Touring Performance and Global Exchange 1850-1960 Making Tracks

''This highly readable and informative collection of essays brings together an outstanding international group of (largely) female scholars in an exploration of global theatrical touring 1850-1960. There is a strong Australasian focus to the volume, although examples and outcomes of transatlantic touring are also considered. An emphasis on female performers and managers enables contributors to provide fresh and more nuanced histories of the types of cultural exchange made possible by touring, challenging the supremacy of earlier male-dominated narratives. This is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the history of theatrical touring, exploring hitherto uncharted territory and offering new insights into the significance of the journeys, experiences and performances recounted by its authors.'' Jim Davis, Professor of Theatre Studies, University of Warwick

''Celebrity does you no good when you're choked by a dusty road or thrown about by a tempestuous sea: neither natural nor economic disasters spare the famous. As this fresh collection of essays demonstrates, the economic perspective of theatrical arts as global commodities trafficked between continents intrinsically depends upon talented and persevering individuals to take drama, comedy, opera. circus, dance, and storytelling to metropoles as well as hinterlands. Emphasizing the travel vectors in British (and formerly British) settler-colonies for women (Indigenous, white, and Black diasporic), children, and the impresarios who promoted them, this collection brings the lived reality of travel and survival vividly to the fore.'' Tracy C. Davis, Professor of Theatre, English, and Performance Studies, Northwestern University