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Editorial: Beyond the Playhouse: Travelling Theatre in the Long Nineteenth Century

The long nineteenth century was the era of theatre building. No other period saw the construction of more playhouses, many of which are still in use today. Yet, this is only half the story, as the nineteenth century was also a highpoint for travelling theatres, goaded on by expanding imperial and other trade networks. Players ably navigated the seas and took overland routes to distant locales; mobile performances ensured a steady circulation through various established theatrical circuits along which performers could gain a reputation, earn extra shekels in their pockets and also ‘see the world.’ At the same time, this theatre left few remains: it was always on the go and lacked stable institutional centres. How do we write the histories of such theatre? Rather than stable theatre, this special issue foregrounds the work of travelling theatre in the nineteenth century. We approach the travelling theatre by highlighting a diverse array of themes, methodologies, and approaches to players, companies, and other agents during an era that gave rise to many of our most stalwart, cherished institutions, traditions, and even academic disciplines. Recent interest, across the humanistic disciplines, has carefully addressed the rate of globalisation in the nineteenth century, often framed under disciplinary subdivisions such as ‘global history’, ‘world literature’, and ‘global theatre history’. Sometimes, these disciplinary enclosures hide some startling similarities. This volume seeks to add to this broad discourse within the humanities by expanding the terrain of travelling theatre – also a global phenomenon for the nineteenth century, if a neglected one. Often, theatre histories of the ‘Age of Empire’ have concentrated on representation of the colonised on the metropolitan stage – or theatres linked to the metropolitan centre through paradigms of colonial modernity. We do not seek to overturn or undermine this work: our volume is indebted to