Theatre Historiography: (Re)Imagining Th

This course approaches the study of theatre practices and theories using historiographic methods that challenge canonical narratives about performance that have long dominated theater history curricula. It raises important questions such as: What constitutes a theatre history? Who has historically been responsible for narrating theatre’s past? What sources have been used? What biases have been present in attempts to construct a global theatre history narrative? Why is understanding histories of theatre and performance relevant today? Unlike a traditional theatre history course that follows a chronological and geographically organized structure, this course encourages students to act as historiographers, proposing unique and innovative genealogies of the past.

The course is structured following a constellation approach that organizes plays, performances, and theories from various places and times around a theme. The initial part of the course will serve as an introduction, exploring key, often competing concepts in theatre scholarship, such as history vs. historiography; canonical vs. decolonial, anti-racist, anti-ableist methodologies; and text-based traditions vs. embodied practices. We will then immerse ourselves in the study of constellations, including “Embodied Practice”, “Materialities: architecture, spaces and objects”, “Spectatorship”, “Colonial Past-Presents.” Constellations incorporate canonical and non-canonical dramatic texts and theories. Critical approaches, plays and performances within a constellation don't explicitly converse; instead, they exist in tension, responding to our object-formation and revealing a self-reflective dimension. Constellations focus on both the cases themselves and our epistemic procedures for examining the past.