International Theatre Festivals and Twenty-First-Century Interculturalism

Ric Knowles' study is a politically urgent, erudite intervention into the ecology of theatre and performance festivals in an international context. Since the 1990s there has been an exponential increase in the number and type of festivals taking place around the world. Events that used merely to be events are now 'festivalized': structured, marketed, and promoted in ways that stress urban centres as tourist destinations and “creative cities” as targets of corporate enterprise. Ric Knowles examines the structure, content, and impact of international festivals that draw upon and represent multiple cultures and the roles they play in one of the most urgent processes of our times: intercultural negotiation and exchange. Covering a vast geographical sweep and exploring festival models both new and ancient, the work sets compelling new standards of practice for post-pandemic festivals.

• Offers a resolution to the confusions that currently beset festival scholarship, proposing a new system for classifying festivals into easily identifiable types
• Outlines a radical alternative to festival scholarship's ethnocentric focus on ancient Athens and 20th-century Edinburgh, establishing a new paradigm based on Indigenous models
• Takes an interdisciplinary approach, building on findings across the arts, humanities, social sciences and business