Bulbs Onstage: Theatrical Hygiene and the Electrification of Performance

European theatres were electrified between 1883 and 1913. This process has traditionally been associated with the advent of modernist theatre, but the details have rarely been examined, nor has the scope of the process's social and technological impacts been analysed. Reconstructing light bulbs' early appearances in theatrical practice and discourse, this article traces the intricate entanglement between the electrical industry and theatrical culture around the turn of the century and highlights electricity's entanglement with concepts of hygiene and healing. Discussing an early light bulb in use in Bayreuth in 1882, the marketing strategies of the German Edison Company and Adolphe Appia's early manifesto, the article shows how electrification of theatres was shaped by competing visions of a future theatre. Also it demonstrates that aesthetics, technology and politics were intricately entangled in this process. Refuting teleological narratives of aesthetic progress, the paper proposes reframing modernist theatre's artistic autonomy as dependent on its embeddedness within the technologies of modernity.