Artistic Diplomacy: On Civic Engagement and Transnational Theatre

Contemporary European theatre builds on many traditions, yet two seem particularly at odds: wandering theatre troupes and publicly funded municipal theatre institutions. While the Italian commedia dell’arte, the French théâtre de la foire or the German Wandertruppen frequently appear as marginalised, itinerant phenomena in theatre histories, the public city, state or national theatres of these three countries embody aristocratic patronage, bourgeois audiences and artistic continuity. This contrast has not always and everywhere been as crass, however. While nineteenth-century Germany did indeed see the gradual erosion of wandering troupes, a few well-known European theatre artists of the twentieth century have kept up a tradition that brings together civic engagement, public patronage and transnational theatre. This chapter introduces a committed cosmopolitan theatre maker, a self-styled ‘bastard-child’ of different critical, nomadic, European traditions and his theatre’s international practice: Roberto Ciulli and the Theater an der Ruhr in the German post-industrial Ruhr valley.