Citizenship and theatre are both global concepts and practices: the former providing the basis for the individualâs relationship with the nation-state, the latter designating a form of cultural expression with associated institutions that has established itself across the globe. This chapter proposes a way to examine theatre and citizenship as interconnected concepts from a global perspective. Both concepts and practices are highly multivalent which means that their points of contact and convergence may be more often inferred and implied than explicitly formulated. The globalisation of theatre in the 20th century was closely linked with the emergence of the nation-state and what theorists of nationalism term âmodular thinkingâ. In the same way, a modern concept of citizenship was adopted along with the concept of the nation-state and is indeed, for many, indivisible from it. This chapter intends to adumbrate how the processes of theatrical globalisation that have been observable over the past century can be discussed in dialogue with coevally emerging understandings and practices of citizenship.
The two citations at the beginning of this chapter provide a conceptual frame for the argument. The USA â as well as other powers â exploited theatre as a projection of soft power. American philanthropy was a major institutional force in disseminating both concepts. It invested considerable resources in promoting both notions of democracy and citizenship and a modernist understanding of theatre. In the late 1950s the Rockefeller Foundation ramped up its support for the arts and especially theatre on an international scale. The Rockefeller Foundation also had a long-standing interest in citizen education. The societal model it promoted, not just at home but also in the emerging postcolonial nations, was a democratic, industrialised one, as only the latter, so the thinking, could provide the standard of living deemed to be the endpoint of development. Martha Nussbaumâs plea for the importance of the humanities within a liberal university education is also predicated on an understanding of the citizen, who is not just born to this status but requires exposure to a particular kind of liberal education to acquire what she calls the âcapacity for citizenshipâ (1998, p. 301), something to which the individual aspires and works towards.
The chapter begins with a discussion of theatre and citizenship as modular concepts that are both embedded in specific concepts of the nation-state. The second section looks at the central role played by US philanthropy in promoting and institutionalising an understanding of theatre education. For the purposes of this chapter âeducationâ will be discussed in terms of tertiary and/or adult education as well as professional training. Why did theatre and drama, a fairly marginalised discipline in the Euro-American academy, suddenly take on such importance and become the recipient of major funding and support? The final sections look at the shift towards Theatre for Development (TfD) in the late 1970s as an example of a global theatre form that places notions of citizenship, at least implicitly, in the centre of its activities.
Theatre, nation and citizenship: modular concepts
âModular man is a nationalist.â (Ernest Gellner, 1995, p. 42)
Whereas theatre and community have become almost synonymous in theoretical discourse, where every performance constitutes an ephemeral community of spectators and performers, research and discourse on theatre and citizenship is relatively easy to survey. The list of book titles (Fisek, 2017; Pahwa, 2020; Wiles 2011) and articles (Williams, 2015; Wong, 2016) featuring the two terms is a short one. Even in Wilesâ study, âcitizenshipâ and âcommunityâ are often used synonymously and interchangeably so that it is difficult to conceptualise the relationship between theatre and citizenship without implying a discourse on community, the default mode for theatre studies. Nevertheless, there is little doubt that both concepts and practices have achieved global diffusion and are subject to varying degrees of institutionalisation.
Institutionalisation in the case of citizenship usually means a strong legal foundation regarding the rights and responsibilities of individuals born into a nation-state. In the case of theatre it does not necessarily mean the widespread existence of publicly-funded theatres but rather the recognition that theatre, like the arts more broadly, is part and parcel of a nation-state like the tax department, judiciary and army. There are few states without recognisable theatrical activity and none without performance traditions. In both cases there is a high degree of mutual recognition across the globe of what both terms mean.
Why the two terms have achieved such global diffusion, is dependent on the emergence of what influential scholars of nationalism Benedict Anderson and Ernest Gellner both call âmodular thinkingâ. In Andersonâs formulation:
nationality, or nation-ness, as well as nationalism, are cultural artefacts of a particular kind ⌠once created, they became âmodularâ, capable of being transplanted, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations. (Anderson, 1991, p. 4)
Ernest Gellner (1995) also sees in the concept of modularity a defining characteristic of nationalism. He distinguishes between âtraditionalâ societies wedded to ânon-modularityâ and more âmodernâ ones that embrace nationalism via modular thinking. It is important to stress here that for Gellner the polarity does not reside in an opposition between European and non-European cultures, because he defines it within European cultures themselves and their turn to nationalism. The latter emerges coevally with industrialisation in Europe and its economic dictates require various kinds of standardisation to function, primarily a nominally literate workforce. Literacy and education are also the preconditions of nationalism (pace Anderson). For the first time, Gellner argues, education becomes the norm of a new level of complex organisation known as âsocietyâ, composed of atomistic, educated individuals. The political unit for this new kind of society is the nation-state. Its affective bonds are created through the ideology of nationalism which harnesses, somewhat paradoxically, the very agrarian, village-centred, myths and rituals, which it by necessity must supersede.
If we turn to tertiary education, a major focus of American philanthropy in the postcolonial world as well as of the former colonial regimes, then we can extend Gellnerâs argument to the new elites. The topic of interest here is the extent to which art and theatre fell under the modular mode. The argument is roughly that the introduction of theatre within the postcolonial world coincided in its initial stage with a version that could be termed âmodernistâ: Stanislavskyâs acting pedagogy, Brechtâs epic theatre, even social drama in the Ibsen or George Bernard Shaw mould. In each case a way of performing or writing plays proved to be highly adaptable to local conditions. By the early 20th century shingeki had emerged in Japan, shingug in Korea and huaju in China, all of which translate roughly as new-style, i.e. Western theatre. The remarkable diffusion of Stanislavskian acting pedagogy after 1945 is a similar example of a modular form finding numerous local adaptations. Wherever the modernist theatrical episteme was being taughtâmainly in universitiesâthe method was sure to follow. Jonathan Pitches asks whether this was a âsystem for all nationsâ (Pitches, 2017). Perhaps not all, but certainly for many from Nigeria to Bangladesh and from Cuba to Tunisia. Stanislavsky was a foundation stone of theatrical globalisation, a prerequisite for delivering the realistic dramas that were being written, and later for the films and television dramas to be broadcast.
Theatrical modernism is a notoriously difficult term to tie down to a particular period or country. There is, however, agreement that it was an international movement that from its onset was characterised by cross-border exchange, whether of troupes and performers, of plays, or of theoretical treatises. The movement coalesces around a rejection of commercial theatre whose principles (or rather lack of them) the advocates of the new movement decried. One can certainly say that by the end of the First World War it was well and truly established and had a set of advocates, charismatic artistic figures and a growing number of media, mainly periodicals spreading its message. The first number of Sheldon Cheneyâs New York-based Theatre Arts Magazine, published in 1916, gives a fairly representative selection of the main components and exponents with articles on the Little Theatre movement, national theatre, Robert Edmond Jones, the Moscow Art Theatre, William Poel, Ruth St. Denis, Joseph Urban, and poetic drama. In his foreword Sheldon proclaims its intrinsically aesthetic goals: âTheatre Arts Magazine is designed for the artist who approaches the theatre in the spirit of the arts and crafts movement, and for the theatregoer who is awake artistically and intellectuallyâ (Cheney, 1916, p. v, emphasis added, C.B.). This was elitist, emphatically cosmopolitan theatre, programmatically opposed to the commercial mainstream. It appeared therefore to be easily transferrable between countries and cultures: in other words modernist theatre was fundamentally modular.
The theatrical discourse of the postcolonial world in the 1950s and 1960s mirrored Western debates and trends, while adding a specific decolonial component, namely, the integration of indigenous performance culture and traditions. This move corresponds to Andersonâs concept of merging with local constellations and has been extensively analysed in aesthetic terms under concepts such as syncretic, hybrid or intercultural theatre (Balme, 1999).
My argument is that modern Western theatre in the 20th century became increasingly reliant on modular principles, in the sense of comprising forms and elements that can be selected and assembled at will without reliance on a predetermined cultural matrix. This sets it aside from and in opposition to most traditional indigenous performance forms which integrate aesthetics, belief systems and specific cultural contexts into an organic whole. The condition of ânon-modularityâ (Gellner) makes it hard to detach individual parts and transport them across cultures. For this reason, theatre forms such as NĂ´ or Kabuki or Peking Opera or even classical ballet remain broadly resistant to modularisation (although the latter has been successfully transplanted to many cultures). Such forms have either died out or been relocated institutionally within the context of immaterial cultural heritage. For the same reason, the performative component of a village festival is difficult if not impossible to detach and make meaningful outside its religious-cultural matrix. When this is done, it becomes usually folkloric, even exotic entertainment.
This does not mean, however, that modular imports remained unchanged. There is broad consensus amongst historians and sociologists of modernity that it is necessary to speak of âmultiple modernitiesâ (Eisenstadt, 2000), the process whereby the âconvergencesâ implicit in the modernist project undergo myriad adaptations and differences on the ground. The adaptations of Western theatrical forms across the globe since the late 19th century bear testimony to Eisenstadtâs diagnosis.
If nationalism and its spread is contingent on modular thinking and the implicit challenges to traditional networks of ritual and kinship that it entails, the same can be said for the concept of citizenship, which goes hand in hand with the foundation of nation-states. Indeed in many languages there is no distinction made between citizenship and nationality. Modern concepts of citizenship derive from the American and French revolutions, and their grounding in Enlightenment thinking: the citizen or citoyen is figured as a new relationship between the (modular) individual and the (nation-)state: the citizen is no longer subservient to a lord and bound quite literally to his or her pays, where, in pre-revolutionary France, the word pays corresponded for most inhabitants more closely to county than country (Forrest, 2004, p. 22). The âmodernâ citizen, on the other hand, is an autonomous subject who derives rights from and responsibilities to the nation-state...
