected outcomes in line with the restrictions caused by the closure of all archives and libraries. One major conference, The "Cultural Cold War". Towards a Theorization of its Afro-Asian Contexts”, was held in October 2019. A second one, “Theatre for development (TfD): historiographical and institutional perspectives”, planned for March 2020 in South Africa, had to be cancelled. Positive developments included the implementation of a fellow program for 2020. This was the result of many inquiries by interested scholars who wanted to join the group. We managed to host three fellows before the pandemic. We also completely redesigned our website to allow improved integration of digital content including videos, podcasts and network analyses. The number of publications is growing: We planned and implemented a working papers series; several peer-reviewed articles appeared; two edited collections are underway and the dissertations are nearing completion.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our project has already established that the artistic sphere is an important area of research and will explore how the latter intersects and interacts with issues that historians, economists, and anthropologists have identified for the Global South. The project has already begun to establish the new term theatrical epistemic community which can be defined as an international alliance of artists, scholars, bureaucrats and philanthropists who shared an understanding of theatre as a discrete artistic and cultural form as opposed to its commercial variant. They saw in it potential for nation-building and its rise can be dated to the late 1940s. The origins of the post-war theatrical epistemic community lie, however, in theatrical modernism: the international, multi-sited movement whose foundational belief is the idea that theatre can be an art form and hence of high cultural value and not just a commercial enterprise. The international conference on philanthropy and the arts also demonstrated for theatre historians in particular the importance of philanthropy for the establishment of artistic and theatrical infrastructure in the global South.

Exterior of the Ugandan National Cultural Centre 1960. Source: Jim and Hilda Dixon. CC