Theatre and Internationalization

Perspectives from Australia, Germany, and Beyond

Ulrike Garde, John R. Severn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000209051
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Mondialisation

Theatre and Internationalization examines how internationalization affects the processes and aesthetics of theatre, and how this art form responds dramatically and thematically to internationalization beyond the stage.

With central examples drawn from Australia and Germany from the 1930s to the present day, the book considers theatre and internationalization through a range of theoretical lenses and methodological practices, including archival research, aviation history, theatre historiography, arts policy, organizational theory, language analysis, academic-practitioner insights, and literary-textual studies. While drawing attention to the ways in which theatre and internationalization might be contributing productively to each other and to the communities in which they operate, it also acknowledges the limits and problematic aspects of internationalization. Taking an unusually wide approach to theatre, the book includes chapters by specialists in popular commercial theatre, disability theatre, Indigenous performance, theatre by and for refugees and other migrants, young people as performers, opera and operetta, and spoken art theatre.

An excellent resource for academics and students of theatre and performance studies, especially in the fields of spoken theatre, opera and operetta studies, and migrant theatre, Theatre and Internationalization explores how theatre shapes and is shaped by international flows of people, funds, practices, and works.

Part 1

Introduction

1Theatre(s) and internationalization(s)

Ulrike Garde and John R. Severn

Introduction

Theatre and Internationalization: Perspectives from Australia, Germany, and Beyond examines both the ways in which internationalization has affected the processes and aesthetics of theatre, and how theatre has responded dramatically and thematically to internationalization in the world beyond the stage. One goal of the book is to demonstrate the complexity and wide spread of internationalization in theatrical terms. In order to do justice to this complexity, it approaches theatre and internationalization through a range of theoretical lenses and methodological practices, including archival research, transport history, adaptation studies, theatre historiography, arts policy, organizational theory, language analysis, academic-practitioner insights, and literary-textual studies.

Recent work on internationalizing aspects of theatre has tended to approach them through the lens of globalization. However, Theatre and Internationalization works on the assumption that internationalization and globalization are not isometric. For example, the European Union legislation and funding that encourages and facilitates intra-European theatrical mobility, described in Chapter 9, is internationalizing, but only within a limited geopolitical area. It is also protectionist, and thus cannot easily be subsumed under the rubric of globalization. Rather, globalization – an economic model of late capitalism with a neo-liberal ideology – might be thought of as a subset of internationalization. As the case study of the megamusical below shows, it should therefore be possible to critique aspects of a theatrical work in terms of globalization, while also picking out what it is doing positively, negatively, or simply differently in terms of internationalization. Similarly, an alertness to the potential performative contradiction of theatrical works that aim to critique the abuses of globalization while requiring their casts to spend long periods away from home on international tours, or that themselves become products in the global theatrical marketplace (discussed further in Chapter 8), might allow practitioners to avoid replicating practices to which they are ostensibly opposed. To this end, Theatre and Internationalization aims to provide critical approaches to enable more nuanced analysis of theatrical developments to be made.

Since the late 1980s, ‘globalization’ – in contrast to ‘internationalization’ – has generally been treated as a pejorative term to describe the exploitation of foreign labour markets and the worldwide dissemination of mass-produced products. This of course does not cover all the ways in which international interactions occur. This book aims to draw attention to the ways in which theatre and internationalization might be seen as contributing productively to each other and to the communities in which they operate, for example through exposing audiences and performers to the unfamiliar in terms of people, languages, and ideas, and to the self-reflection that this brings. Chapters 2 and 3 show how internationalization can be experienced in terms of pleasure, and indeed – as the diary entries and postcards revealed by Chapter 3’s archival research demonstrate – as sheer fun. At the same time, the book is alive to the problems to which internationalization, or a sense of obligation to engage in internationalization, can give rise. As Chapters 12 and 13 argue, internationalization can also be a source of economic stress and personal discomfort, especially when participants feel pressured to engage in it.

Rather than treating internationalization as a form of ideology with which its contributors either agree or disagree, Theatre and Internationalization views internationalization as a process – a set of interlocking international flows of influence, practices, people, funds, and works – that is most effectively approached through examples of practice. As such, it aims to bring to light concrete issues in the internationalization of theatre and to provide critical tools with which to approach the complex interactions among, for instance, the availability of and access to international transport and communication, translation and interpreting technology, the legal ability of performers to travel abroad, and the social, political, and organizational stances, whether positive or negative, towards presenting audiences with foreign influences that together contribute to the internationalization of theatre. As a case in point, Chapter 4’s discussion of international touring by Australian Aboriginal performers in the late 1960s draws attention to the fact that national laws can prevent performers leaving their country of origin as much as entering another. The book also aims to analyse changes in patterns of internationalization in response to developments beyond theatre: Chapter 3 demonstrates how the rise of affordable commercial jet aviation in the 1950s and 1960s led to changes in theatrical touring practices, from sea-based circuits to air-based hubs, while Chapter 5 gives an academic-practitioner’s account of the use of communications technology in the development of a recent cross-continental production, an aspect of increasing interest given rising concerns about the effect of air travel on climate change. Chapter 7, in contrast, explores de-internationalization in the context of the opera libretto, historically a highly internationalized theatrical component, due to the requirements of funding organizations, among other reasons.

Theatre and Internationalization takes an unusually wide view of theatre as a performative art: its thirteen chapters include contributions by specialists in popular commercial theatre, disability theatre, Indigenous performance, theatre by and for refugees and other migrants, young people as performers, opera and operetta, as well as subsidized spoken art theatre. By expanding an understanding of theatre beyond subsidized spoken art theatre, the book aims to reflect the reality that many practitioners draw and bring experiences of internationalization from and to a range of theatrical forms: as the book demonstrates, directors might work across spoken theatre, opera and operetta, choreographers across dance, musicals and contemporary mixed-media performance, and performers across revue and narrative drama. Likewise, audiences encounter internationalization across a spectrum of theatrical forms.

While this initial chapter explores internationalization in a wide range of historical and geographical contexts, the remaining chapters examine aspects of theatre and internationalization in depth, rather than providing a comprehensive high-level survey. In order to draw the subsequent chapters together, the editors and contributors have chosen to take their primary case studies from Australia and Germany, countries on opposite sides of the earth but with a perhaps surprising history of mutual theatrical interactions and influences. This is in part because these contexts allow discussions of specific historical and contemporary aspects of internationalization that are nonetheless revealing in a wider context in terms of the extent to which forces beyond the theatre influence its engagement with internationalization. Thus, the book is not only about internationalization in Australian and German theatre, and its findings aim to be transferrable to other situations. Further, while each chapter deals with theatre from/in Australia and/or Germany and German-speaking countries, they also cover internationalizing aspects relating to Asia, the Pacific, the Middle East, Latin America, the US, and Europe more generally.

Australia was chosen as an ideal example for a book with a focus on the practical aspects of internationalization as its relatively isolated geographical position as an island state with no international land borders can pose significant obstacles to international movement. In addition, Australia’s status as a post-colonial multicultural settler society with its own internal colonial history vis-à-vis its indigenous inhabitants raises questions around the meaning of ‘international’ that force a particularly nuanced approach to discussions of theatrical internationalization. Australia also serves as a demonstration of a theatrical context in which state policies such as the racist White Australia Policy, in force from 1901 and progressively phased out between 1949 and 1973, have resulted in a widespread erasure of awareness both of what was once a highly internationalized theatre scene and of ways of receiving popular spoken theatre in unfamiliar languages. The Gold Rush era in the Australian colonies, for instance, saw fourteen Chinese opera companies performing in Victoria between 1850 and 1870 (Zhengting 2012, p.4), while Melbourne’s concurrent status as the world’s wealthiest city attracted Europe’s biggest stars, such as the Italian actress Adelaide Ristori, the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, and the English operatic soprano Anna Bishop.¹ That the former two performed in their own languages to appreciative audiences suggests a willingness among Australian settlers to receive spoken theatre in unfamiliar languages. A newspaper review in Melbourne’s Argus for 21 September 1875 gives a detailed account of movement and vocal delivery (reprinted in Love 1984, pp.96–7). Noting Ristori’s lengthy seasons in Sydney and Melbourne despite performing in Italian, Harold Love suggests that audiences received these ‘as a form of opera without music’ (1984, p.96). Finally, a focused study of Australia permits discussion of anglophone works while avoiding the US/UK-centric approaches that tend to dominate discussions of developments in theatre.

Germany was chosen due to its complex history of engagement with theatre and internationalization. On the one hand, as Chapter 2 demonstrates, internationalizing aspects of theatre in the 1930s fell foul of National Socialism’s racist laws and practices, which led to works being banned and practitioners exiled or murdered, while post-war revivals of banned works removed the internationalizing aspects of the original productions – at best unthinkingly continuing Nazi censorship. Contemporary institutions that have contributed to restoring these internationalizing aspects have recently faced resistance from growing far-right opposition. On the other hand, some of the most interesting examples of theatre and internationalization are to be found in contemporary Germany’s exceptionally well-funded and extensive theatre network, especially as the country engages with the presence of refugees and other migrants, as well as with its place in the European Union, in Europe as a whole, and in an increasingly globalized world. The choice of Germany also permits discussion of non-anglophone works (translations are provided for all non-English quotations): indeed, one of the aims of the book is to provide ways of thinking about linguistic issues that have often been glossed over in anglophone theatrical discussions.

Theatre and internationalization

A recent turn in theatre historiography has seen a welcome shift from teleological approaches that focus on landmarks in the development of ‘national’ theatre traditions to one that aims to create an understanding of the theatre ecologies available to audiences and practitioners at particular times and places, in which, for example, translations and adaptations of foreign works play alongside revivals as well as new works, and actors perform outside their country of origin.² Much of this work has framed itself in terms of the ‘transnational’. While the terms ‘transnational’ and ‘international’ have a long history as virtual synonyms in common usage, recent academic work has made attempts to distinguish the two, often tailoring definitions for a specific piece of work. Steven Vertovec, for example, writes:

At least one conceptual clarification is worth underlining to begin with. With regard to interactions between national governments (such as formal agreements, conflicts, diplomatic relations) or concerning the to-ing and fro-ing of items from one nation-state context to another (such as people/travel and goods/trade), we might best retain our description of these practices as ‘inter-national’. When referring to sustained linkages and ongoing exchanges among non-state actors based across national borders – businesses, non-government organizations, and individuals sharing the same interests (by way of criteria such as religious beliefs, common cultural and geographical origins) – we can differentiate these as ‘transnational’ practices and groups (referring to their links functioning across nation-states). The collective attributes of such connections, their processes of formation and maintenance, and their wider implications are referred to broadly as ‘transnationalism’.

(Vertovec 2009, pp.2–3)

While there is no consensus on usage of the term, and others implicitly or explicitly include ‘the to-ing and fro-ing of items from one nation-state context to another’ – especially the movement of people – under the rubric of transnationalism, Vertovec is relatively typical in characterizing transnationalism by a focus on linkages and exchanges across borders.

Much of the work in Theatre and Internationalization: Perspectives from Australia, Germany, and Beyond could no doubt comfortably be described as having such a ‘transnational’ approach. We have, however, chosen to view our case studies through the lens of ‘internationalization’. On the one hand, although our interest is in flows of influence, practices, people, funds, and works, this terminology aims not so much to frame that interest in terms of various forms of border crossings, as it aims to position theatre as being in a constant process of becoming influenced – and, at times, of appearing to be influenced – by factors beyond the borders of the state in which it is produced. Thus, internationalization in theatre can be an issue of perception as much as of real or virtual border crossings. This can manifest itself in a number of ways. Theatre can be perceived to be thematizing international imports. Homosexuality, for example, can be conceived as a foreign import: in such circumstances, theatre that thematizes homosexuality can also be perceived as thematizing internationalization. As Awondo et al. note in the context of Senegal:

influential Senegalese religious and political leaders seem to be convinced that an actual infiltration of homosexuality – as an imposition from outside – threatens the social order and the intégrité nationale. This idea is repeated regularly on the media. It also inspires other initiatives, like the staging of theatrical presentations about the fate awaiting homose...