WOMENTHEATRENET - Women'sTransnationalTheatreNetworks,1789-1914

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What would a history of 19th-century Western theatre look like if the work of women were placed at its centre? WOMENTHEATRENET poses this fundamental question to effect a paradigm shift in the historiography of mainstream western theatre in the long 19th century. The current state of knowledge suggests that women have always been active in the theatre, but their work has been obscured by gendered and classed hierarchies of aesthetic value, and entrenched practices of documentation. The agency and innovation of women's work is minimised, and women's cultural networks regarded as subordinate to networks of powerful male practitioners. This state of the art is exacerbated by the dominance of national theatre histories and élite institutions in most theatre historiography. WOMENTHEATRENET will make women's theatre work visible through a series of exemplary case studies of the interlinked theatrical cultures of Britain, Ireland, Australia and India, which will investigate and make visible transnational female-centred networks of creative and intellectual exchange. These case studies will be complemented by a study of women's exchanges and networks in Britain and France. The research team, together with a scholarly network of invited Visiting Fellows, will analyse the conditions of women's theatre work as a form of cultural citizenship, within practices of exchange, circulation, translation, and adaptation, in mainstream commercial theatre and 'paratheatrical' practices. WOMENTHEATRENET will examine archival data of women's theatre work in a) the popular and mainstream theatre (including translation and adaptation); b) paratheatrical work (performances outside established theatre spaces); and c) writing for and about the theatre, in the transnational and imperial networks of the 19th century. The research will be disseminated through book-length publications, articles, a research through practice programme, and international scholarly meetings.