What Makes a Theatre Production International?

What makes a theatre production international?

A theatre production is international when its making, its presentation or its circulation depends on more than one national context. The dependency may be artistic — performers, directors, designers or playwrights drawn from different countries; financial — commissioners, funders or presenters in several territories; linguistic — a play performed in translation, or several languages on stage at once; or logistical — a tour, a festival engagement, a residency or a remote collaboration. On this definition, internationality describes a set of relationships and infrastructures rather than a level of prestige.

Keeping the definition plural matters in practice. A production can be international in its making and never leave its home city: a co-commission assembled from partners in three countries may premiere in one of them and be seen nowhere else. Conversely, a show devised entirely within one national theatre system becomes international in circulation the moment it tours, is streamed across borders, or is licensed for performance in another language. Most confusion arises when people assume these different forms of internationality always coincide.

Four axes: creation, presentation, circulation, reception

Creation. Who makes the work, under whose conventions, and with whose money? A rehearsal room containing artists from several theatre cultures is already an international space, even before any audience abroad sees the result. Questions of working method — how a director gives notes, whether a dramaturg is present, how long a rehearsal period lasts — become negotiations between different professional norms.

Presentation. Where and to whom is the work shown? A festival appearance abroad, a bilingual production in a border city, or a performance with surtitles for an audience that does not speak the stage language all make the event international at the point of reception.

Circulation. How does the work travel afterwards — as a touring production, a licensed text, a recording, a stream? Circulation usually involves rights, contracts and transport, and it is often where the least glamorous and most consequential decisions are made.

Reception. What does an audience need in order to read the work? Programme notes, surtitles, front-of-house context and press framing are part of the international life of a production, and they are frequently under-resourced relative to the cost of moving bodies and scenery.

International, intercultural, transnational, multilingual

These terms are often used as synonyms. They are not, and the differences help clarify what a given production is actually doing.

An international production need not be intercultural: a company may tour a familiar repertoire abroad without engaging the host culture’s performance traditions at all. Equally, an intercultural project may be made entirely within one country by artists from different communities. Naming the axis accurately helps artists, producers and scholars avoid claiming more than the work actually does.

The circulation of a canonical repertoire shows how these categories overlap. Dennis Kennedy’s chapter on global Shakespeare and globalised performance, in The Oxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Performance, treats the worldwide adaptation of Shakespeare as a field in which a shared dramatic corpus is continually reshaped by local performance cultures — an international circulation that becomes intercultural only through specific choices of language, form and casting.

Co-production as the structural heart of much international work

Co-production is the most common way of assembling a production that belongs to more than one country. Partners — theatres, festivals, producers, funders — contribute money, space, personnel or presentation slots, and in return receive performances, credits, rights or influence over the work’s development. The International Co-Production Manual, written and researched by Judith Staines, Sophie Travers and M J Chung and available through IETM, describes the process as a journey ‘full of surprises’ and gives sustained attention to partners, festivals, venues, contracts and the slow work of building relationships.

In practice, co-production terms vary widely: some partners co-commission a new work, some buy a share of a finished production, some provide residencies or in-kind support. Whatever the model, the agreement should be explicit about credits and billing, territories and exclusivity, the number and timing of performances, cancellation and insurance, intellectual property, translation and adaptation permissions, and documentation or recording. Assumptions left unwritten tend to surface as disputes once the work is successful enough to travel further.

Touring, festivals and mobility

Touring is the most visible form of international activity, and the most easily underestimated. Gary Hills’s Guide to International Touring (published 2021, updated 2023) organises the work around research, partnerships, finances, practicalities and marketing, and stresses that finding contacts and building long-term relationships takes time. The Guardian’s practitioner advice on touring internationally makes the same point bluntly: the international market is not ‘paved with gold’, and unfamiliar touring structures and language differences mean that things rarely happen quickly.

Practical mobility questions — work permits and visas, customs treatment of equipment, freight, insurance, and the tax position of visiting artists — are jurisdiction-specific and change frequently. Companies should verify requirements with the receiving venue, the relevant embassy or consulate, and the customs authority of each country concerned, rather than relying on another company’s past experience. A festival invitation is not a guarantee that the necessary permissions will be granted.

Translation, surtitles and working across languages

Language is where international production most often becomes visible to an audience, and where the most careful decisions are needed. Three distinct activities are frequently conflated. First, translating the play: producing a performable version from a source text, usually requiring permission from the playwright or rights holder for the territory and period concerned. Second, translating for the audience: surtitles, simultaneous interpreting or translated programmes, which are dramaturgical choices about what to condense, cut or explain. Third, interpreting for the rehearsal room: the informal, high-skill work that allows a director and an actor without a shared language to reach an agreement about a scene.

Each activity deserves credit. Translators are authors of the performed text and should be named as such; interpreters and cultural consultants are collaborators, not furniture. Productions that treat language access as an afterthought tend to produce surtitles that describe the plot while missing the joke, or rehearsal processes in which one language quietly dominates every decision.

Money, rights and contracts

International work multiplies the number of legal systems in play. Funding may combine public subsidy, foundations, co-commissioners and box office across several currencies; contracts may specify a governing law and a jurisdiction for disputes; payments may be subject to withholding tax; royalties and fees may be treated differently depending on where the performance takes place. None of this can be settled generically. Producers should take local professional advice in each territory and confirm the position in writing before contracts are signed.

Misconceptions about international theatre

• That international means better. Crossing a border is a logistical and artistic choice, not an artistic achievement in itself.
• That international means foreign. Work made by artists from several countries for a local audience is international in its making without ever being exotic to its public.
• That a country has one theatrical tradition. National theatre systems contain competing forms, languages and institutions; treating a country as a single style misrepresents the artists involved.
• That English solves the problem. A shared working language reduces interpreting costs but does not remove the asymmetries it creates in the rehearsal room.
• That co-production is the only model. Touring, licensing, translation, residencies and digital exchange are all meaningful forms of international activity in their own right.

A practical check: how is this production international?

1. Which countries are represented among the creative team, and who holds decision-making authority?
2. Where does the money come from, and what obligations does each funder or partner attach to it?
3. In what languages does the work exist — in rehearsal, on stage, in the surtitles, in the contract?
4. Who has granted permission for translation or adaptation, for which territories and for how long?
5. How will the work travel, and who is responsible for visas, freight, insurance and taxation?
6. What is documented, who consents to it, and where will the record live?

Documentation, credit and ethics

International projects generate material — rehearsal footage, translated scripts, workshop recordings — that may be valuable to partners with very different resources. Agreements should establish who may record, publish or archive what, how contributors are credited, and how consent is obtained and withdrawn. Unequal access to funding, travel documents or institutional support shapes who is visible in the record; documentation is one place where that imbalance can be either reproduced or corrected.

Why the definition is worth keeping

Calling a production international is a claim about how it was made, paid for, shown and understood. Used precisely, the term tells a reader or an audience which questions to ask: about partners, languages, rights and mobility. Used loosely, it becomes a promotional adjective that obscures exactly the labour — translators, producers, technicians, hosts — on which international theatre depends.