Developing Theatre in the Global South

Institutions, networks, experts

Edited by Nic Leonhardt and Christopher B. Balme

£45.00

ISBN: 9781800085763

Publication: April 09, 2024

Hardback £45.00 Paperback £25.00 Open Access PDF £0.00

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Drawing on new research from the ERC project ‘Developing Theatre’, this collection presents innovative institutional approaches to the theatre historiography of the Global South since 1945. Covering perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America as well as Eastern Europe, the chapters explore how US philanthropy, international organisations and pan-African festivals all contributed to the globalisation and institutionalisation of the performing arts in the Global South. During the Cultural Cold War, the Global North intervened in and promoted forms of cultural infrastructure that were deemed adaptable to any environment. This form of technopolitics impacted the construction of national theatres, the introduction of new pedagogical tools and the invention of the workshop as a format. The networks of 'experts' responsible for this foreground seminal figures, both celebrated (Augusto Boal, Efua Sutherland) but also lesser known (Albert Botbol, Severino Montano, Metin And), who contributed to the worldwide theatrical epistemic community of the postwar years.

Developing Theatre in the Global South investigates the institutional factors that led to the emergence of professional theatre in the postwar period throughout the decolonising world. The book’s institutional and transnational approach enables theatre studies to overcome its still strong national and local focus on plays and productions, and connect it to current discourses in transnational and global history.

Nic Leonhardt is a theatre scholar and a writer based at both LMU Munich and the University of Cologne.

Christopher B. Balme is Professor of Theatre Studies at LMU Munich.

List of figures
List of tables
List of contributors
Preface
Acknowledgement

Introduction
Christopher B. Balme and Nic Leonhardt

Part I: (Un)sustainable Institutions: Building a theatrical epistemic community

1 Global theatre players during the Cold War: the ITI and UNIMA
Viviana Iacob and Rebecca Sturm

2 Infrastructures for a Black/African renaissance: cultural institution building and organisational frameworks in selected postcolonial pan-African Festivals
Gideon I. Morison and Judith Rottenburg

3 Theatre for development (TFD) as an organizational field
Abdul Karim Hakib

4 Theatre against development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories
Rashna Darius Nicholson

Part II: Technopolitics

5 Instituting national theatres in Africa
Christopher B. Balme

6 Divided Europe in Damascus: the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus between Eastern European dictatorship and Western European intellectualism
Ziad Adwan

7 From North to South: the workshop as a global epistemic format
Christopher B. Balme and Nic Leonhardt

8 Musical theatre routes: West End, Broadway and the Brazil of Lei Rouanet
Gustavo Guenzburger and Bernardo Fonseca Machado

Part III: Expert networks

9 The Rockefeller roundabout of funding: Severino Montano and the development of theatre in the Philippines in the 1950s
Nic Leonhardt

10 Metin And: creating a theatrical epistemic community in Turkey
Hasibe Kalkan

11 Augusto Boal’s transnational networks of the Theatre of the Oppressed
Clara de Andrade and Christopher B. Balme

12 Cecile Guidote, PETA and ITI
Rebecca Sturm

13 Robert W. July and the ‘future’ of theatre in Africa
Christopher B. Balme

14 Efua Sutherland’s Pan-African Networks
Abdul Karim Hakib

Index

Format: Hardback

Size: 234 × 156 × 18 mm