Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ . Re-Mapping the 19 th -Century Habsburg Monarchy Theatre Landscape Patrick Aprent (Vienna/ Munich), Magret Berger (Vienna/ St. Pölten) This article focuses on female theatre managers in the nineteenth-century Habsburg Monarchy, specifically within the territory of present-day Austria. Combining qualitative and quantitative research and utilising methods from geography and the digital humanities, it aims to reintroduce the many women who led theatres and thereby made substantial contributions to the theatrical and cultural life of their time, but who have been excluded or inaccurately represented in later theatre history writing. By analysing the content of around 230 theatre almanacs, this article illustrates the gender relations of the historical theatre landscape and demonstrates that women disproportionately often occupied ‘ peripheral spaces ’ , leading theatre ventures in the suburbs, on smaller provincial stages and in travelling theatres. Introduction The professional activity of female theatre managers (in German ‘ Theaterdirektorinnen ’ ) in the late Habsburg Monarchy has received little attention and remains a desideratum in academia. 1 This absence within scholarship is problematic as in the theatre landscape of Austria today - one of the Monarchy ’ s successor-states - gender inequality still prevails with regard to leadership positions at major venues. The gap of knowledge hinders opportunities for broad public debates with only a few - though important - activist interventions of theatre practitioners remaining as lone voices for change. One such initiative was the project “ DIE Spielplan ” , demonstrating the male dominance on renowned Austrian stages and specifically pointing to the low number of women in leadership roles and the absence of women ’ s plays in the repertoires. 2 Such initiatives highlight how the theatre sphere still is a male-dominated space, where women are affected by discrimination, reflected in their access to, practice and representation in leading positions. The lack of visibility of female theatre leaders in the present public consciousness is so profound that one could ask whether there were any female theatre managers at all in the past. However, as we will demonstrate in this article, there were in fact more than one hundred women whose contributions to the field of theatre management have been overlooked and whose names remain unknown to this day. In the nineteenth century, Germanspeaking theatre reached almost everywhere in the Habsburg Empire, one of the largest states in Europe in 1900. Against all odds, ‘ female theatre managers ’ , 3 responsible for the artistic and operational concerns of theatres, were indeed active throughout the century. Just as Tracy C. Davis proclaimed for the British stage in the same era, “ in every corner [. . .], every kind of neighbourhood, and every sized town, burgh, and city, women ran this industry ” . 4 The aim of this article is therefore to reintroduce knowledge about the many women in the late Habsburg Monarchy who led theatres and thereby made substantial contributions to the theatrical and cultural life Forum Modernes Theater, 35/ 1-2, 39 - 54. Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ FMTh-2024-0004 of their time. To shed light on their practice, we introduce a methodology that combines qualitative research with quantitative methods from geography and the digital humanities and utilises so far rarely used theatre almanacs as source materials to re-map nineteenth-century theatre. This approach draws an extended picture of the theatre landscape and includes marginalised practices usually omitted from theatre historiography such as female theatre managers. Collating information on these women allows us to investigate the gender relations at the time and identify the spaces they occupied. It also highlights their peripheral position on various levels, geographically, socially and in theatre literature, due to processes of exclusion, marginalisation and distortion in normative knowledge production. All of this will be linked to international feminist theatre historiography and its findings. In several small-scale studies we conducted in recent years, we have gained initial insights into the practice of female theatre management and thereby demonstrate that source materials - even though often disparate and dispersed - certainly exist. Through our micro-historical work on Anna Blumlacher (1823 - 1907), Marie Arthur (1835 - 1888) and - carried out by our colleague Claudia Mayerhofer - Alexandrine von Schönerer (1850 - 1919), we have been able to learn about women ’ s paths into management, their social environments, contemporary reception, and gender-based obstacles. 5 Blumlacher, Arthur and von Schönerer were active in the same period but situated within very different socio-economic, professional and personal environments. Indicating that female theatre managers were present everywhere, in the metropolis as well as in the periphery, these three qualitative case studies give a representative view of the social and geographical spectrum of female theatre management, therefore making a comparative analysis a valuable starting point for our study. Until recent research, 6 Alexandrine von Schönerer had not received much attention in theatre history, although she was one of the most successful and enduring managers of the prestigious Viennese theatre, the Theater an der Wien. Coming from a wealthy and highly respected family, she had the financial means to buy the theatre in 1884. Although she was involved in artistic and business decisions from the beginning, she leased the premises to other managers until 1889, when she took over management of her own stage for eleven successful years. Schönerer ’ s position not only in Vienna, the political and cultural capital of the Monarchy, but at the centre of the Viennese theatre-scene, was rather exceptional for female theatre managers at the time. This also meant that all her actions and decisions were scrutinised by the public, amplifying the gender-based challenges in the profession in some instances. Theatre manager and actress Marie Arthur, however, is a paradigmatic example for the concealed long-term involvement in theatre management within family-structures. 7 She is representative of how women ’ s careers in theatre management would - by official accounts - typically begin: in most cases, they inherited a theatre company from their husband or from a family member upon their death. Such an incident would bring to light the skills, experience, and leadership competence that they had accumulated by their continuous involvement in all leading roles of family-run businesses over many years. Marie Arthur was part of a theatre family, co-managing the family operation, but always staying in the shadow of her husband Karl Arthur. Following his death, she officially took on the role of theatre manager and led the theatre operation to 40 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger even bigger stages in cities such as Znojmo/ Znaim (CZ) and Celje/ Cilli (SI). Another case study is Anna Blumlacher with a career lasting over 80 years. 8 She was engaged as an actress at around 45 theatres all over the Habsburg Monarchy, changing location and theatre practically every year. Beginning in the 1880s, she managed a travelling theatre company for almost 25 years in the Habsburg crown land of Styria, where she staged theatrical performances at dozens of different places. Blumlacher ’ s itinerary illustrates the mobile life and practice of the so-called ‘ provincial theatres ’ , which included permanent theatres in provincial cities as well as a form of itinerant theatre practice reaching even the smallest towns in peripheral locations. While all three women were visible during their active time as influential contributors to the theatrical and cultural life, the question is what different mechanisms of marginalisation or exclusion caused them to fade into obscurity. Reintroducing our protagonists as well as the many other female managers is an important corrective to prevailing theatre history narratives, in which they - among many other theatre forms, practices and people - lack any representation. With our microhistories as starting points, our intent in this article is the documentation of female theatre management on a broader scale. Our particular focus is on analysing which socio-geographic spaces they occupied within the theatre landscape, as we identify a definite trend that female theatre managers were most likely to work in what could be termed ‘ peripheral spaces ’ : Rather than managing the biggest stages of the time, evidence from cases such as Anna Blumlacher, Marie Arthur and others suggest that that the majority of women held leading positions at smaller venues, in travelling theatre companies or in more remote areas, where they were oftentimes perceived differently than in the metropolitan centres of the theatrical landscape. Peripheral spaces, we hypothesise, opened up opportunities for female managers with fewer barriers to entry. However, operating the smallest theatre stages on the margins often meant precarious working and living conditions with limited prospects of promotion. Analysing these spaces and conditions thoroughly is highly significant for our understanding of nineteenth-century theatre and female managers as main contributors therein. At the same time, it might point us to continuities and persistent inequalities that women face in the culture and arts sector today, demonstrating the relevance of this topic. Re-Mapping Nineteenth-Century Theatre and its Marginalised Practices In order to create a more inclusive topography of nineteenth-century theatre, we have identified theatre almanacs as a promising source material, as they aim to capture the full theatre landscape beyond narrow foci or selection criteria. In Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Tracy C. Davis and Ellen Donkin point out that female playwrights have a very solid presence in the annals and calendars of the stage 9 because, as Jacky Bratton notes at a later point, “ the calendar makers[ ’ ] [. . .] objective is simply completeness ” 10 . The same is true of female theatre managers and the many smaller theatre ventures that have tended to escape the attention of historians, but which suddenly emerge “ simply by adjusting the lens to a different focal length ” 11 . However, rather than tracing a few individuals via the almanacs, we aspire to use these materials in a more systematic way, that is as an assembled data corpus. Drawing on the concept of a ‘ macroscope ’ , 12 we combine our qualitative research with digital quantitative methods blending 41 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ macroand micro perspectives. Our microhistorical case studies serve as the starting point but shall be contextualised on a much larger scale in order to compare the itinerary of our protagonists with that of all other theatre managers recorded in around 230 editions of nineteenth-century theatre almanacs which we will introduce as source and data collection in the following section. Using Geographical Information Systems mapping and statistics, we explore the almanac data, starting with the creation of a map of all places with professional theatre. We will then quantify how many theatre managers worked at each place. This number renders the theatre activity and centrality of places and therefore provides - to a certain degree - an understanding of central or peripheral spaces within the nineteenthcentury theatre landscape. In other words, it visualises a whole network of theatres and theatre places and reflects what position in the hierarchy a place held. Finally, visualising the gender relations of this topography via maps and diagrams, we illustrate the spaces female theatre managers occupied therein and review emerging patterns and characteristics on the basis of the specific practice of our case examples. There were a number of theatre almanacs in the nineteenth century that documented the German-speaking theatre of the time. Although they were published in a variety of formats, they were often interchangeably referred to as ‘ almanacs ’ , ‘ journals ’ or ‘ calendars ’ . In contrast to those documenting only one particular stage, the type that serves as our material basis is defined by Paul S. Ulrich as ‘ universal theatre almanacs ’ ( ‘ Universale Theater-Almanache ’ ), 13 which Fig. 1: A mapping of the gender ratio of theatre managers at the respective places, with the size of the symbols corresponding to the total numbers of managers. © Patrick Aprent 42 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger periodically cover - with unlimited geographical scope - German-speaking theatre in its entire global reach. The main section of these almanacs included a directory, containing information on a vast range of theatres and their locations, the names of theatre managers and each associated ensemble and personnel. Besides the uniformly-structured documentation of theatres, other sections of the almanacs included biographies, adverts, play texts, and obituaries among other information. The overarching purpose of these almanacs, such as the Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach, was to provide as complete a picture as possible of the German-speaking theatre landscape. While this aspiration could not be fulfilled, and the almanacs have several limitations, 14 they still represent unparalleled material to gain a macro-perspective on nineteenthcentury theatre that includes female managers and other marginalised theatre practices. The data set used in our analysis is based on data compilations with a geographical focus on Austria by Paul Ulrich and includes the content of around 230 almanac issues covering the years from 1830 to 1914 with fragmented entries from earlier years. 15 Within the borders of present-day Austria, there were 292 places staging professional theatre in the nineteenth century, based on Fig. 2: Graph visualising the average ratio of female managers in proportion to the total number of managers of each theatre place. © Patrick Aprent 43 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ our extensive analysis of all almanac records. Projecting all these locations on a map presents a picture of nineteenth-century theatre that was of vast extent and reached far beyond the well-known metropolis of Vienna. About 750 theatre managers can be traced in the almanacs. Of these, 67 were female managers, which equals 8.4 % women to 91.6 % men. Linking them to their respective workplaces adds another facet to the theatre landscape and allows us to analyse the gender relations in theatre management. Figure 1 is a mapping of all theatre places within the borders of present-day Austria. The size of the circles represents the number of managers at each place, highlighting Austria ’ s larger cities and major theatre places at a glance. The pie chart outlines the gender ratio in theatre management at every single place. While the vast range of smaller places need further explanation, it is immediately apparent that the numbers for all major cities account for a male dominance in theatre management. The graph in Figure 2 clearly shows this pattern. The number of theatre managers per place are visualised on the vertical axis with grey bars, while places with similar numbers are grouped into four categories. As we will further elaborate, this forms a ranking of places and illustrates how centrally or peripherally they were positioned in the theatre landscape. The average ratio of female managers for each category of places is also outlined and runs inversely to the ranking of places accumulating the most power and prestige. This highlights a clear difference regarding gender. While female theatre managers were exceptions in places with major theatre stages and represented only 7 % of all managers there, their percentage rises to 29 % for smaller cities and peripheral places, where primarily travelling theatres operated. With 332 theatre managers documented in the almanacs, almost half of all managers worked in Vienna, the definitive centre of the Habsburg Monarchy. Among those, 22 female managers are recorded, resulting in a gender ratio of 7 % female to 93 % male. Very few women, such as Alexandrine von Schönerer or Caroline Völkel-Strampfer (ca. 1820 - after 1882) at the Ring-Theater, were able to assert themselves in managing positions at prestigious venues in Vienna. The majority, however, led smaller stages such as Pauline Czerniawski-Löwe (? - 1911) at the Rudolfsheimer Volkstheater. 16 Besides Vienna, there were other places of relevance for nineteenth-century theatre, which had longstanding theatre traditions as well as theatre buildings. Such places include Graz and Innsbruck as major provincial cities of the Habsburg crown lands, but also Krems, Steyr and Leoben, cities of rather local importance. Similar to Vienna, women were exceptions in these locations and represented on average only 7 % of the theatre managers. Looking beyond these few well-known theatre places, a remarkable shift in the gender relations can be observed at middle-sized and smaller places. A string of places, predominantly smaller cities such as Villach, Bregenz or Grein were all of similar size, political and economic importance, and also of a similar status in the theatre landscape. Most of these places maintained permanent or at least semi-permanent theatre stages and were visited by 5 to 23 different managers in the nineteenth century. Although they could not sustain a theatre company for a whole theatre season, usually lasting from September/ October to Palm Sunday, these places still provided stable conditions for certain periods. 17 In these places, the number of female theatre managers is considerably higher with around 15 % on average. The aforementioned Marie Arthur is just one example who leased such venues with their practice being similar to that of bigger provincial theatres. The ratio of female managers for this group of places 44 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger would be even higher, were it not for several well-known spa towns and summer resorts. It can be seen that the famous summer stages in places like Bad Gleichenberg, Bad Ischl and Baden bei Wien replicated the gender relations of the larger cities, as prominent theatre managers would relocate their theatre operations to follow their bourgeois audience to the countryside over the summer. Going another step further, it is remarkable that beyond Vienna, other major cities, and dozens of smaller cities, there were another 250 places in Austria where professional theatre was performed in the nineteenth century. These places represent peripheral spaces in the theatre context and were often small towns in geographically remote areas or located in the suburban area of major cities. They almost never had a dedicated theatre building and were visited infrequently by professional travelling theatre operations which played on temporary stages such as taverns, rooms in clubhouses and community halls. This form of itinerant theatre practice is often overlooked in the standard literature of theatre history but was common for most theatre professionals in the period and reached even the smallest towns of the Empire. 18 Importantly, a significant rise to 29 % of women managing such theatre operations on average highlights that these peripheral spaces might have provided opportunities for them. Despite the precarious circumstances of their endeavours, the structural obstacles and societal gender roles might have been less of an impediment to accessing and working in these spaces than in the theatre-centres of the time. We identified almost 30 women in the category leading smaller travelling theatre operations. Anna Blumlacher and Anna Lazary (1819 - 1902), of whom some knowledge has been accumulated in recent years, are both paradigmatic examples of this practice, successfully leading their companies for decades, the latter even for 42 years. 19 Reflecting on our hypothesis, the analysis of almanacs attests to a clear trend that women more frequently managed theatres in peripheral spaces of the nineteenthcentury theatre landscape, regardless of whether they consciously chose to utilise these spaces of opportunity or because they were forced to do so because they were blocked from accessing bigger stages. This illustrates a striking male dominance at the prestigious theatre places and stages, while almost a third of the smallest theatrical businesses in peripheral spaces were managed by women. Given the obvious difference in working conditions for female managers, how are peripheral spaces defined in the context of our analysis? Although the concept of centre and periphery is widely problematised, it is probably helpful for a description of the theatrical landscape under discussion to think of it as a more complex system that is an interrelated socio-geographical space, with distinctive characteristics on either end of the spectrum, all gradations in between as well as all kinds of anomalies and exceptions. Our analysis focussed on the number of theatre managers in each place, therefore representing the theatrical activity and centrality of all places. High numbers, such as Vienna with 332, indicate a place with several theatres which have been in operation for a long time and were extensively documented, possibly as it was where the almanac was published or due to the importance of the place within the theatre landscape. Low numbers, on the other hand, depict a place with little and infrequent theatrical activity, and potentially incomplete documentation. This approach gives an idea of how centrally or peripherally these places were positioned in the nineteenth-century theatre topography. However, peripheral spaces were not necessarily 45 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ confined to small towns far from Vienna. These spaces, as they appear in our analysis, were first and foremost socio-cultural spaces within the nineteenth-century theatre world, and only peripheral in a geographical sense in a second place. Above all peripheral spaces represent positions within the network of theatres, with a few prestigious ones at the top of a hierarchy and many more forming the wider surroundings. The fact that geographically remote places usually account for peripheral spaces is therefore a frequent correlation, as usually only centrally positioned major cities accommodated prestigious venues. The spa towns already mentioned, however, demonstrate that this correlation could be reversed. Following their familiar audience to their summer destination, managers and personnel from renowned theatres reproduced the whole social environment in geographically remote areas, including the gender relations of the most prestigious theatres. At the same time, there were many smaller stages on the outskirts of Vienna managed by rather unknown managers, including many women. Female Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ As our analysis has shown, in places with high centrality, which are often the location of the most renowned stages and where most of the cultural and economic capital congregates, a considerable male dominance in theatre management can be observed. In contrast to these centres of male power were peripheral spaces in which female managers were concentrated. In Habsburg ’ s Germanspeaking theatre landscape, Vienna was the definite centre with its prominent venues, playwrights, agents, and actors that were of great cultural, economic and political importance. The renowned Viennese stages were also the focus of bourgeois attention, extensively followed in media coverage and strictly observed in relation to bourgeois values. We can therefore assume that, comparable to London, where “ neither theatre ownership nor management were genderneutral activities ” 20 , gender-based discrimination might occur and transgressions against women ’ s intended role in society might be more likely to be sanctioned than in smaller provincial towns, thus limiting access to leadership positions to exceptional occurrences. Outside of Vienna, but part of a network inextricably linked with the metropolis, were a few larger and a vast number of smaller theatre places: the practice of the socalled ‘ provincial theatres ’ . Many of these theatre places were sometimes in difficultto-reach areas with limited infrastructure, a smaller pool of audiences and less or no entertainment on offer. They were also located outside of society ’ s attention and ignored by contemporary theatre commentators and historians because of their perceived artistic deficiency. Evidently, these varying structural conditions of spaces impacted the practice of female theatre managers in different ways. Preliminary comparative studies on our protagonists have shown that von Schönerer, who managed one of the most prestigious theatres in Vienna, faced administrative restrictions and gender-based discrimination in media representation. Although she invested considerable capital to buy the Theater an der Wien, she was not able to manage the theatre independently at first, as her concession included the requirement to have a male representative for technical and security matters. 21 However, the archival accounts on Blumlacher ’ s applications for concessions to stage theatrical performances show no such constraints. 22 A similar difference is noticeable in contemporary media reporting. Surprisingly, as Blumlacher ’ s travelling theatre company operated only in smaller cities and towns, she and her com- 46 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger pany were the subject of more than 100 articles in local newspapers with mostly favourable commentary on her efforts. In their composition and choice of words, these commentaries are comparable to those made on male competitors, with no indication that gender was a reference point in the reporting. The media coverage on von Schönerer was mainly neutral as well but in some instances her gender was referenced in provocative comments, while other articles made stereotypical attributions. 23 Even though this suggests noticeable differences in the relation of space and gender depending on where female managers worked, the management of Blumlacher and of von Schönerer was not suppressed because of their gender. Once in these positions, they were visible in the public and were mostly received similarly to their male counterparts, with media commentary focusing on the common evaluation criteria of theatre management such as choice of personnel, the set design or programme. In order to contextualise the high number of women who, similarly to Blumlacher, led small theatre companies in peripheral spaces, it is therefore important to reflect on the accessibility of particular spaces in the theatre landscape by focussing on women ’ s pathways into management, their practice and scope for action as managers and whether they had further career opportunities. Notwithstanding if women inherited, bought, or founded theatre companies, managing the most renowned stages was an exception. In the centres of cultural, economic and political power, we assume that structural disadvantages and society ’ s gender norms had the greatest impact, resulting in almost insurmountable obstacles. As our analysis illustrates, some of the smaller permanent provincial theatres provided better preconditions, but it was specifically peripheral spaces that offered a market with less or no competition and fewer gender-based obstacles, and typically only these environments were accessible to women. A major factor that helped women into management might have been the longer existence of family-run theatre businesses in these areas, which facilitated their involvement in leadership and the passing on of businesses to women, as was typical in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. 24 Closely linked to the issue of accessibility is the examination of upward mobility and career opportunities for female managers. Although Blumlacher ’ s practice altered during more than two decades of theatre management, the area and type of places she visited remained unchanged. The fact that her application to lease the permanent theatre in Pettau/ Ptuj (SI) for the autumn season 1893 was rejected by local authorities could be seen as an indicator that her attempt to ascend to a larger stage was denied, if it was not for a second application from a renowned male competitor which was also rejected. 25 Marie Arthur ’ s example might prove the opposite, showing that female managers were mobile and had chances to rise within the theatre hierarchy. As we know from preliminary biographical research, 26 her husband Karl Arthur organised summer theatres in spa towns from the late 1860s onwards, in which Marie Arthur was heavily involved. After Karl presumably died in 1886, Marie eventually took over the theatre operation. It is particularly noteworthy that after stepping out of the shadow of her husband, her activity was no longer limited to summer theatre or smaller stages but shifted towards bigger venues. After managing theatres such as Bruck/ Mur and Cilli, she stepped up to manage the theatre of Znaim, one of the bigger provincial stages of the Monarchy. To do so, she reportedly turned down another approved application to manage the theatre of Krems. Marie Arthur ’ s sudden death at the age of 53 during her time in Znaim put an end to a 47 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ promising career, as many related reports point out her great entrepreneurial competence and leadership qualities. Even if Arthur ’ s short-lived career is an indication, further evidence is needed to shed light on career trajectories and clarify whether peripheral spaces could provide the starting point for female managers to ascend to the bigger stages of the metropolis, similarly to actors or civil servants. The factual basis for future research is the overall pattern that peripheral spaces were more conducive to female theatre management, which corresponds to findings from various international contexts, as Tracy Davis has summarised. 27 What unites Blumlacher, Arthur and von Schönerer, despite their different environments, backgrounds, and practices, is their visibility and the relatively neutral reception they received during their lifetimes. However, gender as a social category was of greater importance in the process of history writing. In later literature where von Schönerer is mentioned, her depiction is often subject to gender bias, with clear deviations from the portrayal of male manager contemporaries. 28 More often though, female managers were excluded entirely from theatre history. The intentional concealment and omission or re-attribution of their achievements to a male partner, usually their husbands, was one method that led to their absence. Otherwise, the disregard and marginalisation of other practices such as provincial and travelling theatres led specifically to the omission of women who disproportionately often occupied exactly these peripheral spaces. Almanacs, we anticipated, might be a material basis to uncover these marginalised practices, which calls for their critical evaluation. In this respect, almanacs proved to be promising material but are not a genderneutral source. Even though their aim was a complete documentation of the theatre landscape, historical, patriarchal power structures are still inscribed in the production of almanacs. Consequently, female managers are more likely to be excluded than male managers for several reasons. Especially earlier almanac versions would at times not include first names or gender-signifying pronouns and thus, in the editing process of almanacs as well as in today ’ s reception, a genderless name might more likely be assigned to the male gender. Secondly, the frequent concealed involvement of women in leadership roles is extremely hard to verify, even though we can identify clear patterns suggesting this, such as directors ’ wives being listed as cashiers in the almanacs. Finally, professional theatre in peripheral spaces - disproportionately often carried out by women - was covered far less extensively. Reflecting on the travelling theatre company of Blumlacher in remote geographical areas let us assume that these marginalised practices are still underrepresented to a considerable extent, and the estimated number of female managers might be significantly higher. Our constantly increasing list of female theatre managers within present-day Austria is evidence of this. We were able to identify 50 women in addition to the 67 from the almanacs by tirelessly searching through the Habsburg state ’ s administrative records in local archives. Feminist Theatre Historiography and Innovative Methodologies - An Outlook Feminist theatre historiography is still rarely considered in the German-speaking research landscape. It is therefore hardly surprising that our knowledge of nineteenthcentury theatre of the Habsburg Monarchy primarily depicts and reproduces a dominant male perspective. To “ rethink histor- 48 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger iography through a feminist lens ” 29 is therefore an important step to question these structures of power constituting the exclusion or distorted representation of female theatre managers as well as other marginalised practices. Further studies can thereby draw on the pioneering work of feminist scholars, such as the thorough and multilayered research of Jacky Bratton and Tracy Davis. Yet already our preliminary findings show remarkable similarities to international contexts, demonstrating that peripheral spaces were more conducive to female management, while cultural and political centres were pervaded by male-dominance. 30 The fact that these patterns not only stretch out through geographical space, accounting for several nineteenth-century theatre contexts, but unfortunately also through time, has been highlighted by Ireland ’ s recent “ WakingTheFeminists ” movement. Starting in around 2014, theatre practitioners and researchers in collaboration have pointed out how gender inequality in Ireland ’ s theatre sphere prevails to the present day, presenting evidence, for example, that at Ireland ’ s most renowned stages, those receiving most state funding, the fewest women were involved in leading roles. 31 In German-speaking areas, the patterns are similar, even though comprehensive studies have so far only been published for Germany 32 and are in preparation for Switzerland. It is peripheral spaces, like the OFFtheatre scene, where women mainly hold leading positions yet often face precarious working conditions. Access to the most renowned stages, however, is still made difficult, so that women only rarely appear as managers there. These conditions are only gradually being problematised in academia and above all by people from within the theatre scene, but the established power structures are extremely resistant to propositions for more diversity and equality. Yet, as the situation in Ireland ’ s theatre scene has proved, research and knowledge are key to raising awareness and initiating public debates, hopefully leading to sustainable change and improved conditions in the long term. A critical examination of processes of theatre history writing is as fundamental to moving forward as investigating the practices of female theatre managers in more detail and learning about specific strategies they developed to assert themselves in a male-dominated environment. A precondition to all that is, however, simply revealing their names and their wide-ranging contribution to theatre and society, not only as managers but in a variety of leading roles, from managers and directors to playwrights, acting teachers, agents, theatre owners, set designers, or lessees. Tracy Davis and Ellen Donkin declared “ the first order of business is adjusting the lens so that theatrical activity by women snaps into focus ” 33 . With the methodology we explored in this article, we aspire to take this first step, making these women visible again, and to encourage reflection on how novel approaches, such as including digital methods from geography and the digital humanities, can become a means to systematically uncover marginalised practices and offer counterpoints to male-centred depictions of theatre history. Re-mapping the theatre topography based on theatre almanacs revealed at a glance the work of 67 female managers, most of whom were active in peripheral spaces and are unknown to this day. Inspired by Tracy Davis ’ extensive list of 350 women in leading positions on the British stage 34 , the names we uncovered are also important connecting points for future research. However, the fact that the number of female managers on our list has been growing rapidly since we consulted further material beyond the almanacs, shows that further research is required and that what is more important than our particular methodology is the overarch- 49 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ ing objective to reintroduce these women and to critically assess the entanglement of knowledge production and power with all the means at our disposal. While they were relatively visible and appreciated as theatre managers during their lifetime, the research on our protagonists highlights specific mechanisms of history writing that discredit or exclude them: the inclusion but distorted depiction; the intentional omission or re-attribution of their contribution to a male partner; or being overlooked in conjunction with the marginalisation of other practices, such as provincial and travelling theatres. Jacky Bratton has outlined the importance for a meticulous examination and contextualisation of history writing to understand women ’ s absence or misrepresentation in formative theatre histories, leading also to the point that “ research today constantly turns up women whose contribution to theatre was substantial, innovative and decisive, but whose stories were not remembered or were inaccurately recorded ” 35 . Women ’ s concealed involvement in theatre leadership thus deserves specific attention. As can be seen in the almanacs, the most common path into management for women was inheritance, where they seamlessly took over all tasks and responsibilities. As Davis has written, this proves “ the structure of joint utility that may have operated in many businesses credited to husbands ” 36 , with the only official account of their contribution prior to them taking over the business often being the almanac record listing them as cashiers. At the same time, the frequent constellation of cashier=wife / manager=husband in the almanacs points us to dozens of other cases where wives at least participated in theatre management. In this regard, it is worthwhile to examine women ’ s roles in ‘ theatre families ’ in general, which for us appears to be as ambivalent as female managers ’ situation in peripheral spaces: on the one hand, family-structures made it easier for women to take over any management functions, but on the other hand, their labour was often exploited without recognition or the opportunity to build an independent career. In addition, this might help to deconstruct the myth of single great-manstories, as seen in several examples from the history of science demonstrating how great scientific discoveries were often a collective achievement of married couples or families, but with the entire achievement attributed to the male family head. 37 All these important steps will not only critique, contrast and expand our knowledge of nineteenth-century theatre and help us to appreciate women ’ s manifold contribution therein, but also provide a historic perspective and a basis for discourses on current challenges in society in a broader context. Anmerkungen 1 Until now, no systematic research on female theatre managers in German-speaking theatre has been initiated, while in the international context feminist scholars have laid important groundwork on, for example, the United Kingdom: See among others Tracy C. Davis, “ Female managers, lessees and proprietors of the British stage (to 1914). ” in: Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 28, no. 2 (2000), pp. 115 - 144. Jacky Bratton, The Making of the West End Stage. Marriage, Management and the Mapping of Gender in London, 1830 - 1870, Cambridge 2011. Kerry Powell, Women and Victorian Theatre, Cambridge 1997. Studies on the contemporary context remain equally scarce; there is only one study for Germany and a comprehensive study for Switzerland in preparation: See Gabriele Schulz, “ Zahlen - Daten - Fakten: Geschlechterverhältnisse im Kultur- und Medienbereich. ” in: Gabriele Schulz / Carolin Ries / Olaf Zimmermann (ed.), Frauen in Kultur und Medien. Ein Überblick über aktuelle Tendenzen, Entwicklungen und Lösungsvorschläge, Berlin 2016, pp. 27 - 361. 50 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger However, a few ‘ female principals ’ ( ‘ Prinzipalinnen ’ ) from the eighteenth century are well-known, and numerous publications exist on Friederike Caroline Neuber (1697 - 1760) and Karoline Schulze-Kummerfeld (1742 - 1815): See among others Marion Schulz, “ Friederica Carolina Neuberin - Schauspielerin, Prinzipalin, Bühnenreformerin. Vorreiterin und Unternehmerin des Theaterwesens im 18. Jahrhundert. ” in: Schriften des Neuberin-Museums Reichenbach 45, Reichenbach im Vogtland 2019. Claudia Ulbrich, Gudrun Emberger (eds.), Karoline Kummerfeld. Die Selbstzeugnisse (1782 und 1793), vol. 1, Wien / Köln / Weimar 2020. While nineteenth-century female authors have been explored in Austria ’ s literary studies and general research exists on female entrepreneurship in the field of (women ’ s) history and gender studies, women in the sphere of theatre have predominantly been the subject of critical work with a focus on their role as actresses: See among others Renate Möhrmann, Die Schauspielerin. Zur Kulturgeschichte der weiblichen Bühnenkunst, Frankfurt am Main 1989. Yet among the many famous actresses featured in such publications, some also managed prominent theatres - a fact that is rarely acknowledged in such studies. Apart from a few brief entries in biographical encyclopaedias, women as theatre managers are visible mostly in the field of local histories. Such works aimed for a comprehensive presentation of a town ’ s, region ’ s or theatre venue ’ s history, thereby in principle listing or commenting on all theatre managers - male and female - of a specific place: See among many others Anton Bauer, 150 Jahre Theater an der Wien, Zürich / Wien 1952. Cornelius Mitterer, “ Peripherie-Kultur. Das Rudolfsheimer-Volkstheater und die Metropolisierung Wiens. Mit einer erstmaligen Repertoire-Zusammenstellung im Anhang ” in: Nestroyana. Blätter der Internationalen Nestroy-Gesellschaft 39, no. 1/ 2 (2019), pp. 80 - 111. 2 See Bérénice Hebenstreit, Michael Isenberg, “ Von wegen Vielfalt: So ungleich sind Österreichs Theater. ” Mosaik, blog entry, 2018, www.mosaik-blog.at/ theater-oesterreich-un gleich-geschlecht-frauen-maenner/ [Accessed 9.8.2024]. On the topic, see also Kathrin Schwiering, THEATER.MACHER.INNEN - Wie gleichberechtigt ist das Theater? Television documentary for 3sat, 37 min, 2020. 3 We use the term female theatre managers to translate the German terminology ‘ Theaterdirektorin ’ , which was used in contemporary reporting and in the theatre almanacs but could be misleading in the English translation ‘ director ’ , because it insufficiently indicates the entrepreneurial side of leading a theatre. In research on the British and American Theatre “ women (theatre) managers ” and “ manageress ” are other terms used. See Jane K. Curry, Nineteenth-century American Women Theatre Managers, Westport 1994. Tracy C. Davis, The Economics of the British Stage, 1800 - 1914, Cambridge 2000, p. 273. 4 Davis, “ Female managers, lessees and proprietors of the British stage (to 1914) ” , p. 115. 5 See Patrick Aprent, Magret Berger, “ Ambulantes Theater in den Habsburgischen Provinzen. Die Reisende Gesellschaft der Anna Blumlacher in der Steiermark ” in: Nestroyana. Blätter der Internationalen Nestroy-Gesellschaft 40, no. 3/ 4 (2020), pp. 222 - 245. Patrick Aprent, Claudia Mayerhofer, “ Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. ” , fernetzt - Junges Forschungsnetzwerk Frauen- und Geschlechtergeschichte, blog entry, 2020, https: / / www.univie.ac.at/ fer netzt/ 20200615/ [Accessed 9.8.2024]. Patrick Aprent, Anna Blumlacher. Ein Beitrag zur Theatertopographie im 19. Jahrhundert, Unpublished thesis, University of Vienna, 2015. Magret Berger, “ Die Theaterdirektorin Marie Arthur (1835 - 1888) als ein Beispiel für die Praxis einer ‚ Theaterfamilie ‘ in den Provinzen der Habsburgermonarchie im 19. Jahrhundert “ in: Rural History Yearbook 19 (2023). [in preparation] Claudia Mayerhofer, Theaterdirektorinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. Einfluss und Rezeption am Beispiel von Alexandrine von Schönerer (1850 - 1919), Unpublished thesis, University of Vienna. [in progress] 51 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ 6 See Mayerhofer, Theaterdirektorinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. Aprent, Mayerhofer, “ Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. ” 7 See Berger, “ Die Theaterdirektorin Marie Arthur (1835 - 1888) als ein Beispiel für die Praxis einer ‚ Theaterfamilie ‘ in den Provinzen der Habsburgermonarchie im 19. Jahrhundert “ . 8 See Aprent, Anna Blumlacher. Aprent, Berger, “ Ambulantes Theater in den Habsburgischen Provinzen. ” . Aprent, Mayerhofer, “ Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. ” . 9 See Tracy C. Davis, Ellen Donkin, “ Introduction. ” in: Tracy C. Davis / Ellen Donkin (ed.), Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge 1999, pp. 1 - 14, here p. 1. 10 Jacky Bratton, “ Jane Scott the writer manager. ” in: Tracy C. Davis / Ellen Donkin (ed.), Women and Playwriting in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Cambridge 1999, pp. 77 - 98, here p. 78. 11 Davis, Donkin, “ Introduction. ” , p. 4. 12 The concept of a macroscope was introduced to humanities scholars by historian Tim Hitchcock in 2014, highlighting the potential to enhance in-depth qualitative research with emerging digital methods and infrastructures. Hitchcock thereby builds on the work of computer scientist Katy Börner, who conceived the macroscope as a novel digital tool to analyse and visualise ever-growing complex data-sets by blending different methods and levels of scope. See Tim Hitchcock, “ Big Data, Small Data and Meaning ” , Historyonics, blog entry, 2014, http: / / historyonics.blogspot.com/ 2014/ [Accessed 9.8.2024]. Tim Hitchcock, William J. Turkel, “ The Old Bailey Proceedings, 1674 - 1913. Text Mining for Evidence of Court Behavior. ” in: Law and History Review 34, no. 4 (2016), pp. 929 - 955, doi: https: / / doi.org/ 10.1017/ S0738248016000304. Katy Börner, “ Plug-and-Play Macroscopes. ” in: Communications of the ACM 54, no. 3 (2011), pp. 60 - 69, doi: https: / / doi.org/ 10.11 45/ 1897852.1897871. 13 See Paul S. Ulrich, Wiener Theater (1752 - 1918). Dokumentation zu Topographie und Repertoire anhand von universalen Theateralmanachen und lokalen Theaterjournalen mit einem Überblick zu Zeitungen mit Theaterreferaten und deren Referenten, Wien 2018, pp. XXX - XXXI. 14 The in-depth qualitative research on our protagonists allowed us to examine the almanac-content for accuracy and completeness in more detail and revealed an agreement of around 66 % with the detailed itineraries we compiled by utilising other source materials. Limitations of almanacs include that i) occasional misspelling or the sole mentioning of surnames without a pronoun complicates the identification or disambiguation of persons and their gender; ii) the further away theatre operations were located from the place of publication, the more sporadically they are documented in the almanac; iii) travelling theatre was only featured to a greater extent in later editions; whereas iv) other entertainment formats with theatrical activities, such as music halls and varietés, were excluded and only a later published almanac format, the so-called ‘ Artisten-Kalender ’ , provides information on a variety of other marginalised theatre forms. Almanacs, therefore, have their gaps and errors, while source-specific constraints such as the once-a-year distribution made it impossible to keep up with the dynamic theatre conditions, with the published content capturing only the beginning of a restless theatre season in which personnel constantly changed. See also Ulrich, Wiener Theater (1752 - 1918), pp. XXX - XXXI. 15 The data set includes, among others, the three longest published almanacs, the Almanach für Freunde der Schauspielkunst (later Deutscher Bühnen-Almanach) from 1836 - 1893, Ferdinand Roeder ’ s Theater-Kalender from 1858 - 1879 and the Almanach der Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnenangehöriger (later Neuer Theater-Almanach and Deutsches Bühnenjahrbuch) from 1873 to the present. Ulrich ’ s compilations gather all almanac-information on Vienna ’ s and Austria ’ s theatres and theatre managers. The digitised compilations were restructured semi-automatically into two data 52 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger sets: the first lists all managers alphabetically with their gender added on; the second compiles all mentioned places and adds how many female and male managers worked at each place as well as adding the geo coordinates and a geonames-ID to the places. The second data table consists of these columns: geonames-ID - place - lat - lon - SumMan - SumFemMan - %Male- Man - %FemMan. Concerning this data material, the following aspects have to be considered: i) For the purposes of this paper, we have focused on what are today ’ s Austrian territorial borders, even though these were of marginal importance in the historical context as German-speaking theatre was a far-reaching network encompassing all of Central Europe; ii) we have not considered specific time periods or forms of theatre such as differentiating between the regular theatre season and summer theatre; iii) the dataset and Ulrich ’ s database are not critically curated but a mere recording of the almanac content, with all inaccuracies of the source material remaining in place. Our only curatorial intervention was to review around 30 theatre managers whose allocation of gender was unclear from the almanac entries and specify gender where it was possible while excluding 10 names where it was unfeasible. For the data basis, see Ulrich, Wiener Theater (1752 - 1918). Paul S. Ulrich, Itinerare der Direktoren in Österreich 1775 - 1918 [unpublished manuscript, available at the Don Juan Archive Vienna]. 16 See also Mitterer, “ Peripherie-Kultur ” , p. 105. Christian K. Fastl, “ Friedrich Strampfer ” , Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon (ÖBL), 2009, http: / / www.biogra phien.ac.at/ oebl/ oebl_S/ Strampfer_Frie drich_1823_1890.xml [Accessed 19.8.2024]. 17 For the theatre in Grein, see Karl Hohensinner, Ein Theater, vier Jahrhunderte. Stadttheater Grein, Grein 2022. 18 See Peter Schmitt, Schauspieler und Theaterbetrieb. Studien zur Sozialgeschichte des Schauspielerstandes im deutschsprachigen Raum 1700 - 1900, Tübingen 1990, p. 19. Aprent, Berger, “ Ambulantes Theater in den Habsburgischen Provinzen ” . 19 See Aprent, Anna Blumlacher. Aprent, Berger, “ Ambulantes Theater in den Habsburgischen Provinzen ” . Aprent, Mayerhofer, “ Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. ” . Miroslav Luká š , “ Lazary Anna. ” , Tschechische Theaterenzyklopädie ( č eská divadelní encyklopedie), 2019, http: / / encyklope die.idu.cz/ index.php? option=com_content& view=article&id=5150: lazary-anna&Itemi d=277&lang=de [Accessed 5.8.2024]. 20 Davis, The Economics of the British Stage, p. 275. 21 See Aprent, Mayerhofer, “ Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. ” . 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid. 24 See also Davis, The Economics of the British Stage, pp. 300 - 301. 25 See Aprent, Mayerhofer, “ Theaterunternehmerinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. ” . 26 See Berger, “ Die Theaterdirektorin Marie Arthur (1835 - 1888) als ein Beispiel für die Praxis einer ‚ Theaterfamilie ‘ in den Provinzen der Habsburgermonarchie im 19. Jahrhundert ” . 27 See Davis, The Economics of the British Stage, pp. 273 - 274. 28 See Mayerhofer, Theaterdirektorinnen im 19. Jahrhundert. For such a representation of von Schönerer, see Rudolf Holzer, Die Wiener Vorstadtbühnen. Alexander Girardi und das Theater an der Wien, Wien 1951. 29 Charlotte Canning, “ Feminist Performance as Feminist Historiography. ” in: Theatre Survey 45, no. 2 (2004), pp. 227 - 233, here p. 228, doi: https: / / doi.org/ 10.1017/ S004055 7404000183. 30 See Davis, The Economics of the British Stage, pp. 273 - 274. 31 See Brenda Donohue, Ciara O ’ Dowd, Tanya Dean, Ciara Murphy, Kathleen Cawley, Kate Harris, gender counts. An analysis of gender in Irish theatre 2006 - 2015, 2017, www.arts council.ie/ uploadedFiles/ Main_Site/ Con tent/ About_Us/ Gender_Counts_WakingThe Feminists_2017.pdf [Accessed on 10.08. 2024]. 32 See Schulz, “ Zahlen - Daten - Fakten: Geschlechterverhältnisse im Kultur- und Medienbereich. ” . 53 Female Theatre Managers in ‘ Peripheral Spaces ’ 33 Davis, Donkin, “ Introduction. ” , p. 5. 34 See Davis, “ Female managers, lessees and proprietors of the British stage (to 1914) ” . 35 Jacky Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History, Cambridge 2003, pp. 14 - 15. 36 Davis, The Economics of the British Stage, p. 274. 37 See Sandra Klos, Doris A. Corradini, Brigitte Mazohl, “ Störfall Gender. Weibliche Mitglieder - wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterinnen - Förderpolitik - Forschungsperspektiven. ” in: Johannes Feichtinger / Brigitte Mazohl (ed.), Die Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaft 1847 - 2022. Eine neue Akademiegeschichte, vol. III, Wien 2022, pp. 63 - 175. 54 Patrick Aprent / Magret Berger