This collection presents innovative institutional approaches to the theatre historiography of the Global South, proposing a fundamental reexamination of the historiography of theater in emerging countries since 1945. Covering perspectives from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, the chapters explore how US philanthropy, international organizations, and pan-African festivals all contributed to the globalization and institutionalization 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 politics impacted the construction of national theaters, 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 decolonizing world. The book’s institutional and transnational approach enables theatre studies to overcome its commonly strong national and local focus on plays and productions and to connect it to current discourses in transnational and global history.
Table of Contents
List of contributors
List of figures
Preface
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: ITI and UNIMA
Viviana Iacob and Rebecca Sturm
2 Infrastructures for an 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: Workshops 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-Alvarez, 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