Performing Archipelagos

The interconnected networks of trade, administration, migration, and communication, enabled the formation and establishment of entertainment circuits and touring performances that spanned empires. From professional touring companies to amateur societies, travelling performances served both to reinforce colonial power and to entertain the elite migrants. These imperial networks allowed for the transnational circulation of Western forms, which influenced and shaped local and regional forms.

From Manila to Singapore and Tokyo, musicians, dancers, magicians, and revue troupes performed in nightclubs, theatre restaurants, and amusement parks in the 1950s and the 1960s. Regional touring and commercial circuits connected and diversified the ‘variety’ of entertainment in circulation in the Asia-Pacific. Explore the touring hubs on the circuit of international entertainment and trace the traffic along global routes that were supported by infrastructures of tourism and entrepreneurship.

Since the nineteenth century, associations, actor-managers, businesses, clans, and clubs created and shaped transregional networks that supported and facilitated the movement and flow of performers and troupes. From building stages and owning performance venues to commissioning troupes to perform at festivals and religious ceremonies, these ‘agents’ connected nodes across the seas and bridged the distance between the homeland and the diaspora.