Theorizing Practice Redefining Theatre History

by Worthen, W. B.; Holland, Peter

• ISBN13: 9781403907943
• ISBN10: 1403907943
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-03-04
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

Published in association with the Huntington Library, Theorizing Practice is a series of essays by several of the most significant figures in the field present a wide-ranging interrogation of the practice of theatre history studies at the present time, raising questions of history and historiography; the bearing of national, sexual, and racial identity on the canons of theatre history; the limits of print and the history of non-textual forms of performance; the intersections between theatre and other forms of commodification; and even the work of performance at the borders of the human.

Author Biography

Peter Holland is the McMeel Family Professor of Shakespeare Studies, Department of Film, Television and Theater, University of Notre Dame.

W. B. Worthen is Professor and Chair of the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, University of California, Berkeley.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Notes on the Contributors	xi
Series Introduction: Redefining British Theater History	xv
Peter Holland
Introduction: Theorizing Practice	1	(7)
W.B. Worthen
Historiographies
1 A History of Histories: From Flecknoe to Nicoll	8	(22)
Peter Holland
2 Confessions of an Encyclopedist	30	(17)
Dennis Kennedy
3 The Criteria for Evidence: Anecdotes in Shakespearean Biography, 1709-2000	47	(24)
Thomas Postlewait
Objectivities
4 Decomposing History (Why Are There So Few Women in Theater History?)	71	(17)
Susan Bennett
5 Photography, Theater, Mnemonics; or, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Still	88	(32)
Barbara Hodgdon
6 Vicarious: Theater and the Rise of Synthetic Experience	120	(16)
Joseph Roach
7 Zoo Stories: "Boundary Work" in Theater History	136	(15)
Una Chaudhuri
Dis/Continuities
8 History Plays (in) Britain: Dramas, Nations and Inventing the Present	151	(26)
Loren Kruger
9 Deus ex machina in the Modern Theater: Theater, History, and Theater History	177
Freddie Rokem
Absences
10 Improvising / History	196	(17)
Susan Leigh Foster
11 The Imprint of Performance	213	(22)
W.B. Worthen
Index	235