Mainstage theatre and immigration: The long history of exclusion and recent attempts at diversification in Berlin and Vienna

Abstract

Recent studies have shown that mainstage theatre has largely remained closed to immigrants and their descendants who want to enter the cultural institution as actors, directors and playwrights. This was explained with persistent homogeneous national narratives, gatekeepers denying immigrants and their descendants access and cultural policies pushing them into niches. This article adds to this the dimension of theatre history to understand first, why mainstage theatre in the German-speaking countries has remained closed to the new diversity brought by migration and second, why diversification, when it finally arrived, was more successful in Berlin than in Vienna. I regard the intricate link between theatre and nation-building as underlying the long exclusion of immigrants and their descendants in the German-speaking context. Subsequently, I argue that the more flexible theatre structures and the recent turn towards including immigrants and their descendants in cultural policy-making in Berlin have facilitated the career of an artist whose main aim was to address the exclusionary structures of theatre. Due to the limited research on this topic, I cannot claim my observations to be representative, but they provide a matrix for an in-depth analysis in other contexts.

How Does “Migrant” and “World” Music Change Local and National Cultures? An Insight from the Cologne Carnival, Related Antiracist Networks and Recent Cultural Politics

“…In the cultural scene of Cologne, diversification processes have been intended from top-down (Sievers, 2017) and bottom-up levels (grassroots initiatives), leading to durable changes concerning the use of musical references and the visibility of new cultural actors. An example for the top-down (institutional and political) perspective is the "Kulturentwicklungsplan" "cultural development plan" developed by the city government in a two-year process of round-table discussions with actors from the cultural scene in the town.…”

Integration of aspiring artists: Japanese music students in Germany

“…Because theaters in the German-speaking territories were part of nation-building, migrants and their descendants have had relatively little access to them despite more recent efforts to reach out to these populations (Sievers, 2017). Such biases can be observed not only in theaters, but also in orchestras, where women are still underrepresented and some of their male colleagues consider it inappropriate for them to play certain instruments, such as brass.…”

Continuity or Change? How Migrants’ Musical Activities (Do not) Affect Ethnic Boundaries

“…To date, several empirical studies have drawn on concepts of symbolic boundaries and/or the role of social categorisation in processes of migrants' inclusion/exclusion in different artistic fields (Delhaye, 2008;Gebesmair, 2009;Gebesmair et al, 2014;Kasinitz, 2019;Lena & Cornfield, 2008;Sievers, 2008Sievers, , 2017Sievers, , 2018Vandenberg et al, 2021). However, there have been few attempts to systematically review the opportunities as well as the limitations of an ethnic boundary approach to analysing cultural change.…”