ABSTRACT
Although most assessments of theatre are preoccupied with aesthetics and, increasingly, the political implications of aesthetic choices, we have found it necessary to broaden our perspective from the creation of performance to its distribution in a global context. The distribution of theatre is subject to the economic rules that apply to any commodity, particularly the laws of
international economic exchange in a globalised world. While many critics do recognise that the available resources to produce new theatre determine the type and scale of theatre produced, and many performers involved in the making of theatre necessarily heed the dual roles of production and distribution, few extend that economic argument to its social relations. The practicalities of packaging and marketing theatre can profoundly alter the potentially delicate collaborative work accomplished in the rehearsal room. This chapter focuses on interculturalism’s markets and the difficulties a number of women performers have faced in their attempts to engage with those markets, which have traditionally been controlled by men. Inevitably, then, a question of agency arises when women performers sell their art. The question becomes particularly urgent when the explicit female body – or the body that consciously and conspicuously displays itself in performance as female – enters the market. The explicit body in performance disrupts accepted behaviour models for women, both on and off the stage.
