Step into a world where the stage was set for revolutionary change and discover how women played a key role in shaping global popular culture.
Making Theatrical Empires:
Nineteenth Century Women
Presented by Professor Kate Newey
Popular theatre in western Europe at the start of the nineteenth century changed the world. It was out of the turmoil of the French Revolution, and the huge expansion of industrialising London, that our contemporary popular culture emerged. Melodramas of the ‘illegitimate’ theatres in London, and the theatres of the boulevards – what Pixérécourt called his ‘plays for those who cannot read’ – are the foundation of a global popular culture which works on strong feeling, a driving and sometimes violent sense of right and wrong, and a desire for visible justice. Think of the popular television formats of soap opera, reality television, crime drama and fiction, Hollywood and Bollywood romcoms – these genres have melodrama and the melodramatic at their centre. This seems so normal now, that we don’t realise just what a radical innovation it was. For the last thirty years, theatre historians have undertaken a scholarly revision of this period, rejecting earlier judgements of this cultural revolution as ‘trash,’ and coming to recognise its importance, both in the nineteenth century and now.
However, this revision has tended to focus on national theatre histories, and the work of men within them. Even the revisionist histories of this period do not tell the full story. They position the work of men as the default history of the nineteenth century theatre, and tend to render the work of women invisible. My paper will ask: What would a history of this global movement in theatre of the nineteenth century look like if the work of women were placed at its centre? Specifically, I am interested in how women made theatrical empires, in the transnational exchanges of the British Empire.
Event Details
Event Date: Tuesday 27 August 2024
Event Time: 5.45pm for a 6pm start
Event Location: Avalon Theatre, 172 Sir Fred Schonell Drive, St Lucia (access via Macquarie Street).
Getting there: The Avalon is a 15-20 minute walk from UQ's St Lucia Campus, or accessible via public transport. You can use the Translink website to find details on public transport options. If you catch the ferry, the Guyatt Park terminal is directly opposite the theatre. Please note there is no on-site parking, and only very limited street parking available.
RSVP: Friday 23 August 2024
About the Presenter
Kate Newey is Professor of Theatre History at the University of Exeter. Her work focuses on women’s writing and nineteenth century British popular theatre. Her publications include a co-edited collection of essays, Politics, Performance and Popular Culture (Manchester UP, 2016), and the monographs Women’s Theatre Writing in Victorian Britain (Palgrave, 2005), and John Ruskin and the Victorian Theatre co-authored with cultural historian, Jeffrey Richards (Palgrave, 2010). Kate has published widely on nineteenth century theatre and popular culture, and led several Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded projects. From 2024, Kate is leading a large-scale project funded by the European Research Council, ‘Women’s Transnational Theatre Networks, 1789-1914.’ She has held research Fellowships at Harvard University, the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC, and the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Centre, University of Texas (Austin).
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Image: Pierre-Louis Pierson (French, 1822–1913). La Frayeur, 1861–64. Salted paper print with applied color; Image: 22 7/16 x 17 5/16 in. (57 x 44 cm), Mat: 29 1/2 x 23 5/16 in. (75 x 59.2 cm). The Metropolitan Museum or Art, New York, Purchase, The Camille M. Lownds Fund, Joyce F. Menschel Gift, Louis V. Bell and 2012 Benefit Funds, and C. Jay Moorhead Foundation Gift, 2015