DRAMA 573 A: Problems in Theatre History Research

Drama 573:   Performance and the Archive

Archives are unnatural spaces.  They arrest what should, by right, decompose.  They persist in recalling what would otherwise be forgotten.  At best, archives, with or without curation, cargo forward a promise of re-accessing a world that is past.   At their worst, they replicate the hegemonies of those worlds.  

Performance archives offer a particular challenge.  Performance famously disappears, but it has a curious way of disappearing incompletely.    Titles remain where the play does not.   Images endure, but the traditions behind them are lost.   Sometimes texts endure, but no score.  Plays without a theatre; or a theatre without a repertory.   The efficacy of performance is almost always the first thing lost. 

Still, collectively a great many artifacts of many mediums have been preserved.   This seminar is built around what survives:  the material and immaterial evidence of performance’s long past.   

We work with a variety of media:   sites of performance, architecture, material remains, iconography, acoustic records, bodies, and the vast field of collateral archives.   Seattle, as a site, is not rich in old performance archives, but we do have access to some special collections as well as a host of finding aids, curators, digital and print records that we will work with for accessible decades.

Various genres leave various records, some more enduring than others, some more indirect, and some leave a legible absence. 

As sites of inquiry, we will be working in many fields but focus on two:  the first is a field of your own choosing, an area of interest or specialization (a decade, maybe, or a genre) in which remains can be found with which to work.  The second field is a common field:  American theatre of the 1930s, chosen for the width and breadth of resources available.   The course is designed to as a hands-on, share-and-discuss forum, with an emphasis on discovering rather than a final product.  There is no final paper.

Instead, you will be hosting us through archives of choice and how they might be useful.  

Grading is based on daily participation and presentations.

Texts:

American Culture in the 1930s, David Eldridge. 

‘Ripa’s Fate,’ D. J. Gordon.

‘Dionysus in (17)69’, Odai Johnson

‘Good Stories and Closed Subjects,’ Paula Sperdakos.

Wilhelm Sauther, ‘The Drottningholm Court Theatre,’

‘Pursuing Hollar’s sketch of the Second Globe Playhouse,’ Tim Fitzpatrick, in A Tyranny of Documents.

‘Working up from Postholes,’ Odai Johnson

‘Fixing the Fix:  Medicine Show Trading Cards,’ Chase Bringardner, from A Tyranny of Documents, Stephen Johnson, ed.

The Common Book:  David Eldridge, American Culture in the 1930s is not a particularly theatre-rich text but is useful for the breadth of its coverage.   This model of coverage can be done for every decade in most countries in most centuries.   Look at the timeline.  Look at the range of media.  The social and intellectual context.  The major national events in a decade of crisis.     Performance’s backstory, filling in this template, is the stuff of archives.   Our last collective project will involve choosing a genre of the 1930s:   fan out.  Ziegfield’s Follies; Amos and Andy radio drama; American written drama, Worker’s Theatre, WPA, the first regional theatres, the last vaudeville generation, the first university training programs.  Harlem Renaissance.  Technical advancements in the stage; B’way; and all the various forms:   from Minstrelsy to movies.  The 1930s reached back to the 19^th century and forward to preservable media.   It is now collectible, hence the material of the archive.   What remains?  What doesn’t remain?  

Project Descriptions:  

Short individual projects: 

Find a baroque performance (fête, procession, carousel, naumachia, comedie-ballet, etc.) that relies on allegory and help us unpack it.

Find a theatre/site of performance and share what remains to document its former life.  Examples abound:  Greek and Roman remains, reconstructed spaces, like Noh theatres, or the Blackfriars, the Globe; restored spaces like Bury St. Edmonds, Richmond Yorkshire, Drottningholm, Cesky Krumlov, the court theatre of the Forbidden City, China.  Renovated spaces, in continuous use (Drury Lane, B;way); converted spaces (Abbey), found spaces (immersive), abandoned sites (Nazi thingspiels.)  . .  what remains of the space to story what once happened?

Find a film and photography archive and share how you might use it to support theatre culture.   The work of David Myers used early film to recover 19^th century acting styles. Others have used early film to document stage sets and costume design, as the aesthetic of production of early film was borrowed from the late 19^th c. stage.    What might film offer to other fields?

Working within your own field, summarize the textual records available.  For cultures with high literacy rates, textual evidence can be the primary archive.  The range is large.  Each field will have its own range.  What is yours? 

Find a play or performance document that is not digitized  (no current publications, ms. or otherwise unavailable in print) and propose how it might be introduced.

Explore a collection of material artifacts and share how they might be used to narrate the afterlife of a prior performance tradition.  A surprisingly large range of material goods of performance have been collected and curated:   costumes, properties, iron spikes, karagoz puppets, figurines, the prompter’s box, the gas lights, candle lights, oil lights, DeNiro's hats, sets and scenery.  What material goods remain in your own field?

Choose a field and share how embodiment might be employed as an archive.  What exactly do bodies recall?  Practice, as passed from actor to actor leaves no material trace, yet, as Diana Taylor has argued, documents a transmission of skills that recall older practices.   What, if any, remains of the embodied archive in your own field?

 Collective projects:   

You are charged with creating a ‘Centenary Scrapbook’ on the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre.   What’s in it?   What kind of archival material exists to document the creation? 

                Collective short project, 1930s America:   Fan out and each work a genre of theatre/performance in America, 1930s.   What are your archives?  How are they shared between genres?

Schedule:  (subject to minor revision)

Tues. Jan 7:     Introduction, expectation, first exercise in iconography:  studio stills and receipt books.   

Thurs. Jan 9:   Photographs.  For Thursday, visit the online collections of the Billy Rose Theatre Division, NYC,  the Harry Ransom Center,  the Victoria and Albert, and/or Washington’s own, J. Willis Sayre photography collection  https://content.lib.washington.edu/sayreweb/

Tues:  Jan 14:    First etude:  Iconography and unpacking allegory.    Find a baroque performance that includes allegory (Triumphs, processions, paintings, pageants, masque, weddings, births. . . and survey the forms that document / preserve it.   For Thursday:  Read ‘Ripa’s Fate,’ D. J. Gordon.  Sor Juana’s ‘Entry of the Viceroy of Mexico.’  

Thurs.    Jan 16:             Rare Books Room, Special Collections, Suzzalo:   Cesare Ripa and his Iconologia.

Tues:    Jan 21:   Working with theatres and sites of performance.  Overview of preserved spaces.  For Tuesday, read three short articles about the discovery and reconstruction of theatres:  from Wilhelm Sauter, ‘The Drottningholm Court Theatre,’ ‘Pursuing Hollar’s sketch of the Second Globe Playhouse,’ Tim Fitzpatrick,’ and  ‘Working up from postholes,’ Johnson.    For Thursday, choose a site of performance. 

Thursday, Jan 23:  share your findings on a site of performance and what remains of its past.

Tues. Jan 28 -Thurs. Jan 30:  The Glenn Hughes Playhouse project.   You are charged with creating a ‘Centenary Scrapbook on the Glenn Hughes Penthouse Theatre.   What’s in it?  What kind of archival material exists to document the creation and history of the space?

Tues. Feb 4;  Textual records survey.  In class, a sampling of textual records:   the victor lists of Athens, guildhall records, Henslowe’s diary, newspaper accounts (Theatrical news), memoir, receipts.  

Thur. Feb 6:  Individual short project:   working within your own field, summarize the variety of genres of textual records available.   

Tues.  Feb 11:   Manuscripts and  pre-digital media.   Meet at Suzzalo.  Catalogues and  Online catalogues for non-digital resources:   James Winston papers, Huntington Library, Harvard Theatre Collection.    https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c89028xg/   [Winston papers, Huntington Library, + description.]   The Theatric Tourist – from papers to publication. 

Early English Books:   consider the vast list of popular print sources on political crises, like the Popish Plot, 1678-1680.   Pages of titles for tracts, most not otherwise published.

Older media:   microfilm reels, microform, microfiche cards.

Thursday, Feb 13:   find something that hasn’t been digitized and speculate what a publication (book / article / anthology) might look like.     

Feb:    Tues, Feb 18:  Film and photography.    Read from Eldridge, American Culture in the 1930s, Film and Photography.     Studio stills.   (HRC)   For Thursday watch  John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) as a dust bowl document.   Read a short (somewhat unrelated) article, ‘Good Stories and Closed Subjects,’ Paula Sperdakos, in A Tyranny of Documents, Stephen Johnson, ed., and David Mayer’s ‘Melodrama and Early Film.’

Thurs, Feb 20:   What film archives.   Exercise:   find a film archive, host us through their holdings, and share how it might be useful.    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_archives

Tues, Feb 25:    Material Afterlife:   Collectibles and their backstories.  Read ‘Dionysus in (17)69.’   Read the short ‘Fixing the Fix:  Medicine Show Trading cards’   Survey two sites:   Minstrel show collectibles, - Hatch-Billips museum and The Jim Crow Museum.   Find and share a collection of material artifacts that document a performance tradition. 

Thurs. Feb 27:    Listening:  oral histories and the acoustic archive.   What does an oral archive sound like?   Read from David Eldridge, ‘Music and Radio.’

                Radio dramas, yes; Interviews, yes, but not with the intention of Anna Devere Smith style performance in mind, editing and dramatizing.  Just raw tape.    What about a thunder run.   A thunder sheet.   The impact of ‘talkies,’ or the tinny piano of a musical hall melodrama.   If we had a score, and an old piano, could we get there?  What about the ‘third music?’ or anthems in the theatre?   Consider reading for sound.   What does ‘disapprobation’ sound like?  What is the acoustic menu of approval or disapproval?   What does a measurement of success sound like?  Chekov was on the ‘wire’ when the MAT concluded The Seagull and was dismayed by the utter silence.  What is an acoustic archive?

Tues. March 4:    technologies of stagecraft.   What survives?  From ghost traps to moveable flats, wave machines, hydraulic lifts, gas rooms, carbon arc and lighting tech?    What might an archive of theatre machines tell us about performance?    Find a piece of preserved older technology and tell us its story.

Tues. March 11:           What is an embodied archive in a field of choice?   Read from Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertory.

Thurs. March 13:          presentations:  what stories do the archives tell of your field?