New book out: C. Balme (ed.) “Performing the Cold War in the Postcolonial World”

This volume explores how the Cultural Cold War played out in Africa and Asia in the context of decolonization. Both the United States and the Soviet Union as well as East European states undertook significant efforts to influence cultural life in the newly independent, postcolonial world.

The different forms of influence are the subject of this book. The contributions are grouped around four topic headings. „Networks and Institutions“ looks at the various ways Western-style theatre became institutionalized in the decolonial world, especially Africa. „Cultural Diplomacy“ focuses on the activities of the Soviet Union in India in the late 1950s and 1960s in the very different arenas of book publishing and the circus. „Artists and Agency“ explores how West African filmmakers (Ousmane Sembène and Abderrahmane Sissako) and European authors (Brecht and Ibsen) were harnessed for different kinds of Cold War strategies. Finally, „Cultures of Things“ investigates how everyday objects such as books and iconic theatre buildings became suffused with affect, nostalgia, and ideology.

This book will be of interest for students of the Cold War, postcolonial studies, theatre, film, and literature.

Chapters 1, 4, 8, and 11 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at https://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

„The Rockefeller Connection: Visualizing theatrical networks in the Cultural Cold War“, in Comparatio, Vol. 12, 2, 2020, p. 127-144.

In this co-authored article, Christopher Balme and Nic Leonhardt (both ERC project Developing Theatre at LMU Munich) examine how the Rockefeller Foundation funded theatrical initiatives in developing countries: the Philippines and Nigeria. Using visualization software, in this case the open source application Gephi, the authors demonstrate how personal and institutional networks underpinned the cultural, specifically, theatrical development strategy of the foundation. The paper discusses the principles underpinning historical network analysis and analyzes two case studies, Severino Montano’s Arena Theatre in Manila, and the establishment of a School of Drama at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

• This article has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 694559 – DevelopingTheatre)

Nic Leonhard spoke to Viviana Jacob about her project. Click on the button below to read the interview.

A one-day online workshop organized by Judith Rottenburg and Lisa Skwirblies
November 13th, 2020

From the 16^th to 20^th March 2020, the ERC funded project Developing Theatre: Building Expert Networks for Theatre in Emerging Countries after 1945 at LMU Munich will be organizing an international conference in collaboration with Tshwane University of Technology in Pretoria, South Africa on the topic Theatre for Development (TfD): Historical and Institutional Perspectives.

Conference organized by Prof. Dr. Christopher Balme (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) und Dr. Gautam Chakrabarti (Freie Universität Berlin).

Culture was one of the key areas in which the multifaceted geopolitical struggle was played out between the 1950s and 1980s. There is a need – 25-plus years after the end of the Cold War – to collect experiences of and responses to questions regarding the formation of expert networks, philanthropic and/or governmental interventions, and peopleto- people contacts in and across various Afro-Asian and Euro-American countries.

Participants: Ewa Bérard (CNRS-ENS Paris), Milena Dragićević Šešić (University of Arts, Belgrade), Gesine Drews-Sylla (Prag/ Tübingen), Severyan Dyakonov (IHEID Genf), Viviana Iacob (Bukarest), Sophie Lange (HU Berlin), Christian Langer (FU Berlin), Gideon Ime Morison (LMU), Christopher J. Lee (Lafayette), Alexandre Loktionov (Cambridge), Vita Matiss (Riga Graduate School of Law), Danny Orbach (Hebrew University), Inderjeet Parmar (City, University of London), Monica Popescu (McGill University), Sudha Rajagopalan (Amsterdam), Giles P. Scott-Smith (Leiden), Carolien Stolte (Leiden), Rebecca Sturm (Munich), Tal Zalmanovich (Haifa).

Nic Leonhardt, Director of the Centre of GTH, has been invited as a keynote speaker of the conference Indigenous Languages, Traditional Music and Dance within an Intercultural Performance/ Langues autochtones, musiques et danses traditionelles au sein de performances interculturelles.

Her talk “Mediating Cultural Meanders: Dance, Narration, Music” will discuss the circulation of intangible cultural phenomena using the examples of Thai choreographer Pichet Klunchun and his performance “Nijinsky Siam” as well as the figure and stories of Mullah/Hodja Nasreddin.

The conference Indigenous Languages, Traditional Music and Dance within an Intercultural Performance/ Langues autochtones, musiques et danses traditionelles au sein de performances interculturelles takes place from 25 to 28 of Juli in Gannat (Auvergne, France). The conference, organized by Vikrant Kishore (Australia) and Etienne Rougier (France) takes place along with the Festival des Cultures du Monde, which is a part of UNESCO‘s intangible cultural heritage. Gannat is famous for the festival that takes place every summer since 1974. The conference will be the first of its time.

Far-Flung | Centre-Staged: Severino Montano’s Arena and the ‘National Theatre’ in Manila in the 1950s and 1960

In her talk “Far-Flung | Centre-Staged: Severino Montano’s Arena and the ‘National Theatre’ in Manila in the 1950s and 1960”,  Nic Leonhardt will elaborate on Montano’s establishment of an Arena Theatre in Manila and rural areas in the Philippines in the 1950s and 1960s, sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation. Severino Montano (1915–1980) was an influential playwright and director. Born in Manila, he received his education in drama and economy primarily in Great Britain and the United States. After 12 years of studying and working abroad, he returned to Manila in order to build up the Arena Theatre and establish drama education in the Philippines.

The Talk will take place on 09.07.2019 in Shanghai Theatre Academy, Shanghai, China, 9. Juli 2019 at 16:00 in room 209.