Theatre Research International

Governing the theatrical event: policy, power, and the democratization of performance

This special issue advances an innovative rethinking of the Theatrical Event, as defined by the IFTR’s Theatrical Event Working Group. The issue proposes to approach the Theatrical Event as a site of governance, as a nexus where cultural policy, institutional power, and performative practice converge. Rather than treating theatre as an autonomous aesthetic domain, this issue foregrounds the regulatory, political, and institutional forces that actively shape its conditions of possibility.

Drawing on and extending the Theatrical Event framework, the issue proposes a conceptual shift: from analysing what theatre is, to examining how theatre is governed, enabled, constrained, and transformed. In this sense, we invite contributors to consider theatre not only as an artistic form, but as a field structured by regimes of value, access, and legitimacy.

This intervention resonates with broader theoretical debates in the humanities and social sciences. Concepts such as Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality, Chantal Mouffe’s idea of agonism, Jacques Rancière’s conception of the emancipated spectator, and Sara Ahmed’s work on institutions, diversity, and complaint, invite us to understand cultural production as embedded in systems of regulation and power.  Such concepts further illuminate how structures of inclusion and exclusion are reproduced and contested through everyday practices. These perspectives open up new avenues for theatre and performance studies, allowing us to rethink the Theatrical Event as shaped by both visible and invisible infrastructures of governance.

In the current times of global crisis and political turbulence, we are witnessing increasing institutional interference in the arts through the enforcement of mechanisms of control and censorship, combined with phenomena such as rising extremism, trolling, and market pressures.  In this troubling context, it is vital to explore the wide-ranging means used by artists in different parts of the world to reclaim agency, artistic liberty, autonomy and inclusion, using strategies such as negotiation, cooperation, resistance or subversion.

Of special interest in this context are two aspects of the “Diamond Model.” The model was first introduced by Willmar Sauter (2004: 3-14) as part of the IFTR's Theatrical Event Working Group’s activity and has served as the thru’ line for all the group's subsequent publications, including Festivalising! (2007), Playing Culture (2014), Theatre Scandals (2020) and the forthcoming Taking Centre Stage: Theatre for Young Audiences, Theatre with Students and Amateur Theatre (2026). Most relevant to this call are the parameters of Cultural Context, examined through cultural policy, state regulation, and legal frameworks which promote or restrict cultural freedom, and Contextual Theatricality, particularly in relation to the democratization or disempowerment of performing arts institutions and the impact on the Theatrical Event as a whole. These dimensions are not merely background conditions; they are constitutive of theatrical practice, influencing what is created, who participates, and how meaning is produced and received.

At a time when performing arts institutions are undergoing profound transformations driven by demands for accessibility, inclusion, accountability, and public engagement, this special issue asks how such processes reshape theatre at both structural and experiential levels. How do policy and regulation intervene in artistic creation? How do institutional reforms reconfigure relations between artists, audiences, and publics? What new forms of participation and exclusion emerge under the banner of democratization? And how might these dynamics call for new methodological approaches to the study of theatre?

By addressing these questions, the issue positions itself at the forefront of contemporary debates in theatre and performance studies, offering a theoretically grounded and methodologically innovative contribution to the field.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

• Cultural policy and the governance of theatrical production
• State regulation, legal frameworks, mechanisms of control and censorship in performance
• Institutional power and the organisation of performing arts systems
• Democratisation processes and their impact on theatre institutions
• Agency, access, inclusion, and the politics of participation
• Funding structures and their influence on artistic practice
• Relations between artists, institutions, and publics
• Theatrical events as sites of negotiation between policy and practice
• Methodological approaches to studying theatre through policy and governance
• Cultural exchanges, cross-border initiatives and cultural diplomacy as strategies of democratisation
• Artistic negotiation in times of crisis
• Case studies framed through Cultural Context and Contextual Theatricality

References

Ahmed, Sara. 2012. On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. Durham: Duke University Press.

Ahmed, Sara. 2021. Complaint! Durham: Duke University Press.

Cohen, Keren, Vicki Ann Cremona, Peter Eversmann, Rikard Hoogland, Smadar Mor, eds. 2026 (forthcoming). Taking Centre Stage: Theatre for Young Audiences, Theatre with Students and Amateur Theatre. Leiden/Boston: Brill.

Cremona, Vicki Ann, Peter Eversmann, Bess Rowen, Anneli Saro, Henri Schoenmakers, eds. 2020. Theatre Scandals: Social Dynamics of Turbulent Theatrical Events. Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi.

Cremona, Vicki Ann, Rikard Hoogland, Gay Morris, Willmar Sauter, eds. 2014. Playing Culture. Conventions and Extensions of Performance, edited by Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Foucault, Michel. 1991. "Governmentality." In The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Edited by Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, 87–104. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

_____. 2008. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979. Edited by Michel Senellart. Translated by Graham Burchell. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Hauptfleisch, Temple, Shulamith Lev-aladgem, Jacqueline Martin, Willmar Sauter and Henri Schoenmakers, eds. 2007. Festivalising! Theatrical Events, Politics and Culture. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Mouffe, Chantal. 2013.  Hegemony, Radical Democracy, and the Political. Edited by James Martin. Abingdon: Routledge.

_____. 2018. "Art and Democracy: Art as an Agnostic Intervention in Public Space", Open 14: 6-15.

Rancière, Jacques. 2009. The Emancipated Spectator. Translated by Gregory Eliot. London and New York: Verso.

_____. 2010. Dissensus. On Politics and Aesthetics. Edited and translated by Steven Corcoran. London and New York: Intellect.

Sauter, Willmar. 2004. “Introducing the Theatrical Event”. In Theatrical Events: Borders, Dynamics, Frames, edited by Vicki Ann Cremona, Peter Eversmann, Hans van Maanen, Willmar Sauter and John Tulloch, 3-14. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.