Theatre in Market Economies

Explores theatre's relationship with the market economy since the 1990s, from the Third Way to the age of austerity.

Michael McKinnie (Author)

9781107000391, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 4 February 2021

225 pages
23.4 x 15.8 x 1.7 cm, 0.452 kg

Theatre in Market Economies explores the complex relationship between theatre and the market economy since the 1990s. Bringing together research from the arts and social sciences, the book proposes that theatre has increasingly taken up the mission of the 'mixed economy' by seeking to combine economic efficiency with social security while promoting liberal democracy. McKinnie situates this analysis within a wider context, in which the welfare state's tools have been used to regulate, ever more closely, the lives of citizens rather than the operations of markets. In the process, the book invites us to think in new ways about longstanding economic and political problems in and through the theatre: the nature of industry, productivity, citizenship, security and economic confidence. Theatre in Market Economies depicts a theatre that is not only a familiar cultural institution but is, in unexpected and often ambiguous ways, an exemplary political-economic one as well.

Introduction: Show Business
1. Industry
2. Productivity
3. Citizenship
4. Security
5. Confidence
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Street theatre [ASZD], Theatre direction & production [ANF], Theatre studies [AN]