On Stage and Backstage. Gender, Empire and Nation in the Theatres of a Cosmopolitan City (Trieste 1814-1914).

This historical research, that innovatively brings together a transnational and gender approach, investigates the ways in which theatre activities in Trieste shape collective identities and imagined communities linked to nation and empire, and asks how these identities, which have so profoundly marked European history, are interlaced with gender roles. The research spans from the establishment of the Austrian Littoral (1814) to the outbreak of World War I (1914), that leads to the formation of nation states. Trieste is an interesting case study because along a century characterized by the development of national movements in Europe, this town is a cosmopolitan emporium city and the main port of the Habsburg multi-national empire. The research sheds light on the theatre because during the century theatre in Europe plays a central role in the construction of the collective imaginary and in the sentimental education of both men and women. The project, that matches a cultural-historical with a social-historical analysis in an original way, looks not only to the visual and artistic aspect of the performance, but also to the networks of theatre workers (onstage, back stage and offstage), invisible to the audience but essential to the performance and to the dissemination of repertoires, images and symbols. Most of the research will be spent in Trieste, whose archives will disclose ties between the city theatres and other European theatres. To shed light on the theatrical circuits in the Adriatic Littoral, in which Trieste was included, shorter fieldwork periods are planned in Venice and Zara, whose state archives preserve important theatre collections. The project will be developed with the historian prof. Marta Verginella, an expert in plurilingual contexts in border areas between Italian, German and Slavic worlds, and hosted by the Faculty of Arts at the University of Ljubljana (UL). A placement will take place at the Civico Museo Teatrale “Carlo Schmidl” in Trieste