Archipelagic Mappings and Performance Routes, Routers, and Networks

The project investigates theatrical networks and performance routes of the colonial British empire, where new forms and practices were hybridising and evolving as they travelled and parsed through key venues along key trade routes. It seeks to examine these contexts and explore local subjectivities in the form of travelogues, journals, photographic images, newspaper, and written records.

In this study, Asst Prof Lim situates Singapore as a focal point and a significant node in historical networks that existed between urban centres, port cities, and the sea routes that performance practices and performers travelled on as they embarked and disembarked, evolved, or took root in places across the region. In doing so, he seeks to address the lack of research and documentation of the history of performing arts in Singapore.

Asst Prof Lim also aims to provide a visual representation of performance travels or the routes that travelling troupes and performers took, and the routers and nodes that they arrived at to perform, reside, or disembark. When completed, the project will provide methods of analysing the histories of these practices in relation to global trends and transregional movement and migration.