

My essay ‘In Search of London’s Music Theatre Scenes’ is included as one of four case studies in a new bilingual collection, edited by Matthias Rebstock and ITI Deutschland, entitled Independent Music Theatre in Europe (or Freies Musiktheater in Europa). The book also includes surveys of the new music theatre scenes in Berlin, German-speaking Switzerland and the Netherlands, with a focus on the interactions between structures, processes and aesthetics.
This chapter is the result of nearly three years of research, and various interviews with artists, producers and curators back in 2018. Obviously it’s a very strange time to see a publication like this come out. The picture that I have tried to paint of London’s ‘music theatre’ landscape since the 2000s is already one of constitutive precarity, but given the gravity of the present crisis, even this picture may become unrecognisable within just a few months. Nevertheless, along with the other studies in the book, I hope it stands as a meaningful if not comprehensive snapshot of the varieties of music theatre produced in and by this very particular place and time.
The book is published by transcript Verlag and can be purchased from their website.
Continue reading