Theatre and Tourism

(Paperback)

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How does tourism impact theatre How do theatrical ways of seeing, knowing, and acting shape tourism How do economic and political processes like colonization or neoliberalization influence them both And what is the future of these twinned global leisure industries Theatre and tourism are kindred practices. Both engage their patrons in experiences of temporary escape to distant places, times, or different lives. Both stage expressive, communicative, embodied encounters in real time and space. Tourism and theatre are both sites of public pedagogy, cultural diplomacy, and cosmopolitan consciousness, promising pleasure and knowledge from the spectacle of others and elsewheres. This concise study explores the historical and contemporary entanglement of theatre and tourism, and speculates about the future as emerging technologies reshape both industries, offering new experiences of presence, embodiment, and mobility.

Author Bio

Margaret Werry is Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota, in the Department of Theatre Arts and Dance. She is an interdisciplinary scholar trained in Performance Studies (PhD Northwestern University, 2001), who works across the fields of Theatre, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Cultural History. Her forthcoming book, The Tourist State: Performing Leisure, Liberalism, and the Racial Imagination examines the relationship between tourism, performance, indigenous politics, and liberal state-making, looking at cultural policy and tourism practice in the South Pacific at the turn of the 20th century, and the turn of the 21st. She has published on this topic and on otherscritical and experimental pedagogy, spatial theory, intercultural performance, photographic criticism, multi-media performance, cinema, museology, and cultural policyin a range of US and international journals. She is also an actor, dramaturge, and performance artist and has worked with Chicago companies Lookinglass Theatre and Naked Eye.