European Theatre Migrants in the Age of Empire : Personal Experiences, Transnational Trajectories, and Socio-Political Impacts

Abstract

This open access volume explores the crucial yet insufficiently addressed phenomenon of European theatre migration in the long nineteenth century. It argues that theatre migration went far beyond the popular phenomenon of touring, significantly shaping the historical discourse on theatre and mobility. The hidden and multifaceted histories of European theatre migration that this book seeks to explore allow us to rethink national theatre histories as histories of mobility, entanglements, and negotiations. They also allow the reader to challenge and to decenter a European self-understanding of insularity and a European cosmopolitanism ignorant of its imperial and colonial roots.