From the Editor; From the Editor; Theatre Survey

A construction site is a messy place, but a theatre under construction or, better yet, a theatre under reconstruction is an apt metaphor for the work that we as theatre historians do. Reconstructing a theatre, like reconstructing the events of theatre, is always a balancing act between excavation, s...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Theatre survey 2003-11, Vol.44 (2), p.169
Main Author: Harding, James M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Archives & records
Construction
Editors
Essays
Historians
Metaphor
Tenure
Theater
Theater history
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Summary:A construction site is a messy place, but a theatre under construction or, better yet, a theatre under reconstruction is an apt metaphor for the work that we as theatre historians do. Reconstructing a theatre, like reconstructing the events of theatre, is always a balancing act between excavation, speculation and innovation. In fact, in the sphere of theatre history, the border between reconstruction and construction is never entirely clear. Conceptually at least, theatre historians work in a construction zone, even if hard hats are not de rigueur. If for no other reason than to underscore the perpetual state of (re)construction that characterizes our work, I am thus delighted to open my first issue as Editor with a messy photo of the renovation of the Royal Court Theatre. Most immediately, the photo provides visual documentation for Stephen Berwind's article "Reconstructing the Construction of the Royal Court," and I am grateful to him for helping to procure the photo from Natalie Land at Haworth Topkins Limited in London. But the more I study the composition of this photo, the more its theatricality strikes me, especially the image of its suited elder central figure grappling with a cable loosely connected to the not yet anchored steel girder of support (an image that might double as a scene from Ibsen's Master Builder). How rich that image is, and if it does indeed remind us of the constructive nature of our own work, so too does it remind us that our work repeatedly necessitates that we renegotiate the boundaries separating the practice of theatre from the practice of everyday life. In this respect, the photo of the Royal Court Theatre "under construction" rather brilliantly captures what I would argue are the foundations of theatre history: a fundamental acknowledgment of the provisional nature of the histories we construct combined with an ever-evolving definition of theatre itself. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
ISSN:0040-5574
1475-4533