Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography

How do historians represent the past? How do theatre historians represent performance events? The fifteen challenging essays in Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography are unified by their investigations into how best to understand and then represent the past. These scholars of theatre history and performance studies offer insights into the abiding issues that all historians face in the task of representing human events and actions.

"Representing the Past is required reading for any serious scholar of theatre and performance historiography: original in its conception, global in its reach, thought-provoking and transformative in its effects."---Gay Gibson Cima, author, Early American Women Crities: Performance, Religion, Race

"Unusually well conceived, this collection of essays by leading scholars in theatre studies exemplifies a back-to-the-basics approach that is as welcome as it is timely. We are reminded just how difficult it is to capture the most elusive of historical objects---a theatrical performance---but also that we must keep trying."---Martin Puchner, author, The Drama of Ideas: Platonic Provocations in Theater and Philosophy

"This collection of essays will change the basic rules of theatre and performance historiography and establish some completely new ones. At the same time as it strengthens the bridges to the disciplines of general history and cultural history, it opens up many new venues and perspectives to the histories of the stage arts. It sets up the basic categories for performance historiography research and shows in depth how these categories can be applied. This book will become a central point of reference for students and teachers in the field for many years to come."---Freddie Rokem, author, Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre and Philosophers and Thespians: Thinking Performance

Charlotte Canning is a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, Where she is head of the Performance as Public Practice program. She is the author of Feminist Theaters in the U.S.A. and The Most American Thing in America: Circuit Chautauqua as Performance (Iowa, 2005), which won the Barnard Hewitt Award for Excellence in Theatre History.
Thomas Postlewait is currently an affiliate professor of theatre history at the University of Washington. Coeditor of Interpreting the Theatrical Past: Essays in the Historiography of Performance (Iowa, 1989) and Theatricality, most recently he is the author of The Cambridge Introduction to Theatre Historiography.