This thesis examines why non-profit theatres in Britain have become increasingly involved in educational work since the 1990s, from an historical and institutional perspective. With an assumption that this sector-wide organisational change has been caused by a shift in institutional environments of the arts sector, the thesis proposes an institutional framework, where three different institutional logics - artworld, market and policy - coexist and tend to dominate the institutional context at different times. Using this theoretical framework, the thesis demonstrates that arts policy and management during the post-war period were shaped by the artworld logic. However, the two decades since 1979 have seen the environments become complicated because the institutional logics of the market and policy gained currency. Criticising the limitation of marketisation theory that has so far dominated most analyses of recent cultural policy, the thesis sheds light on the fact that active intervention by the state has replaced the arm’s length principle and the arts - especially arts education and participatory arts activities - are increasingly used for explicit social policy objectives. This phenomenon is defined as ‘politicisation’ of the arts. The rapid growth of educational work since the 1990s is conceptualised as an organisational adaptation of theatres to such environments. The case study of four English theatres demonstrates that although the theatres have expanded education under unprecedented political pressure, they also try to implicitly resist external intervention and to maximise autonomy. This implies that politicisation is a complicated process of institutional change: whilst new rules, norms and expectations have been developed under the policy logic, the sector’s romantic view of the arts has been reformulated and old ways of working have persisted. Thus, the recent institutional change in the non-profit arts sector is better understood as an integration of different institutional logics, not as colonisation of the arts world by the market or politics. In these dynamics environments, the non-profit theatre can reinvent itself as a creative educator and social impact generator without fundamental transformation in its artistic and management sides.

The Guénégaud theatre was in operation in Paris from 1673 to 1680 - from shortly after Molière's death to the foundation of the Comedie-Frangaise. Although the first home of both the Paris Opera and the Comedie-Frangaise, the Guénégaud has attracted little attention, and no previous study has been devoted entirely to it, despite the fact that the Guénégaud account books are preserved in the Archives of the Comedie-Francaise. These have provided a wealth of information on the day-to-day running of a seventeenth-century French theatre and the preparation of productions. What is more, a study of the records of ticket sales they contain has been found to make possible not only an analysis of the tastes and, to a certain extent, the composition of the Guénégaud's audiences, but also a reconstruction of the theatre building itself. In 1673, the Guénégaud company was in a highly vulnerable position. Just seven years later, however, it was so powerful and in possession of a theatre so well-equipped, - that it was the ancient and prestigious Hotel de Bourgogne company that was closed down and its actors transferred to the Guénégaud to form the Comedie-Francaise. This thesis, therefore, further examines how the Guénégaud company succeeded in effecting this reversal in their fortunes. One major contributing factor was the Guénégaud company's series of machine plays by Thomas Corneille and Donneau De Vise. Concentrating on Circe, the first and most successful of these, as a single representative production, this thesis, is also, therefore, a study of the adaptation and final demise of a genre where music was of primary importance in the face of implacable opposition from Lully, desirous of protecting his privilege on the production of operas. Finally, the thesis attempts to show that if there is any justification in the tradition by which the Comedie-Frangaise is known as the 'Maison de Moliere', this is entirely due to the Guénégaud company's success in ensuring their own survival and, in so doing, maintaining and transmitting their inheritance from Moliere's troupe, and that this same survival was in no small part thanks to the machine plays of Thomas Corneille.

My thesis interrogates the complex and indeterminate nature of Taiwanese identity as it is articulated in post- I 980s Taiwanese theatre productions. I argue that Taiwanese identity is negotiated in a 'diasporic space' that has manifestations through cultural hybridity, spatio-temporal disruption and homing in travelling. Initially, I establish the conceptual framework of diasporic space through critical investigations of the sociality of modem diaspora, post-dolonial notions of cultural difference and hybridity (Homi Bhabha) and space-time dynamics as elaborated in Foucault's conception of heterotopias. The subsequent chapters consist of performance analyses and provide dramatic illustrations of these theories as they are imbricated in diasporic space. Subsequently, I examine the appropriation of Beijing Opera aesthetics in a Taiwanese context, and argue that it engenders a hybrid identity by defying the totalising force of Chineseness. I also consider how national space and its attendant essentialist identity is attempted via a sacralised home of homogeneous constitution, thus arguing for the impossibility of identifying a stable national cultural identity due to infracultural differences in the diasporic community of. Taiwan. To fully account for the lived experience of the Taiwanese, I then explore the dialectic force of history that shapes the cultural imaginary of home and identity in ten theatrical productions. I argue that, rather than being bound to a fixed home/land, Taiwanese identity is mediated in the spatio-temporal difference between the homes in the past in China and the present in Taiwan. In addition, I examine the internal conflicts in present-day Taiwan that are unfolded through stories depicting everyday life. The Taiwanese constantly travel in and out of the present locality, and each journey in its own particularity touches upon broader cultural politics of locating home identity. Probing the various manners in which these chosen performances locate Taiwanese identity, I evaluate their achievement in presenting a multiplicity of theatrical possibilities and alternative perspectives of cultural reality that helps envision a 'new' 'diasporic' understanding of homing through travelling, inhabiting shifting moments and movements when/where identity is always being re-configured.

Whilst in recent years the study of nineteenth-century popular theatre and culture has expanded into the music hall, fairgrounds and 'minor' theatres, embracing melodrama and spectacle, the Victorian pantomime has attracted little attention. More especially, the widespread and dynamic productions of the English provincial theatres have been largely excluded in discussions that repeatedly focus on the London stage. My thesis is centred on the Theatres Royal of Nottingham and Birmingham, two towns sited in the English Midlands, but with markedly different population sizes, socioeconomic structures and national status. My argument, however, is not predicated on comparison but rather on siting the pantomimes within the very specific local contexts of each town. The relationship between the pantomime and the town engages with a notion of audience, identifiable through textual and promotional materials. The argument in my thesis moves from an overview of production styles at the two theatres to a specific analysis of the financing and promotion of the pantomime at Nottingham in the mid- 1860s. Using extant financial records, I have established how the pantomime was produced in times of local hardship, and how a production affected by low expenditure and failing revenue was promoted to its potential audiences. The emphases of advertising and the promotional techniques engaged by the theatre managements, together with those of the local newspapers also enable a reassessment of the role of the pantomime author. The traditional understanding of authorship as related to ownership of the text is reconsidered in relation to the role the pantomime author played in the promotion of the production, and his real and construed relationship to the theatre and town for which he was writing. Moreover, the available empirical evidence has served to foreground the pantomime text as an expression of local concerns and political interests that were particular to each town and displayed an acute awareness of issues of regional identity and status.

Between 1951 and 1987 the Russian director Anatolii Efros created seventy four stage productions, thirteen television films, four feature films and four radio plays. His work made a significant contribution to the development of Russian theatre in the twentieth century, but has received no comprehensive study in Russian or English. This thesis provides an overview of his career but concentrates on a central aspect: his response to the Russian classic canon. It analyses in depth seven productions created in Moscow over some fifteen years. These are discussed in the context of his reaction to their performance history and as a reflection both of changing political circumstances and of his own character and development. His response is shown to have evolved from radical, overtly contemporary, iconoclastic re-interpretation towards a greater indebtedness to tradition and in particular to the legacy of Stanislavsky. His productions of Chekhov's The Seagull (1966) and Three Sisters (1967) were daring assertions of artistic independence. They were condemned and banned both as irreverent attacks on the sacrosanct style of the Moscow Art Theatre and for their overfly political implications. In 1975, Gogol's Marriage and Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, though innovative, were less controversial; though they too reflected contemporary concerns, their messages were more muted. Turgenev's A Month in the Country in 1977 marked the beginnings of the change in his approach, and this became increasingly apparent in the 1980s. At the beginning of a period of irrevocable socio-political change, the Soviet theatre was in crisis, and Efros himself had serious problems, prompted in part by criticism of Road (an adaptation of Gogol's Dead Souls) in 1980. His second staging of Three Sisters in 1982 was characterised by a reassessment of his earlier ideas and an increasing concern for historical continuity.

The research described in this thesis is the result of a collaborative project between The University of Nottingham and Roundabout Education at Nottingham Playhouse, funded through an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award, which aimed to explore and begin to overcome the barriers to access to theatre for audiences labelled as having profound and multiple learning disabilities (PMLD). Positioned primarily from the perspective of the unique worlds of five profoundly disabled young people, the thesis begins with an assessment of their access to theatre in the light of disability discrimination legislation particularly Article 31 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1991 - and highlights their disenfranchisement from past and current consultation processes, which perpetuates the lack of theatre appropriate to their needs. An initial examination of current audience reception theory - and current theatrical practice for PMLD audiences - suggests that this 'invisibility' is caused by a complex range of historico-cultural factors. The thesis describes the two practical research phases which I undertook as a key part of this collaborative project in order to address this shortfall. In the first phase, Thumbs Up, a team of specialists from a range of art forms worked alongside young people at a Nottingham School to experiment with the engagement potential of three theatre spectra (silence-sound, darkness-light and stillness-action) to foreground emotional narrative moments. This led to the second phase, White Peacock, in which I created a play using the three spectra to construct emotional narrative and utilised the concepts of inner and outer frames to ensure that those narratives could be experienced by PMLD audiences within a safe ethical framework that kept the distinction between reality and performance distinct at all times. The thesis concludes with a number of foundational principles emerging from the research that will assist theatre-makers wishing to create narrative theatre for PMLD audiences in the future.

This thesis critically examines recent trends in authorship for theatre and performance. In the avant-garde performance of the 1960s and 70s, collaborative creation was often employed as a radical rejection of authorship. As such techniques have become more ubiquitous, not just in experimental theatre but in the mainstream, across art forms, and in the performative culture of the ‘network society,’ the social contours of collaborative processes have become more complex, to the point that ‘collaboration’ can no longer describe these practices. Further, socially-engaged practices often defy boundaries between established art forms and disciplines. I theorise an emergent model of ‘social authorship’ to understand how authors stage the social nature of their creative processes, and trace the socio-aesthetic implications of this trend across wide-ranging case studies that exemplify new hybrid approaches: the new pathways between aesthetic theatre and social practice that emerge from The Mill - City of Dreams, a Bradford-based community theatre project; the meeting of social movement and art project in the NAMES Project AIDS Quilt; the open-sourced and dispersed model of mass co-authorship in PARK(ing) Day; the invitation to co-authorship in playwright Charles Mee’s ‘(re)making project’; and even a brand of social authorship that results in a solo performance, from my own practice as playwright and devising performer. What emerges is that as the aesthetic performs the social and the social rewrites the aesthetic, neither can be thought of independently of the other. Further, meaningful social engagement and the potential for social change are not always where they appear to be. This thesis provides a framework for analysing and evaluating the social aesthetics of these socially authored performances.

This thesis attempts to outline the practical relationship between Irish playwrights and the Abbey Theatre, from the early work of the Irish Literary Theatre in 1899, until the present day. It argues that the Abbey's reputation for being a writer's theatre tends to be contradicted by its distant association with Irish playwrights during the greater part of its history. Only during the early 1980s was there an active attempt to integrate the playwright within the company, creating a vibrant and active community for the development of new writing. Up until the 1980s the Abbey subscribed to the established twentieth-century view that the playwright was a literary writer, outside the creative centre of theatre. The Abbey's changing roles -- from literary theatre, to institutional national theatre and to director's theatre -- distracted the Theatre from acknowledging the valuable contribution individual dramatists could make, ensuring that the playwright remained vulnerable and isolated. The Abbey remained heavily dependent on its own historical inheritance and international reputation, satisfied with a repertoire of predictable classics. The Theatre's approach to playwrights changed in 1978, when Artistic Director Joe Dowling attempted to create what he termed `the home of the living writer'. With assistance from Script Editor Sean McCarthy, Dowling instigated a series of policies which went towards building a coherent writer's theatre within the Abbey, similar to London's Royal Court. Playwrights became members of the company, were assisted with the development of ideas and encouraged to contribute to the rehearsal process. These actions assured experimental playwright development, exemplified by the work of Tom MacIntyre, whose work proved that a playwright could evolve his own artistic identity within an established theatre.

This is the first full-length study of clown training at Gaulier’s school. I take literally Gaulier’s statement, ‘The work of a clown is to make the audience burst out laughing’ (2007: 289). I interpret this to mean that the relationship with the audience plays a defining part in clown practice. Throughout the thesis I consider clowns to have audiences, and argue that the presence of peers in the classroom is a key feature of the learning. I take into account the individual nature of learning, by examining my own experiences learning Clown at the school, and comparing this with the experiences of other writers and a selection of practitioners that have given interviews towards this project. What I call a pedagogy of spectatorship focuses students’ attention towards their classmates, who are audience to everything that takes place in the Clown classroom. Gaulier’s observational skill and charismatic teaching style can enable students to perceive audience laughter and silence as crucial feedback. I demonstrate the audience role in three areas of clown practice: complicit play, the ‘flop’ and the use of the body as ridiculous. I argue that the École Philippe Gaulier provides lessons on the skills necessary to listen to audiences, so that each student can discover the ways in which she can ‘make the audience burst out laughing’.

This thesis explores the relationship between body and site in performance. The research is conducted through the making and examination of a number of the researcher’s own works. Touring and site-based works are examined in relation to specific examples of other contemporary artistic practice. The research is an embodied relationship between theory and practice. Performance works directed by the researcher were created in collaboration with other artists. The process of creating these works is the lived experience of the interaction of the creation of art images and critical theory. These works are then interrogated as part of an ongoing artistic process. This thesis is one element of a tripartite enquiry, comprising practice, theory and documentation, which constitute a ‘body of work’. The ‘body of work’ engages over time with the notion of life as a quality experienced through the body and occasioned by movement. From this perspective it interrogates the static notion of ‘being’ and argues that this notion is limited in examining contemporary performance practice. Through an investigation of theories of ‘becoming’ and an exploration of an embodied practice of ‘becoming’ this research proposes a model of ‘fluid being’ to articulate the nature of the body within ‘the body of work’. The research concludes that the ‘fluid being’ manifest in the lived experience of the ‘body of work’ is an open constellation that militates against any notion of site as that which can contain it. It therefore speculates towards a notion that, in a practice occasioned by ‘fluid being’, the primary relation of practice is with the temporal occasion of life as lived experience rather than spatial notions of site.