Books in the Transnational Theatre Histories series

This book shows how Carnival under British colonial rule became a locus of resistance as well as an exercise and affirmation of power. Focusing specifically on the Maltese islands, a tiny European archipelago situated at the heart of the Mediterranean, this work links the contrast between play and power to other Carnival realities across the world.

This book examines how the Cold War had a far-reaching impact on theatre by presenting a range of current scholarship on the topic from scholars from a dozen countries.

Transatlantic Broadway traces the infrastructural networks and technological advances that supported the globalization of popular entertainment in the pre-World War I period, with a specific focus on the production and performance of Broadway as physical space, dream factory, and glorious machine.

This book examines the intersection between sound and modernity in dramatic and musical performance in Manila and the Asia-Pacific between 1869 and 1948. During this period, tolerant political regimes resulted in the globalization of capitalist relations and the improvement of transcontinental travel and worldwide communication. This allowed modern modes of theatre and music consumption to instigate the uniformization of cultural products and processes, while simultaneously fragmenting societies into distinct identities, institutions, and nascent nation-states.Taking the performing bodies of migrant musicians as the locus of sound, this book argues that the global movement of acoustic modernities was replicated and diversified through its multiple subjectivities within empire, nation, and individual agencies. It traces the arrival of European travelling music and theatre companies in Asia which re-casted listening into an act of modern cultural consumption, and follows the migration of Manila musicians as they engaged in the modernization project of the neighboring Asian cities.

This book examines how the Cold War had a far-reaching impact on theatre by presenting a range of current scholarship on the topic from scholars from a dozen countries.

This book examines the intersection between sound and modernity in dramatic and musical performance in Manila and the Asia-Pacific between 1869 and 1948. During this period, tolerant political regimes resulted in the globalization of capitalist relations and the improvement of transcontinental travel and worldwide communication. This allowed modern modes of theatre and music consumption to instigate the uniformization of cultural products and processes, while simultaneously fragmenting societies into distinct identities, institutions, and nascent nation-states.Taking the performing bodies of migrant musicians as the locus of sound, this book argues that the global movement of acoustic modernities was replicated and diversified through its multiple subjectivities within empire, nation, and individual agencies. It traces the arrival of European travelling music and theatre companies in Asia which re-casted listening into an act of modern cultural consumption, and follows the migration of Manila musicians as they engaged in the modernization project of the neighboring Asian cities.

This is the first systematic study of networks of performance collaboration in the contemporary Chinese-speaking world and of their interactions with the artistic communities of the wider East Asian region.

The final chapter, on Theatre for Development and related social action theatre, covers the whole East African region, offering the first ever historicised analysis of this mode of theatre making which, since the 1980s, has come to dominate funding and opportunity in performance arts.

This book is the first ever transnational theatre study of an African region. A History of African Theatre is relevant to all who have interests in African cultures and their relationship to the history and politics of the East African region.