Theatrescapes – Global Theatre Histories

24/10/202124/10/2021

New Book Out: Theatre Across Oceans. Mediators of Transatlantic Exchange (1890-1925) (N. Leonhardt)

We are delighted to announce that a new monograph developed within the framework of the Centre for Global Theatre History just came out. Theatre Across Oceans. Mediators of Transatlantic Exchange (1890-1925) by theatre historian Nic Leonhardt was recently published with Palgrave Macmillan. The book allows the reader to enter and understand the infrastructural ‘backstage area’ of global cultural mobility during the years between 1890 and 1925. Located within the research fields of global history and theory, the geographical focus of the book is a transatlantic one, based on the active exchange in this phase between North and South America and Europe. Emanating from a rich body of archival material, the study argues that this exchange was essentially facilitated and controlled by professional theatrical mediators (agents, brokers), who have not been sufficiently researched within theatre or historical studies. The low visibility of mediators in the scientific research is in diametrical contrast to the enormous power that they possessed in the period dealt with in this book.

• Nic Leonhardt: Theatre Across Oceans. Mediators of Transatlantic Exchange (1890-1925). London: Palgrave Macmillan (Transnational Theatre Histories)

13/07/202113/07/2021

”We have a double pandemic here” – A conversation with Clara de Andrade & Gustavo Guenzburger from Brazil – A new episode of the Theatrescapes Podcast

We are happy to announce that we just launched a new episode of our Theatrescapes Podcast ! This time, Theatrescapes host Nic Leonhardt speaks with Clara de Andrade and Gustavo Guenzburger from Rio, Brazil, about the challenges COVID-19 as well the political situation in Brazil have brought to both their artistic and academic work since then.

Clara de Andrade and Gustavo Guenzburger are theatre makers and theatre researchers from Rio, Brazil. The Centre for Global Theatre History has a long-standing relationship with the couple and UNIRIO. In early 2020, Clara and Gustavo were Visiting Fellows of the Centre and of the European Research Council (ERC) funded project “Developing Theatre” at the Institute of Theatre Studies at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. When they were about to return in March, the pandemic broke out …

Clara de Andrade, Brazilian Theatre Researcher, Dancer and Actress

Gustavo Guenzburger, Brazilian Theatre Researcher, Director and Activist

Clara de Andrade is a Brazilian actor, singer, teacher and researcher in Theatre Arts. Her main field of research is the transnational networks of the Theatre of the Oppressed and Theatre for Development. She has been working and researching at institutions such as UNIRIO, Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3) and was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Global Theatre Histories & Developing Theatre Project at LMU Munich.

Gustavo Guenzburger is a Brazilian artist, activist, teacher and researcher in Theatre Arts. His main field of interest are transnationality and modes of production in theatre. He has been teaching and researching at institutions such as UNIRIO, UERJ, Sorbonne Nouvelle (Paris 3) and was Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Global Theatre Histories & Developing Theatre Project at LMU Munich.

The Theatrescapes Podcast is produced by the Centre for Global Theatre Research and the ERC project Developing Theatre (GA No. 694559) Pat LMU Munich.

The Podcast episodes are available here, on iTunes, Google Podcast and Spotify.

Please follow our updates here on this blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

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Special thanks go to our colleague Aydin Alinejadsomeh who conjures everything around the technology.

We would also like to thank the Legon Palwine Band from Accra, Ghana, for letting us use their great music for the podcast!

31/05/202101/06/2021

Theatrescapes – GTH Centre Launches the first Podcast on the Histories of Global Theatre

The audio podcast Theatrescapes focuses on the Global Histories of Theatre and the Histories of Global Theatre. It is produced by the Centre for Global Theatre History at LMU Munich.

The Centre for Global Theatre comes up with a new format: in June, we launch our audio podcast: Theatrescapes !

Theatrescapes takes up those topics that have engaged the Centre’s researchers and its international network since its beginning: Stories and case studies about theatre in a global context, mainly from a historical perspective, but also reaching into the present. The podcast is dedicated to conversations and book reviews about the global or transnational histories of the performing arts, of drama, dance, opera, circus, etc., from the early modern period to the 21^stcentury. Guests and interview partners include scholars and artists, theatre and cultural practitioners from around the world. At Theatrescapes, the world is at the microphones for the world.

The variety of topics at Theatrescapes is unique and requires curation. The podcast is therefore structured in series of 3-5 episodes each, dedicated to areas of focus.

A short intro episode in early June will be followed by the first series, Theatre (Research) in Times of Covid, that explores how the global pandemic situation has impacted theatre practice and research. In conversation with theatre scholar Nic Leonhardt, host of the Theatrescapes podcast, theatre practitioners and arts supporters, researchers and faculty members from South America, Asia and Europe describe challenges and opportunities of that special time period that is making history.

We welcome listeners from around the world!

If you have suggestions for topics and conversation partners, please do not hesitate to contact us!

Special thanks go to our colleague Aydin Alinejadsomeh who conjures everything around the technology.

We would also like to thank the Legon Palwine Band from Accra, Ghana, for letting us use their great music for the podcast!

Theatrescapes is available here, on iTunes, Google Podcast and Spotify.

Please follow our updates here on this blog, on Facebook and Twitter.

29/07/2018

Globale Theatergeschichte schreiben – ein Porträt im DFG-Magazin “forschung”, 2/2018

Kunst darf alles, Theater ist grenzenlos. Wie aber schreibt man ihre Geschichte(n)? – Die performativen Künste aus einer transnationalen, transregionalen, transkulturellen Perspektive zu schreiben, scheint so offenkundig – wie es lange ein Desiderat blieb. Mit dem von der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) geförderten Reinhart Koselleck Projekt, “Global Theatre History”, das 2010 am Institut für Theaterwissenschaft der LMU München seine Anfänge nahm, haben wir dies zunächst im Kleinen probiert. Das internationale Netzwerk an wissenschaftlichen Partnern wuchs und wuchs mit den Jahren. Fragen wurden mehr, unbearbeitete Felder der Theaterhistoriographie zeigten sich allerorts. Als die Förderung naturgemäß 2016 auslief, waren wir uns schnell einig, dass das erst der Anfang sein konnte. Also formten wir das Centre for Global Theatre History, um den Diskurs um die historischen Verflechtungen der Theaterkünste über Grenzen hinweg weiterzuführen.

In der aktuellen Ausgabe des DFG-Magazins findet sich ein Porträt über die Ansätze und Arbeit innerhalb der Globalen Theatergeschichte, verfasst von Nic Leonhardt, neben Christopher Balme Direktorin des Centres.

Zum Artikel geht es hier: Nic Leonhardt: “Der Vorhang fällt nie”. In: forschung. Das Magazin der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft. 2/2018, S. 22–27.

Noch mehr Global Theatre Histories: www.gth.theaterwissenschaft.uni-muenchen.de www.gth.hypotheses.org

13/06/2017

Guest Lecture by Kate Elswit: “Tracing Dynamic Spatial Histories and Networks of Movement on the Move”

Ernst Oppler. Pavlova as bacchante. Drawing. (Public Domain)

The Centre for Global Theatre History cordially invites to a public talk by London based reader and researcher Kate Elswit ( (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London) on Tracing Dynamic Spatial histories and Networks of Movement on the Move on Wednesday, 14 June, 12-1:30pm @ Institute for Theatre Studies, Georgenstrasse 11, Room #109.

“The talk is based on a series of collaborations between Kate Elswit and Harmony Bench regarding the ways in which digital research methods can work in tandem with more traditional scholarly methods to manage the scale and complexity of data in accounts of what we call “movement on the move,” which we explore through the phenomenon of dance touring alongside other modes of circulation and transmission. In the first part of the talk, I draw on the project’s early research into South American tours by Anna Pavlova’s company during World War One and American Ballet Caravan during World War Two. Here focus is on the database and the map as tools that expand our capacity to trace “dynamic spatial histories of movement.” In the second part of the talk, I turn to a new collaborative work in progress that focuses on the archives of African American choreographer and anthropologist Katherine Dunham. This new work broadens the scope of transmission to explore geographical and cultural mobilities in tandem, ultimately revealing the scale of personal, professional, and political networks surrounding a single artist, and proposing what such histories of circulation can offer to dance history.”

Kate Elswit is Reader in Theatre and Performance at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London and author of Watching Weimar Dance and Theatre & Dance. She has won three major awards for scholarly publications and her research has been supported by many sources, including a Marshall Scholarship, a postdoctoral fellowship in the Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship of Scholars in the Humanities at Stanford University, the 2013 Lilian Karina Research Grant in Dance and Politics, and most recently a Batelle Engineering, Technology, and Human Affairs (BETHA) Endowment Grant with Harmony Bench. She also works as a choreographer, curator, and dramaturg.

16/02/2015

MOOC on Theatre & Globalization @ LMU, Feb 16th. Instructor: Christopher Balme

This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) will discuss how theatre, a European cultural practice, spread rapidly around the world in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The modules will engage with both theoretical and historical perspectives on what is a relatively new area of theatrical research. How did plays, operas and ballets quite literally go global? What do we know about the itineraries of actors, singers, and dancers, what about the cosmopolitan audiences? What can we learn about agents and managers who facilitated the movement of theatre around the world?

Against the backdrop of recent research in the context of global and transnational history, based on case studies of the Global Theatre Histories research group, and enriched by numerous interviews with international experts, course instructor Christopher Balme and his team have developed a fascinating online course that will introduce students into theatre as a global phenomenon and familiarize them with global (historical) perspectives on theatre research.

https://www.coursera.org/course/globaltheatre

more MOOCs at LMU

16/01/2015

Impressions of our 1st ‘Hackfest’ – Feeding and Testing Our New Database

(left to right: Mehmet Özbek, Gero Tögl, Gwendolin Lehnerer, Tobi Englmeier, Lisa-Frederike Seidler, Nic Leonhardt, Christopher Balme; photo: Christine Kneifel, twm)

On Friday, 16 January, core members of the research projects Global Theatre Histories (PI: Christopher Balme) and Theatrescapes (PI: Nic Leonhardt) gathered for a joint hackathon. The goal of this ‘hack day’ was to employ, test, and also challenge the “Theatrescapes Research Tool”, developed by computational linguist Tobi Englmeier, and to enter data (textual, visual, georeferential) on theatres established worldwide since 1850 – both purpose built and non-purpose built –– into the Theatrescapes database. The tool will go online shortly and is designed to work as a research tool for mapping theatres of the world since the mid-19^th century.