This book explores the interplay between global and local influences in theatre festivals in the German-speaking border region around Lake Constance. Whilst opening up a fascinating yet under-researched theatre region to academic study, it also provides much-needed empirical grounding for often vague theories of place, globalisation and culture. Do we really live in a ¿shrinking world¿ dominated by a homogenising global culture industry, or are we experiencing the revival of ¿local particularism¿? To what extent is an apparently place-dependent cultural form such as theatre affected by the processes of cultural globalisation? Through detailed analysis of theatrical case studies from Lake Constance and the application of an interdisciplinary theoretical framework, this book begins to answer such important questions. The empirical focus is on the defining features of the Lake Constance region: the beautiful and often romanticised natural landscape of lake and mountains, and the presence of the nation-state borders which make this the crossroads of the German-speaking world. The author thus examines both open-air summer theatre festivals, such as the internationally renowned Bregenzer Festspiele, and politically focused cross-border theatre festivals, such as the youth festival TRIANGEL.

Contents: Defining and theorising place - Theatre and context - Perspectives on globalisation - Romantic nature perception - Natural landscape and tourism - Open-air theatre festivals and the natural landscape - Border theories - Borderlands and liminality - Transborder theatre festivals - Theatre festivals between the local and the global.

The Author: Jane Wilkinson completed her Ph.D. in German Studies in 2003 at the University of Glasgow. Since 2005 she has worked as lecturer in German in the Department of European Languages, University of Wales Aberystwyth.