Consciousness, Literature and the Arts
Archive
Volume 5 Number 3, December 2004
_______________________________________________________________
Worthen
C.B. with Peter Holland (eds) Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre
History. Basingstoke,
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. pp. 240. ISBN: 1-4039-0793-5 hardback,
1-4049-0794-3 paperback.
Reviewed by
University of Toronto
When
I examine a book such as Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre
History I think that it is both the best of times, and the worst of times: a
Golden Age of Scholarship that is impossibly trying. On
the one hand, the current rules of the game seem to put every previous position
up for grabs, a bonanza of critical updates.
Nothing can be accepted as canonical anymore, at least in the critical
realm, and therefore an enormous vista opens before the prospective critic,
comprised of all the works and positions in need of re-examination.
Is this in fact paradise or an unfortunate consequence of deconstruction
and modern historiography? I guess
it’s both, with the only caveat being that one should recognize one’s
prejudices. As a scholar of the
current generation I feel a conflict of interest, a curious ambiguity in my
gratitude. After the shock and awe
of the previous generations of illustrious meta-critics—Barba,
Barthes, Benjamin, Boal and Brecht, among others, having flattened the
largest critical infrastructure—there is still a great deal of house-to-house
combat left for those of us working on smaller issues.
But I find myself envying that earlier generation, because there seems to
be so much less at stake. And
it is not a fault of the book that its essays answer a power vacuum created by
the removal of the canon, by the rethinking of disciplinarity especially as
regards the relationship between literature and performance and the putting to
rout of the old style of criticism. For
such an enjoyable book I feel that the field does not offer the laurels that it
did when there were still dragons to be slain.
Because
one can't really know anything for certain one must proceed as though in a
minefield when making assertions. When
that caution only leads to a circumscription of a topic, the author can still
cut loose, as Peter Holland does in his "History of Histories", a
survey of histories of theatre, or Dennis Kennedy's charming "Confessions
of an Encyclopedist". Among
the best essays is Thomas Postlewait's "The Criteria for Evidence:
Anecdotes in Shakespearean Biography, 1709-2000."
Postlewait not only demonstrates the flimsiness of some commonly held
views, such as the assumption that Shakespeare played the Ghost in Hamlet,
but suggests the process whereby legends become canonical.
I
am conflicted about the concluding essay “The Imprint of Performance” by W.B.
Worthen. Although a worthwhile and
witty investigation of the "imprint" in the typographical layout on
the page, as an influence upon performers, I found the result disappointing.
Perhaps that reflects my own gut-level discomfort with a paper that seems
to exaggerate the importance of print, a reminder of my experience with those
intent on treating drama as an offshoot of English literature, and not as a
discipline in its own right. I
didn't sense any willingness to engage in the circumstances of the creation of
performance; Worthen instead seemed content to read playtexts as literature.
Its last paragraph touched upon the concerns I would have wanted to see
addressed, namely the shift away from textual authority in the last half-century
and the growing impact of the mise en scène within dramaturgy. For a
book purporting to “redefine theatre history” the concluding essay by its
co-editor seems to be sadly out of date in its thrust.
Nor
is Susan Leigh Foster’s “Improvising/ History” (on one of the thorniest
historiographical questions, namely the methods for recording the history of
improvised performance) the paper I would have expected or wanted.
Foster begins with an assertion that would be interesting if it were
true:
In
improvisation, the fact that performers don’t know what they are going to do
next draws viewers’ attention to their decision making process.
While
there may be processes in which performers don’t truly know what they will do
next, the viewer is captive of an illusion created by the performer’s
rehearsal process, namely that they are composing and creating onstage.
Perhaps that sentence would work better if it read “in improvisation,
the illusion that performers don’t seem to know what they will do next draws
viewers’ attention to their decision making process.”
Perhaps
I am being unfair in my expectations, as a reader old enough to remember big
books on big themes. A collection
of essays is even less likely to achieve “bigness” without the strength that
a singular vision confers. Call me
a curmudgeon, but the title Theorizing Practice: Redefining Theatre History
stakes a bold claim, one that the book doesn’t fulfill.
This charming mosaic –each piece having been placed by a different
hand—is still worthwhile reading, with some wonderful essays.
But it seems to be a happy and meandering perambulation, comprised of pet
projects rather than a unified assault on the field.