The development of the modern European city was intertwined with the rise of both state-sponsored and independent theatre institutions. But what is the role of theatre in the twenty-first-century city? THEAGENT argues that theatre is key to understanding the cultural politics of contemporary urban transformation. In turn, the global city and its new productive economies are key to understanding contemporary theatre.
THEAGENT will develop these claims by focusing on theatre writ large, including theatre-going as a practice of urban subject formation, the aesthetic medium as a space for representing the urban, and the theatre itself as an institution. Combining ethnographic and archival research, the project will explore how theatre has shaped (and been shaped by) gentrification in five European metropoles: Istanbul, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, and London.