Beschreibung:
This article focuses on the way musical theater venues in Montreal were booked and managedduring the continental integration of North American theater industries from the 1880s tothe First World War. It investigates how local theater owners and managers cooperated withrepresentatives of U.S.-American circuits and booking agencies that provided the shows. Theyhad to find ways to reconcile the fragmented audiences in the bilingual city with the increasinglystandardized theatrical offers available. A closer look at different kinds of mediating actorsand organizations and at the range and mechanisms of the supply networks explains whythose relations often did not remain anchored in a particular venue over a longer period. Theprofiles of theaters in Montreal shifted frequently when an especially dynamic phase of socialand cultural specialization in the urban sphere overlapped with growing trans-regional rivalriesbetween competing theatrical circuits.