Social Imaginaries and a Culture of Circulation: Sanna kvinnor in Late Nineteenth-Century Nordic Theatre

Abstract

Anne Charlotte Leffler's play Sanna kvinnor (True Women) (1883), together with other late nineteenth-century plays by women playwrights, is considered a significant historical event in Swedish theatre histories, regarded as a successful feminist intervention. This study examines the cultural-specific conditions and agendas that governed the interpretations of Sanna kvinnor at the theatres. Theoretically, it is based on the idea of plays as the initiators of circulation, which in turn is performative. The focus is on the social imaginaries that are reinstated by the stagings and their interpretations, and how these imaginaries reciprocally shape the interpretations of the play's central theme, protagonist and audience address. The article provides an overview of the various social imaginaries at play and identifies the cultural and social abstractions that form a specific culture of circulation. The encounters between the play and various Nordic theatre environments are examined by closely analyzing and contextualizing theatrical reviews.