European Cultural Heritage Theatre
The art form of theatre has continuously shaped the European cultural sphere across various historical contexts. The networks within the international theatre world afforded those involved a high degree of mobility; however, they also resulted from a constant exchange of plays, which were adapted to local circumstances depending on the respective political and institutional context. Furthermore, those active within theatre networks often worked across different genres and forms, and are therefore difficult to categorise within the modern understanding of professionalisation. The common practice of combining different genres within a single theatre evening to create a cross-genre, yet ephemeral, performance event also presents a methodological challenge that requires interdisciplinary synergies. Theatre is an essential component of Europe’s intangible cultural heritage; however, it is also preserved in memory institutions as a vast array of diverse source material, and its social and aesthetic complexity can only be analytically examined within broader historical contexts—among other things—using digital methods. The conference will discuss the issues of ephemerality and hybridity in the European cultural heritage of theatre and its associated art forms from various disciplinary perspectives (including literary and theatre studies, musicology, dance studies, history and the digital humanities). In line with the synergy between art and media that characterises theatre practice, the conference aims to focus on a methodologically synergistic approach and to highlight gaps in the study of European cultural heritage.
Presentations by
- Katrin Dennerlein (University of Würzburg)
- Laura Gianvittorio-Ungar (University of Graz)
- Klaus Illmayer (Austrian Academy of Sciences)
- Susanne Korbel (University of Graz)
- Christian Neuhuber (University of Graz)
- Christian Kämpf (SLUB Dresden)
- Véronique Braquet, Jakob Leitner, Diana Korol und Ingeborg Zechner (University of Graz)