The Development of an Actor’s Cosmopolitan and Enlightened Identity: Their Intermediate and Educational Function of Building a Peaceful World and a Prosperous Urban Culture

Actors’ transnational theatrical activities had cultural significance in promoting reconciliation among people and building a peaceful world. This made them world-citizen models for the practice of contemporary multiculturalism, while also expanding their social authority as global theater icons. This study targets the discourse on actors and theater in the 16th–19th centuries and theorizes about their educational function, commercial spirit, and cosmopolitan critical consciousness against local and oppressive social structures. The eight chapters examine actors as cosmopolitan figures in terms of their relationship with secular authority, as well as their enlightening roles. The book also considers the concept of establishing acting schools and the stage language associated with phonocentrism. Moreover, actors who took a democratic stance on freedom of expression will also be examined for their ethical cosmopolitanism. Actors’ contributions to the fertility of urban culture and the dissemination of pleasure through emotional and aesthetic exchanges between actor and audience strengthened the actor’s transnational cultural integrative function. This led to the global acceptance of their aesthetic and cultural body as a commodity of consumption in the new media age of modernity.