Theatre and Internationalization Perspectives from Australia, Germany, and Beyond

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.

Section 1: Introduction

1. Theatre(s) and Internationalization(s)

Ulrike Garde and John R. Severn

Section 2: Theatre and Internationalization: Snapshots from the Twentieth Century to Today

2. 1930s Jazz Operettas and Internationalization Then and Now: Risks, Ethics, Aesthetics

John R. Severn

3. Visualizing the Entrepreneurial Networks of International Entertainment: The Dalrays Touring Beyond the Tivoli, 1956-66

Jonathan Bollen

4. Localizing Aboriginal and Pacific Performance on Internationalized Stages, 1967-73

Amanda Harris

5. Collaborative Creation across Borders and Art Forms: A Director’s Perspective on Opera and Internationalization

Sally Blackwood

Section 3: Language and Text in Theatre and Internationalization

6. Negotiating Unfamiliar Languages and Accents in Contemporary Theatre

Ulrike Garde

7. Dramaturgical Oper(a N)ations: De-internationalization in Twenty-First Century American and German-language Libretti

Amy Stebbins

8. Criticizing Globalization in a Theatre of Internationalization?: Concepts of Theatrical Space between Dissolution and Demarcation in Falk Richter’s Electronic City (2003) and Safe Places (2016)

Felix Lempp

Section 4: Internationalization in Contemporary Theatre

9. Internationalization and Contemporary German-speaking Theatremakers and Playwrights

Johannes Birgfeld

10. Who’s Watching? Neo-realism and Global Brand Ibsen in Germany and Australia

Margaret Hamilton

Section 5: Internationalization, Performers, Audiences, Institutions

11. Migration and Theatre in Berlin: The Maxim Gorki Theater and the Komische Oper Berlin

Brangwen Stone

12. Young Artists, International Markets: Legitimizing Myths and Institutional Strategies

Benjamin Hoesch

13. International Percolations of Disability Aesthetics in Dance and Theatre

Christiane Czymoch, Kate Maguire-Rosier, and Yvonne Schmidt

Ulrike Garde is Head of German Studies at Macquarie University, with research interests covering German intercultural studies and theatre. Her most recent book, co-authored with Meg Mumford, is Theatre of Real People: Diverse Encounters at Berlin’s Hebbel am Ufer and Beyond (2016).

John R. Severn is a Research Fellow at Macquarie University. He is the author of Shakespeare as Jukebox Musical (Routledge, 2019) and is currently working on an Australian Research Council-funded Discovery Project on the economic and cultural value of theatre in Australia.