Projects

Christopher Balmes subproject has the twin aim of 1) elaborating theoretically the concept of a theatrical epistemic community and 2) tracing historically its consolidation and differentiation in the pre- und post-WWII period. more

Since its foundation in 1913, the Rockefeller Foundation has played an eminent in role in supporting institutions and organizations. In this sub-project, theatre and media historian Nic Leonhardt investigates funding policies and activities of both the Rockefeller and Ford Foundation in the realms of culture and theatre. more

Rashna Nicholson's sub-project traces the impact of foreign funding on theatre with additional examples from the visual arts and music in the Occupied Palestinian Territories from 1983 to the present day. more

Gautam Chakrabarti's sub-project aims to (1) focus on various Cold-War-era policies and institutions, mainly in the USSR and the GDR, seeking to train and influence budding theatre artists from postcolonial India; and (2) identify and investigate archives and other repositories of theatrical epistemic knowledge in India, in the 1950's and 1980's. more

These two sub-projects investigate arts festivals that took place on the African continent in the 1960s and 1970s – the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar (1966), the Pan-African Cultural Festival in Algiers (1969), the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture in Lagos (1977), as well as the Pan-African Historical Theatre Project, a festival held in Ghana every two years since 1992. They aim to lay open ways in which the cosmopolitan theatrical organizational field, the corresponding epistemic community and the modes of funding – public funds, philanthropy and private donors – shape the artistic work. They ask about the relationship between the event character of those festivals and long-term institutional developments of the performing arts. more

The ITI was founded in 1948 by ‘theatre experts’ to promote ‘international exchange of knowledge and practice in theatre arts’ and therefore provided regular support for ‘third world’ theatre. This project investigates how the ITI coordinated the movement of theatrical expertise in the Cold War era. more

The subproject focuses on historicizing the Theatre for Development (TfD) phenomenon. It will examine the histories, networks and theories that undergirds the genre. Key among its aim is to investigate the epistemic networks, philanthropy and the development agenda that propelled its institutionalization within and outside higher education institutions globally and particularly Africa. more