So far, we have looked at actors and managers. But there is a third profession that is often overlooked in this period of globalized theater: agents. By 1900, the theatrical landscape, and I'm speaking here just of the Western style theater, had established itself on all continents except Antarctica. The demand for artists and productions was huge, which led in turn to a new profession: the agent. Now, agents were by no means a new phenomenon, but their importance increased dramatically as the theatrical landscape globalized. Agents and agencies dealt in theater, opera, vaudeville, variety, music, art. Their activities did not remain within national borders, but had a truly trans-national dimension. An agent in Vienna would book acts for a circus in India, an American impresario would organize a tour of performers in South Africa, a German agent could become the representative for German playwrights in France, and so on. My colleague Nic Leonhardt is researching this fascinating but largely neglected topic, and she has agreed to talk to us about some of her agents. Can you perhaps just, first of all, define what a theatrical agent is or was in those days. >> Well, it's very difficult to define because the way they used the term "agent" in those days is very different and it differs from country to country. And some of the agents I am dealing with call themselves "managers", some of them call themselves "impresarios", and some of them even call themselves "brokers". So it's really difficult to define what an agent is. But I would say they're a sort of mediators between actors and theaters, actors and directors, and dancers, and opera singers and theaters and so on. Theatrical agents organized all the contracts between actors and directors, and actors and theaters and plays and playwrights. So he's organizing all the things that have to do with theatrical business in those days. >> So, can you tell us then why agents or theatrical agents were so important for theatrical globalization? >> Well I think they are very crucial for theater and globalization because they organized all the international trade. The international trade routes, and all the traffic, and so on. And they organized all the the royalties and they bought plays. And they would hire the actors and made contracts with them in a very international way. >> No name springs to mind. >> Yes. >> I can think of many famous actors. Directors theater managers, but not agents. Who are these people? Can you give us some examples? >> I must say that it's also very difficult to, to do research on these people. Because they've almost been forgotten in theater history, and theater studies as well. And it has to do with the fact that theater has been considered as a business in those days, but not in terms of scholarly research. For instance, I'm dealing with one agent, his name is H.B. Marinelli. And before he became a manager and agent, he was a contortionist and a circus dancer and equilibrist. So he was an artist himself, and then he turned into an agent. Another example is Elizabeth Marbury, she's an American agent based in both New York and Paris. She dealt with playwrights and also performers and, and dancers. And another example for a male agent is Richard Pitrot. And, as Marinelli, before he became an agent he was an impersonator. He would impersonate Abraham Lincoln and other presidents of the United States, and was very, very famous for that. And what they have all in common was they had very cosmopolitan biographies. So they had branch offices in all parts of the world, and they would travel tremendously and so on. So, for instance, Pitrot who was based in New York; he would travel to Europe very often, several times a year, in order to look what was going on in the big cities in Europe. And would buy the plays and then would hire also actors, but also dancers and groups, and bring them to the United States. And Alice Kauser would do the same for playwrights. >> So who, who is Alice Kauser? This is a, a new name? >> It's a new name. I forgot to mention that name when I listed the agents I'm working on. Alice Kauser is a very very interesting agent. She was born in Hungary, and she was the the stepdaughter of Franz Liszt, the composer. And then, she was the daughter of an American and a German mother. And she moved to the United States, when she was a teenager. And she worked for Elizabeth Marbury, the other agent I mentioned. And then she opened her own office when she was about 20 years old. And she specialized in bringing playwrights from Europe to the United States. For instance, she would bring Maurice Maeterlinck, the Belgian playwright and Nobel Prize winner in the United States. And vice versa. She also was agent for Benardt, Bernard Shaw, for instance. >> So you could almost say that without someone like Alice Kauser, Maurice Maeterlinck might not even have been known or, performed in the United States. >> Maybe, yes, yeah. Another very famous figure she brought to the United States was Henrik Ibsen. The more I do research on these agents, I'm more fascinated by the fact that exactly when ask myself that question. So how come that a playwright like Henrik Ibsen was performed in the United States? And I think it was possible only because of agents like Alice Kauser. >> So in a sense the theatrical agents are a kind of missing link- >> Exactly. >> In theatrical modernism. >> Exactly, yeah. >> We've been talking about agents and globalization or theatrical globalization, shall we take an example, say someone like Marinelli? Could you perhaps explain how this globalization worked, or how could we even conceptualize it? >> I'm still wondering how he managed to do that, because he worked internationally and he was here and there at the same time. I brought one example, namely the letterhead that he was using in the 1900s. And that letterhead shows the branches, branch offices he had in Paris, London, Berlin and New York. And the way he demonstrates how he works on that letterhead is quite fascinating. The letterhead shows four different cablegrams that are that are connected via cables. And in the background of the letterhead you can see a world map, and various cables that connect the branches, and connect Marinelli with the actors and the people he would do business with. So it's really interesting that he uses that simple letterhead as a means for demonstrating how professional, how very modern, because of the cablegram he's using, a very new medium still, in the 1900s. And the way he shows how internationally he works. So only via letterhead. It's a fascinating source for me to find out about the way he worked. >> So the letterhead in a sense demonstrates connectivity, which is a concept we've been working with in the course. >> Yes, exactly. It's demonstrates connectivity, but it also demonstrates the way Marinelli wants to see and wants to represent himself. It's so crucial to study them in order to find out how theater and globalization work together in the 19th and early 20th century. And I would even say, without theatrical agents theater and globalization in those days wouldn't be possible. >> During the second half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, theater was a commercial enterprise, and part of a highly profitable entertainment industry. All over Europe, the Americas, and their colonies, huge fortunes could be made by supplying colonial audiences with the latest plays and productions from home. Without the competition of film and later radio and television, theater, opera, vaudeville and operetta productions provided the most important mass entertainment of the time. Europeans exported these divertissements, but, as we have seen from the Japanese and Parsi examples, locals soon adapted these models. By the 1930s the model of touring theater, dominated by managers and agents, was beginning to collapse. High costs and competition from cinema meant that theater needed a new model. This would come after the end of the Second World War when governments began to recognize theater's importance as a public good. This story will be continued in a later module.
