How do we theorize theater and performance of this kind? These venues represent another understanding of theater for which we do not really have a critical vocabulary. We could dismiss it, of course, as a performance version of airport art. A standardized, high-priced luxury commodity that circulates around an ever growing network of similar venues. We could, of course, say the same of festivals, where we saw that they are an essential factor in sustaining and distributing experimental work. These new venues appear to be doing something similar. They are global, not in the sense that they produce a standardized commodity, but in that they provide much needed economic support for the companies and groups they invite. We need to compare this new kind of global theater with more conventional approaches. Traditionally, we would deal with a playwright, director or actor linked to his or her city or country by locale and language. This we could call the metonymic approach. The English playwright Harold Pinter, the German Director, Peter Stein and so on. In the metonymic approach, the artist stands in for, represents more general qualities and characteristics of a particular country or culture. The artist is first analyzed in terms of his or her intrinsic style and approach. But in the second step, such individual characteristics are often placed in relation to cultural, often national contexts and features. So when we analyze global theater venues, we should not be looking for metonymic relations, but rather for networks of connections and interrelationships in the programming. That brings together such heterogeneous offerings. This is another example of the connectivity that we've identified as being integral to theatrical globalization since the 19th century. Connectivity in the mega music business, for example, needs to be understood in another way as well as connectivity between media. Musicals can be adapted from films, TV shows, even comics, which themselves are available in different media. A new term has be coined by the scholar of popular culture, Henry Jenkins to explain this phenomenon. He calls transmedia storytelling. As Jenkins defines it, transmedia storytelling represent a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. Jenkins is thinking about digital media, film and computer games, for example, but the phenomenon applies to theater as well. The spectator at the Tarzan musical probably knows the Disney film, the comics, perhaps even the original novels. And certainly, the Phil Collins sound track. Each experience is unique. And the theatrical version offers a Dolby surround experience that surpasses even the cinema. The cinema leads to our final topic in this module, theatrical live casts.
