Theatre & Economy Research Collaboration

This research collaboration emerges from a German–Dutch network at the intersection of theatre, media, and economy. We are early and mid-career scholars and artists whose diverse approaches combine historical and cultural analysis, artistic research, and contemporary cultural critique. Our shared focus is on how theatre (in the widest meaning) can be a lens for economic thinking, and as such helps to conceptualise economic knowledge. But also vice versa: how economic thinking can be a lens to look at theatre. Rather than restricting our analysis to financial flows or institutional structures in the cultural sector, we explore the broader production of economic knowledge across time. Our interests range from (and are not limited to) the intertwinement of theatre and financial speculation in the early modern period to strategies of theatrical visibility in financial markets, collaborative working modes in cultural industries, the hybrid status of plays as both commodities and artworks, the commodification of mass media, and the negotiation of labour in present-day television narratives. By examining these entanglements of theater and economics from the early modern period to the present the group aims to develop a shared methodological space that accommodates both scholarly and artistic perspectives. This website will serve as a space for ongoing discussions, publications, and events, and as an invitation to join us in rethinking the intersections where theatre and economy meet.