This anthology explores the ways in which theatre and performance functions at the interstices of contemporary local and global networks. Theatre and performance occurs in time and space and exists between the audience and performer as a communicative event. This local world of experience and human interactivity is not easily subsumed by global networks or commercial systems and remains a potent force of expression and, at times, resistance. The volume offers a range of critical viewpoints from which to evaluate the interrelationality of the local and the global, such as philosophical cosmopolitanism, post-colonialism, feminism, class, ethnicity, gender and the experience of the diasporic or exilic artist. The anthology concludes with a reflection between Janelle Reinelt and Marvin Carlson upon the ideas put forth in the book and the broader connectivities of the local and the global. Reinelt and Carlson reveal that these concepts should not be regarded in opposition but, rather, as entangled, something which is reflected in this volume as a whole. A number of international productions and performance practices are discussed from diverse geographical and cultural perspectives, illuminating the complexity of the local and the global. As Reinelt suggests: “The global-local category as a hyphenated concept has become a slogan now, a cliché even. It first arose because the local was supposed to save the global from totalisation, but in fact the global-local concept became, in reality, so complex that this opposition was not useful anymore.” Carlson’s and Reinelt’s engagement with the essays, and with the broader issues of the global and the local, marks an important intervention into how we process experience through theatre and performance in the world today.

Contributors include: Marvin Carlson, Shams Eldin, Lynette Hunter, Pirkko Koski, Yana Meerzon, Yasushi Nagata, Janelle Reinelt, Heike Roms, Nehad Selaiha, Melissa Sihra, Juha Sihvola, Joanne Tompkins, Denise Varney and Farah Yeganeh.