How Should Theatre Programmes Explain Cultural Context Without Exoticising a Production?

Direct answer: A theatre programme should explain the cultural context that the production actually uses, not the whole culture it is supposed to come from. It should be specific, attributed, partial and tied to the choices on stage: whose story, which language, what place and period, which translation or adaptation, and which conventions the audience is being invited to notice. Context should help spectators meet the work on its own terms; it should not turn difference into atmosphere, promise an authentic experience or present a nation as a single personality.

The risk is not that programmes contain context. The risk is that context becomes a substitute for dramaturgy. A note that begins with a broad country profile and ends with a list of colourful customs tells the audience what to expect from them; a note that begins with the production’s actual materials tells the audience what to notice in this performance. The first approach exoticises. The second contextualises. The distinction matters most in international, intercultural and multilingual theatre, where audiences may be encountering a convention, a language or a history for the first time.

What exoticism does to context

Exoticism treats another culture as a spectacle of difference. It makes culture look timeless, homogeneous and available for the spectator’s pleasure, while hiding the labour, politics and specific artists who made the work. In programme copy, exoticism often appears as adjectives: mystical, ancient, ritualistic, raw, authentic. It can also appear as structure: a general history of a region, a list of festivals, or a claim that a production opens a window onto a culture. Such material may be well intentioned, but it positions the audience outside the work and asks them to consume a culture rather than follow a performance.

Discussions of cultural appropriation are useful here because they shift attention from good intentions to the criteria by which intercultural work is made and explained. In a HowlRound essay on the subject, cultural appropriation is described as a failure to adequately translate the semiotics—the signs and sign processes—from one culture to another; the essay also frames the issue as a way to examine representation and definitions of cultural property (HowlRound Theatre Commons). For programme writers, that is a practical warning: if the production’s signs are not translated in some way, the vacuum may be filled by stereotypes. Context should therefore be part of the translation, not an ornamental supplement to it.

Begin with the production, not the nation

The most reliable starting point is the production itself. What does the audience need to know to follow this particular dramaturgy? Which references are essential, which are useful, and which are merely biographical or touristic? A play may be set in a city at a particular historical moment, use a dialect or musical form, depend on kinship structures, or quote a political debate. Those are specific contexts. The culture of X is not.

An article on translating performance notes that the context and reception of a production change depending on where it is performed, and that the more specific a play is to a location, time and society, the more it becomes a code that may need to be deciphered, sometimes even explained (Translating Performance). This is not an argument for explaining everything. It is an argument for identifying the specific codes the production is using and deciding which ones programme material can helpfully illuminate.

A useful editorial question is: what would a spectator miss without this information? If the answer is that they would miss the plot, explain the relevant custom or event. If the answer is that they would miss the production’s formal choice, explain the convention or reference. If the answer is that they would miss nothing but the show would feel more foreign, cut it. Programmes should orient, not decode an entire culture.

Principles for programme copy

Name the specific frame

Prefer precise nouns to broad cultural labels. Name the city, institution, language, community, period, political event or performance tradition that the production actually engages. If a work draws on more than one tradition, say so. If the production is a contemporary response rather than a reconstruction, say that too. Specificity is not pedantry; it prevents a single production from being treated as representative of everyone who shares a language or nationality.

Attribute knowledge and agency

Context is not neutral. Programme copy should show who is speaking: the playwright, the director, the translator, the dramaturg, a cultural adviser, a community partner or the production’s research team. Quotations and credited contributions are better than anonymous assertions about what a culture believes. Attribution also makes disagreement visible. If the production interprets a history differently from a standard account, the programme can say so without pretending to settle the argument.

Guidance for directing and teaching culturally inclusive drama in global contexts stresses on-the-ground perspectives, tensions and discoveries rather than abstract summaries of Western or non-Western theatre (ISTA). The same principle applies to programmes. A credited perspective from the artists involved is usually more useful than a general essay assembled from second-hand summaries.

Make translation and adaptation visible

If the production is translated, adapted or performed multilingually, the programme should say so plainly. Which language or languages are spoken? Who translated the text, and what approach did they take? Are there surtitles, an interpreted performance, a published translation or a devised bilingual element? Were cuts, relocations or updates made? These are not technical footnotes; they are part of the audience’s dramaturgical experience.

The notion of a dramaturgical bridge is helpful here. A Routledge chapter with that title describes contextualising foreignness in multilingual theatre, including a bilingual production of Abraham Goldfaden’s Yiddish operetta Shulamis at Harvard University (Routledge). The value of the idea is that foreignness is not denied or turned into spectacle; it is mediated through dramaturgy, rehearsal and explanation. Programme material can be one plank of that bridge, provided it helps audiences understand the production’s own translation choices rather than pretending that translation is transparent.

Offer entry points, not a total explanation

Short, well-edited formats often work better than a long cultural essay: a dramaturgical note of 400 to 700 words; a timeline of the specific events the play references; a glossary of five to eight terms as they are used in the production; a pronunciation guide for names and key phrases; a map or family-tree diagram; a translation note; a content note; and a list of credited sources or further reading. Digital programmes can add audio introductions or linked recordings, but accessibility should be planned from the start: large print, screen-reader-compatible files, high contrast and plain-language summaries.

Each entry point should answer a question the production raises. A glossary that defines every food, garment and festival in a country is a tourist guide. A glossary that explains three terms on which a scene’s joke, conflict or kinship logic depends is a dramaturgical tool.

Mark uncertainty and plurality

Histories and cultural practices are often contested. A programme can say that this production draws on a particular source or that the creative team interprets a tradition in a particular way, rather than declaring that this is how things are. It can note that a tradition has regional variations, that a source is disputed, or that the production deliberately mixes periods. Such qualifications do not weaken the writing; they make it more accurate and less exoticising, because they refuse to present culture as a fixed, singular essence.

Avoid othering language

Edit out language that turns people into specimens or atmosphere. Be cautious with words such as tribal, primitive, mystical, exotic and authentic unless they are quoted from the artists and clearly framed. Avoid we and they when the actual relationship is between this production and this audience. Use active constructions: the translator has moved the play’s idiom into a new theatrical vocabulary, rather than the play is imbued with the mysticism of a place. Describe what the work does, not what the spectator is supposed to feel about the culture.

A practical drafting workflow

1. Agree the context brief with the artistic team. Ask the director, dramaturg and translator what a first-time audience needs, what misconceptions might block reception, and what the production is not trying to explain.
2. Gather primary and credited material. Use the script, production notes, interviews, programme credits, translation drafts and reliable scholarship. Keep a record of who supplied each claim.
3. Sort information into three columns: essential to follow the production; useful for understanding its choices; and merely interesting background. Cut the third column unless it can be tied to a specific choice.
4. Draft with a specificity test. For every sentence, ask whether it could be said of any production from this country or language. If yes, revise or remove it.
5. Review with the artists and, where appropriate, cultural advisers. Check names, diacritics, dates, titles and translation credits. Seek consent before publishing knowledge that a community or individual has shared in a rehearsal or research context.
6. Test the draft with two kinds of reader: someone unfamiliar with the production’s context, who can identify missing explanations, and someone familiar with it, who can identify distortions or stereotypes. Do not ask either reader to speak for an entire culture.
7. Edit for tone and access. Read the copy aloud. Replace abstractions with examples, remove adjectives that promise atmosphere, and prepare accessible versions.
8. Date and archive the programme. Record the production, venue, language and publication date. If the production tours, revise the context for each reception rather than recycling the same national introduction.

Common pitfalls and better alternatives

Evaluation questions for editors and producers

Before publication, check whether the programme answers the reader’s likely question without over-answering it. Does every context sentence connect to something the audience will see or hear? Is the scale of explanation proportionate to the production? Are names, languages and roles accurate? Does the copy make the culture seem static, or does it show specific people making specific choices? Are translation and adaptation visible? Is uncertainty marked where the evidence is contested? Have the artists had a chance to correct the text? Is the programme accessible in print and digital form? Finally, does the copy invite attention to the performance, or does it promise an exotic experience that the performance may not, and should not, supply?

A good theatre programme is not a passport to a culture. It is a dramaturgical companion. It gives the audience enough specific, attributed and carefully edited information to meet the work on its own terms, while leaving room for the work to remain itself. That is the difference between explaining context and exoticising a production.