ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the Cold War had a significant impact on transnational and institutional perspectives of theatre, broadly understood, as American philanthropy and Eastern European countries both energetically supported the emergence of professional theatre in the developing world. At the same time, the newly decolonised countries recognised the theatricality of their autochthonous performance traditions. This led in turn to an expanded understanding of theatre and a move towards concepts of performance. A key institutional framework can be found in the rise of an internationalist “theatrical epistemic community” consisting of individuals and organisations such as the International Theatre Institute (ITI) and International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR), which were imbued with a modernist understanding of theatre. It argues that international performing arts festivals were important nodes of dissemination of the modernisation ideology, which became increasingly politicised, and it discusses three agents of theatre in the Global South (Konstantin Stanislavsky, Bertolt Brecht, and Augusto Boal). Each was influential in different ways: for acting, for playwriting, and (in the case of Boal) for a political popular theatre that transformed into an apolitical Theatre for Development.
