Associate Theatre Professor Eero Laine Honored with ASTR Collaborative Research Award
Published November 25, 2025
Associate Theatre Professor Eero Laine
The American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) has recognized Associate Professor Eero Laine with its prestigious Collaborative Research Award. Laine, a former chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, has also served as director of graduate studies and director of theatre studies.
The ASTR Collaborative Research Award is designed to promote the exchange of ideas and scholarship across diverse academic and community contexts, both within the United States and internationally. It also seeks to advance research in areas that are underrepresented in U.S. theatre scholarship, pedagogy, and performance practice
The awarded project is a collaborative book titled: “Commercial Performance: The Political Economy of Show Business.” “I am developing the book with colleagues in the US, UK, and Canada,” Laine said. “The book examines the global circuits of theatrical capital, approaching show business as a cultural and industrial apparatus. The project emphasizes not only the production and consumption of performance but also its circulation: how performances move, are monetized, and reproduce value across borders. From international pop tours to regional dinner theatre, the project interrogates how economic imperatives shape the form and function of performance today.”
“As part of the development of the book and supported by the ASTR award, we will be holding two online symposia in Spring 2026, one hosted by Trinity College in Texas and the other by Queen Mary University in London, to engage with the project’s central questions about the economic and infrastructural forces shaping contemporary commercial performance.
“The symposia invite students, faculty, and the public to transnational dialogues and critical engagement with the political economy of show business. The symposia will present research from the book along with the methodological and theoretical frameworks that underpin it, notably a lab-based model of co-research and collective writing.”
