This dissertation examines theater in nineteenth-century Mexico City, using it as a lens to better understand the cityâs history, its culture, and the development of public life. Through an analysis of municipal records, account ledgers, notariesâ books, correspondence, playbills, newspapers, and civil court proceedings, it shows how theater formed a pillar of early republican statecraft, provided subsistence and investment opportunities in a flagging economy, and offered a language and a place for individuals to engage in politics and public life. Between 1830 and 1901, it argues that an age of theater emerged in Mexico Cityâa seventy-year period of unprecedented activity and energy around the performing arts. Elites supported a theatergoing culture, wealthy investors and middling entrepreneurs financed new playhouses, journalists re-imagined stage characters and content, and city residents flocked to playhouses.
The study conceives of theater broadly as a cultural production, physical space, political practice, and business. In so doing, it illuminates theaterâs ties to the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the city. Theatergoing was not simply an elite leisure activity tangential to what really mattered, as the literature has treated it. Rather, theater sat at the heart of city life, and theatergoing became a regular aspect of life for a broad cross-section of urban dwellers, especially during the second half of the century. Its production and consumption inside and outside playhouses offered city residents opportunities to participate in public life.
By moving theater center stage, where contemporaries understood it to be, the dissertation sheds new light on the cityâs development, its emergence as a hub in global performance networks, and its deepening integration into circum-Atlantic circulations of goods, people, and culture. It also recasts Mexicoâs nineteenth-century history, often characterized as an age of caudillos and chaos. Theater endured amidst political turmoil and economic uncertainty. More importantly, as this study shows, theater became a central referent and metaphor for the ways city residents experienced and reacted to that centuryâs challenges. Put differently, it offered the script and stage directions for the performance of nineteenth-century urban life.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VANDERBILT/oai:VANDERBILTETD:etd-06152017-095719 |
| Date | 21 June 2017 |
| Creators | Ingwersen, Lance Richard |
| Contributors | Edward Wright-Rios, Edward Beatty, Celso T. Castilho, Marshall Eakin, Jane L. Landers, Steven A. Wernke |
| Publisher | VANDERBILT |
| Source Sets | Vanderbilt University Theses |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/available/etd-06152017-095719/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to Vanderbilt University or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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