This article explores the role of theatre in the strategies of cultural diplomacy that developed in Italy between the last years of the liberal state (1919–22) and the rise of Benito Mussolini. It covers the period until 1927, when the establishment of the Istituti Italiani di Cultura (Italian Cultural Institutes) and the approval of a new regulatory framework for migration marked a new era for fascist soft-power ambitions. The article draws upon unpublished sources of the Historical Diplomatic Archive of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and offers a new perspective on the use of theatre and the performing arts as a tool for cultural diplomacy through the testimony of such flagship authors as Luigi Pirandello, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Alfredo Casella, and Pietro Mascagni. Matteo Paoletti is a Senior Assistant Professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Bologna and part of the research project ‘Historia y patrimonio de la Argentina moderna’ with the Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Buenos Aires. He was a Cultural Attaché at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and oversaw the 2003 Convention on Intangible Cultural Heritage for the Italian National Commission for UNESCO. His recent publications include ‘A Huge Revolution of Theatrical Commerce’: Walter Mocchi and the Italian Musical Theatre Business in South America (Cambridge University Press, 2020)

This article explores the history of the German theatre in St Petersburg in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a subject forgotten for a hundred years due to historical reasons. Svetlana Melnikova uses cross-cultural research methods, which, as she has discovered, appeared in Russian criticism concerning the arts as early as the nineteenth century. The ideas of Russian scholars turned out to be concordant with modern findings in cross-cultural dialogue and comparative research methods, because the process of establishing Russian culture was influenced by earlier cultures in a variety of ways. The German diaspora in the capital of the Russian Empire at the turn of the nineteenth century, and the artistic qualities of the German theatre (the activities of its managers, the company, the repertoire, theatre buildings, as well as the target audience) described in this article, are here presented as the expressive elements of intercultural communication that provide theatre history with a sense of actuality. The author introduces unique archive materials from the Russian State Historical Archive, as well as from publications preserved in Russia-focused departments of major Russian and German libraries. Examining these materials, she reconstructs the history of this rare phenomenon in the context of the mutual influence between German and Russian theatres. Svetlana Melnikova is Professor of Art at the St Petersburg State University of Film and Television. She is the author of six books, including Kotzebue in Russia (2005), and ninety-six articles on the history, theory, and practice of theatre in Russian and German.

German film artist Jan Speckenbach ingeniously contributed to the development of live video on the stage, and this discussion focuses on his education, as well his as experimental collaborations with director Frank Castorf at the Volksbühne Berlin, starting in 2000. Speckenbach’s background in film and media studies facilitated his explorations of uncharted territory in the theatre, going from a set of fixed cameras on the stage to the use of a camera crew with live-editing for augmented images as part of the whole directing concept and process. His first-hand insights into how actors have interacted with this new technology and how filmmaking can be an integral part of the theatre indicate clearly that filmmaking has played an invaluable role in recent theatre history. Speckenbach here also speaks of his collaborations with other directors, notably Sebastian Hartmann and René Pollesch, and about the future perspectives of this technology, which has changed the theatre altogether.

Jan Speckenbach studied art history, philosophy, and media in Karlsruhe, Munich, and Paris during the 1990s. At the beginning of the new millennium he participated in the development of video theatre with Frank Castorf and, now a successful filmmaker, he also continues to work in the theatre. His short film Gestern in Eden [Yesterday in Eden] premiered at Cannes in 2008, while the full-length feature film Die Vermissten [The Missing] was shown at the 2012 Berlinale and Freiheit [Freedom] at the 2017 film competition at Locarno. In 2020 he directed the live-stream of Der Zauberberg [The Magic Mountain, after Thomas Mann’s novel] at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (premiered online in November 2019), which was subsequently invited to the Berlin Theatertreffen. Thomas Irmer is the editor-in-chief of the Berlin-based monthly Theater der Zeit. He has co-edited two books on the work of Frank Castorf – Zehn Jahre Volksbühne Intendanz Frank Castorf (2003) and Castorf (2016). During the last forty years he has authored, among other significant writings, numerous analytical articles and interviews on Castorf’s creative output.

The story of Medea’s murder of her own children to gain revenge against their faithless father has been tackled from many angles by playwrights and directors from Euripides’ time to the present. In recent years, due to highly sensationalized, real-life cases of mothers murdering their children, it has become fodder for sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and feminists. Many recent productions (both original plays and directorial approaches to Euripides’ original) have avoided tackling the difficult questions raised by Euripides’ ending, which demands an answer to the following question: how could the gods send down a dragon-drawn chariot to rescue a woman who murdered her own children? Many contemporary authors and directors prefer to eliminate Euripides’ ending in order to focus on more immediate issues, such as the psychological or social damage resulting from patriarchy, colonialism, and misogyny. After considering several such productions, this article analyzes three plays that directly tackle Euripides’ troubling ending: two original scripts, by Heiner Müller and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei respectively; and a production of Euripides’ original by Japanese director Miyagi Satoshi. Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is Professor Emerita of Theatre at UCLA. An expert on postwar Japanese and cross-cultural performance, she is also a translator, director, and playwright. The author of Unspeakable Acts: The Avant-Garde Theatre of Terayama Shūji and Postwar Japan (University of Hawaii Press, 2005) and co-author of Theatre Histories: An Introduction (third edition, Routledge, 2016), she has published over a hundred articles, chapters, and reviews. She is an Associate Editor of Asian Theatre Journal and a Fellow of the College of Fellows of the American Theatre.

Although lasting only two and a half years, Edward Gordon Craig’s engagement with the Purcell Operatic Society was his most consistent and productive period of work on the stage. This article re-examines this time during Craig’s life in order to ascertain why he saw it to be the zenith of his career. In particular, it analyzes his work with the amateur group to argue that it was foundational in the development of his approach to theatre-making and, further, helped him to introduce the entity of theatre director to Britain and what the role of such a person could be. By examining this material in relation to wider contextual factors, the article also shows how the group offered audiences an alternative to the dominant ‘star’ system of the early 1900s. The article thus indicates why Craig scholarship needs to place the Purcell Operatic Society at the centre of any of its discussions. Philippa Burt is a lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her recent publications include the chapter ‘American Invasions’ in The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre of the First World War (forthcoming, September 2022), as well as articles on Harley Granville Barker and Joan Littlewood in New Theatre Quarterly and Theatre, Dance, and Performer Training.

In the interwar period, amateur drama was actively promoted as a means to create or repair, sustain and develop community consciousness in English villages. In this article, Mick Wallis maps such promotion across various fields of practice at their intersection with the village drama ‘movement’ as a field itself. These include gentry patronage, post-war and rural reconstruction, adult education, and women’s self-advancement. He also charts the emergence of interwar village drama from its precursors since 1900, and the emergence from it of the system of local government Drama Advisers that persisted until the 1990s. Time and again, drama is presented as a vital tool in the improvement of the lives of individuals, the development of national citizens, and the restoration and celebration of local communities. Finally, he suggests the important insights that this work can offer future researchers. Mick Wallis is Professor Emeritus of Performance and Culture at the University of Leeds.

This article explores the role of the traditional Pang Lhabsol festival of Sikkim in India as a medium for political ascendancy and influence in the region – a phenomenon that has continued, albeit with different political inflections, from its founding days until the present. Since its emergence as an indigenous practice in the thirteenth century, it has consistently transformed according to each juncture of political realignment in the region. After 1642, the festival was redesigned to resonate with the religion and ideology of the ruling Namgyal dynasty, playing out negotiations between mainstream Buddhism and the animistic Bon religion. While the inclusion of the Pangtoed Chham dance performance in the ritualistic itinerary of Pang Lhabsol had very significantly reinforced the role of the king as the protector of the people and their faith, the festival has been considerably overshadowed by the inclusion of new elements that resonate with the secular narrative of India after 1975. The article identifies the significance of each of these new elements, drawing as well on audience research undertaken through in-depth interviews. Arkaprava Chattopadhyay is an Assistant Professor at the Shri Ramasamy Memorial University in Sikkim, as well as a doctoral candidate at the Central University of Sikkim.