Intermediality and Liveness at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

Though intermediality is primarily associated with digital and new media, the concept is equally productive in theorizing stage performance and other live art and entertainment. As Chiel Kattenbelt, Freda Chapple, Phillip Auslander, and others have argued, theatrical and other live performances also involve mediation: in these genres, too, it is through material forms such as stage technologies, human bodies, sets and costumes, language, and musical instruments, not to mention advertisements, programs, previews, and reviews that meaning is created. While scholars have employed intermedial frameworks to analyze live performances from various periods, particularly rich approaches have emerged in studies of late nineteenth and early twentieth century performance. Indeed, as Klemens Gruber and others have argued, intermedial practices might be understood to be rooted, albeit not fully deployed, in this era. This chapter surveys scholarship on intermedial performance at the turn of the twentieth century, focusing particularly on its invocation in interdisciplinary studies of both theater and pre- and early cinema technologies. At a historical moment in which emergent media and technologies were often placed in dialogue with, staged alongside, or integrated into established genres and performance forms, intermediality serves as a compelling lens through which to engage the evolving artistic and medial landscape, and the broader cultural practices that surrounded it.