Theatre: Space

This research project takes a comprehensive look at venues and spaces for the performing arts, going beyond the architecture built specifically for theatre, dance and performance in the narrow sense. At various levels, we can observe a shift away from the single-art-form focus of the buildings and programmes of theatres, opera houses, exhibition venues and museums:

1) Cultural mixed-use refers to the physical proximity and shared architecture of various cultural and arts-related venues and institutions that, until recently, were housed separately.
2) A shift away from venues and institutions dedicated to a single art form can be seen in various ways. Theatres are expected to open up to the wider urban community and the neighbourhoods in which they are located.
3) For rural infrastructure, the interconnection of cultural uses is proving to be a necessity. Here, a diversity of venues, sites and spaces is emerging, initiated both privately and supported publicly.
4) The cultural and artistic repurposing of former industrial sites and buildings situated on extensive grounds already implies, by virtue of the site itself, an interconnection of cultural uses.

Through this contextualisation, the findings on spaces and architectures for the performing arts are embedded within current international discourses on the future of the city and the region, and their cultural and artistic sites, spaces and venues.

The transdisciplinary research project is affiliated with the Department of Architectural History and Theory at HTWK Leipzig, under Prof. Dr Annette Menting, and with the Department of Theatre and Media Studies at HMT Leipzig, under Prof. Dr Barbara Büscher.