Steve, you've studied national theaters in great depth.
The national theater of course is a tricky term.
Like in Germany we have several.
>> Mm-hm.
>> Most countries only have one.
Well, how do you understand the sort of difference between.
Some countries having several and other countries only having one.
>> Yes. Well I think there are a lot of different
possibilities for national theaters.
And the, I suppose the initial idea was to have one and for
it to represent the nation in some ways.
Though usually it was in the capital city.
But certainly there are a, a number of ways in which national
theaters have been formed and have addressed the population.
In some countries there's a, a whole,
proliferation of national theaters usually in cities.
But in some cases, there are national theaters which are traveling so
that they don't have actually a theater base, but
they have an administrative base, and then they travel around the country.
So one of the ideas of a national theater is how do you address the, the nation?
How do you reach the population, and
how do you represent the nation in the theater?
So for example, in Scotland recently, they created a national theater
in the 21st century which just has an administrative base and
puts on performances in theaters around the country.
And when those theaters put on national theater plays they're
called the National Theater of Scotland, even though.
They would not necessarily have the same actors in them, or
the same personnel involved in them.
>> When most people think of a national theater, they think of a building
and you're saying of course that this is the newest trend is,
you don't have a building, normally you do have a building.
>> Yes. And
this connection between the National Theatre and
a building seems to be very important once.
What's the significance of the, of the building?
>> Well, I think it certainly started out that way.
So you have the Comedie Francaise.
You have the Dramaten in Sweden.
You have the Burgtheater in Austria, as national theaters which,
with very grand buildings.
And so in a sense,
a lot of the national theaters that were created after these imitated this pattern.
So, for example in the 19th century,
where a number of countries were creating national theaters.
And particularly in areas where countries were just emerging and
so they created national theaters to represent the emerging nation.
These very often were copies of national theaters in other countries,
and very often in a kind of neoclassical style.
So that was very much a 19th century
