This year sees the inaugural series of lectures from the Centre for
Performance Histories. A key component of the year's activities will be the British Asian Conference at Easter 2008 (website)
Our broad theme for this year is Alternative Histories.
We invited our speakers to respond to the following provocation.
The recent reinvigoration of theatre history has focused on questions of historiography and asked us to reconsider the methods we use to construct our cultural history. Whilst this has produced some very stimulating work on alternative historiographies, it has not always resulted in challenging
the subject matter of our study. As a general theme this year we are interested in performances that have been situated beyond the mainstream or centre: performance modes and events that have been considered regional or local (both geographically and culturally), minority, specialist, or popular. From such subjects truly alternative historiography, of course, emerges.
Seminars run on Wednesday afternoons 2-4pm in Studio TS2 in the Alexander Building at Thornlea, New North Road, Exeter
Places are limited, so please reserve a seat with Amanda Edmondson (a.j.edmondson@exeter.ac.uk)
28th September 2007
Pre-sessional Keynote Speaker: Andreas Kotte, Universität Bern, Switzerland
How to write a Theatre History nowadays?
The three main questions (in my opinion) that cause the direction, the construction mode, of every long term Theatre History we know are:
How to deal with
1. the beginnings
2. the so called "theatre vacuum" (500-900), alternatively the "second birth of theatre" in the Middle Ages", and
3. the media (of the last 100 years)?
Prof. Kotte is the author of 'The Transformation of a Ceremony of Penance into a Play' in Theatrical Events. Borders, Dynamics,
Frames, ed. Vicky Ann Cremona et al, (New York: Rodopi, 2004) 53-68, and An Introduction to Theatre Research (Theaterwissenschaft. Eine Einführung. Böhlau 2005) that will be translatetd into English this year, and of the forthcoming companion volume, An Introduction to Theatre History.
7th November 2007
Rukhsana Ahmad, writer, director and academic.
Experiments in theatre from the margins: text, performance and Asian women writers
Rukhsana Ahmad discusses the insights gained while she was artistic director of Kali Theatre Company, from presenting two theatre projects for survivors of domestic violence (many of whom were non-English speakers) alongside a more conventional writer development programme for second-generation, mostly middle-class women. She will reflect on writing, writers, performance texts and audiences.
21st November 2007
Prof. Peter Thomson
Why Didn't Edmund Kean want to play Iago?
The role of Othello has been the ruin of many fine actors, but many of his contemporaries thought it Kean's finest achievement. He seems to have felt it as a context for single combat with his Iagos. Why put himself at so much risk? He was, after all, a 'natural' Iago and an 'unnatural' Othello. As Iago, he could have vanquished any Othello (as Irving and Bob Peck did theirs). Was there something in the Zeitgeist?
9th January 2008
Prof. Phillip Zarrilli, University of Exeter
Ethnography and history[ies]: How do we write and represent the theatre of non-Western cultures?
and What's in a Title? Why histories?
Using a short videotape of a performance, Zarrilli will begin the session with a brief presentation about kathakali dance-drama that opens up questions of how a Western historian/scholar/practitioner writes/represents a non-Western genre of performance. How does one come to “understand” and “represent” a complex performance that is outside one’s own usual frames of reference? What is ethnography? What does one need to examine in order to begin to attempt to understand performance in another culture? How does one combine ethnographic field research with the writing of history? Of what benefit is it to western theatre practitioners to learn about the history and practices of non-western theatre genres?
After the initial presentation/discussion, Zarrilli will focus (with Jane Milling as agent provocateur) on whether/how the recently published co-authored volume, Theatre Histories: An Introduction, is attempting to challenge the way that one-volume histories of theatre have been written to date, especially with reference to the inclusion of non-western histories such as kathakali. Here we address why “histories” and not “history”?
[The recently published book, Theatre Histories: An Introduction, was co-authored by Phillip Zarrilli with Bruce McConachie, Gary Jay Williams, and Carol Sorgenfrei (London: Routledge, 2006). Writing “against” previous one-volume histories of theatre, Theatre Histories attempts to radically shift how the history of theatre is read/taught at beginning levels. Theatre Histories purports to accomplish this radical shift by organizing the book to provide
- an understanding of how key shifts in human communication shaped developments in the history of theatre and performance
- an introduction to the methodologies employed by today’s theatre historians
- case studies which demonstrate “history at work”
- a global perspective on drama, theatre, and performance].
Those attending may wish to have a look at Theatre Histories: An Introduction prior to the session.
Phillip Zarrilli: Zarrilli’s historical research has combined seven years of ethnographic field work with the writing of histories of non-Western embodied practices of kathakali dance-drama, and kalarippayattu of Kerala, India. He has also co-authored an ethnographic history of performances in a middle-American Swiss American community based on living in the village of New Glarus, Wisconsin for two years. Using ethnography and history as his research tools, he has authored/co-authored four books including: The Kathakali Complex: Actor, Performance, Structure (New Delhi: Abhinav, 1984); When ‘the body becomes all eyes: paradigms, practices and discourses of power in kalarippayattu—a south Indian martial art (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Kathakali Dance-drama: Where Gods and Demons Come to Play (London: Routledge, 2000); and (co-authored with Deborah Neff) Wilhelm Tell in America’s Little Switzerland (Onalaska, 1987). The history of performances in New Glarus, Wisconsin also included an NEH-funded 50 minute documentary, “Backstage/Frontstage: Wilhelm Tell in New Glarus, Wisconsin”. This documentary was made in collaboration with the interdisciplinary Folklore Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
6th February 2008
Professor Adrienne Scullion, University of Glasgow
Scottish Pantomime: Past and Present
This seminar examines questions surrounding nationality, identity and popular theatre forms.
How 'popular' are such popular forms today, and how are their politics read by the academic community and wider public?
What are the possibilities and pitfalls of using and constructing oral history?
5th March 2008
Prof. Jane Moody, University of York.
Theatrical Censorship: Critical Perspectives from the 1790s
Jane Moody is Professor in the Department of English and Related Literature at the University of York. She is the author of Illegitimate Theatre in London, 1770-1840 (Cambridge UP, 2000) and co-editor of Theatre and Celebrity in Britain, 1660-2000 (Palgrave, 2005) and The Cambridge Companion to British Theatre, 1730-1830 (Cambridge UP, 2007).
7th May 2008
Paul Clarke, University of Bristol
Performing the Archive: The Future Of The Past
This talk will present the Great Western Research project, hosted by the Live Art Archives at Bristol University, Arnolfini's Archive and Exeter University. The presentation will contemplate possible postmodern archives, open to the ephemeral and indiscrete, to multiple versions, rather than aspiring towards authentication. We are interested in what remains of performances, where these residues remain and how they might be both retained and distributed. In order to be stored for posterity, performance tends to be transformed into objects, how might these documents perform and the archives that hold them remain eventful? Archives of such art-historical events can be considered as resources for re-use and invention, inspiring future moves in the performance scene. What role might revival, reenactment and re-performance play as acts of remaining, means of reappearance and ways of doing theatre history?
28th May 2008
Professor Theresa Buckland, De Montfort University
Amateurs and Professionals: Dancing on Stage and in Salons in Late Victorian High Society
In the late nineteenth century, a craze for performing stage dances hit high society circles in England. Dancing masters were inundated with requests to learn skirt dancing, as popularised by dancers largely associated with the Gaiety Theatre. Reconstructions of historical dances and step dances also contributed to the repertoire of high class ladies performing in salons, in amateur theatricals and, in some instances, on the professional stage. Largely ignored by theatre historians, concert dance and social dance historians, late Victorian amateur dancing and its relationship to the popular stage opens a window on to the performance of changing gender expectations, social mobility, and emerging theatrical dance genres during a critical period of socio-cultural transition in Britain.
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