Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia: Hidden Archives of Performance PDF
Preview Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia: Hidden Archives of Performance
S crapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia : Hidden Archives of Performance G Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia : asks the questions : What constitutes an archive ? What is worthy of le being archived ? And who decides ? Performances are ephemeral, so archival n Hidden Archives of Performance M questions of selection and appraisal determine which performances will be c remembered by history and which will not. G Glen McGillivray (ed.) i l l i The essays in this collection each explore a different facet of the ephemeral- v r ity of performance, and the traces it leaves behind : from photographic stills a y of actors or sets ; draft scripts and production notes, theatre programs and ( e reviews ; the language used to evoke the experience of watching a dance ; to d the memories contained within a site which has been used for a site-specifi c .) performance. S c Each of the contributors to Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia employs r a pertinent case studies to reveal performances that are so often ‘hidden’ from p b the authoritative archival view ; for example, those by women, indigenous o o people, amateurs and working people, and those outside metropolitan cen- k tres. In this way, they build a powerful argument for reconsidering – or at the s , very least, broadening – notions of what the performance archive can be. S n a p s h o t s Glen McGillivray lectures in Performance Studies at Sydney University and a at the University of Western Sydney. He has had extensive experience as a n d theatre director and dramaturg and is currently working on a major research M project that explores networks of collaboration between artists. In addition e to this work, he is researching a book that explores the genealogy of the the- m atrical metaphor. o r a b i l i a Peter Lang Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia Glen McGillivray (ed.) Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia: Hidden Archives of Performance PETER LANG Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›. British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scrapbooks, snapshots and memorabilia : Hidden archives of performance / Glen McGillivray (ed.). p. cm. ISBN 978-3-03-430390-3 1. Performing arts archives. 2. Archives--Philosophy. 3. Archives--Management. 4. Performing arts--Archival resources. I. McGillivray, Glen PN1575.5.S27 2011 026'.792--dc23 2011021470 Cover illustrations: Gabrielle Enthoven by George Charles Beresford sepia-toned platinotype print,1904 © National Portrait Gallery, London. Blood, Sweat and Tears Progam and Theatre Royal tickets Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. An Aboriginal Moomba: Out of the Dark, Princess Theatre, Melbourne, 1951 © State of Victoria 2011, Department of Justice. Reproduced with permission. Cover design: Thomas Grütter, Peter Lang AG ISBN 978-3-0343-0390-3 © Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011 Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland [email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net All rights reserved. All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in electronic retrieval systems. Printed in Switzerland Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of the University of Sydney through the School of Letters Art and Media and the De- partment of Performance Studies. I wish to acknowledge, also, the as- sistance of the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University with the publication of this book. Chapter 9, ‘Still. Not seen: Photography and the archive under the bed’, was previously published as ‘Still. Not seen: Hidden archives of performance’ in About Performance #8, 2008. Reprinted with permis- sion. Table of Contents Forward: A brief note on AusStage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 GLEN MCGILLIVRAY 1 The performance archive: Detritus or historical record? . . . . . 11 GLEN MCGILLIVRAY 2 Tales still to be told: Indigenous Australian theatre practice and the archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 MARYROSE CASEY 3 The ‘not-yet archive’ of Sidetrack Performance Group . . . . . . 45 TOM BURVILL and MARK SETON 4 (Re)Constructing the archive: A regional perspective on performance histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 GILLIAN ARRIGHI and DAVID WATT 5 More is less: Public profile and academic representation in contemporary British theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83 JOHN BENNETT 6 Accidents of survival: Finding a place in the V&A’s theatre and performance archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105 CATHERINE HAILL 7 Feeling for dancing hidden in the archives of the dead . . . . . . 129 AMANDA CARD 8 Performance, documentation and the archive within the institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149 MATTHEW REASON, JULES DOREY RICHMOND, VICTORIA GRAY, NATHAN WALKER 8 Table of Contents 9 Still. Not seen: Photography and the archive under the bed . . 173 GLEN MCGILLIVRAY 10 Buried treasure: The lidded box and its function . . . . . . . . . . 191 KIM DURBAN 11 Performance as palimpsest: Leaving a trace memory in site-specific performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207 LISA WARRINGTON 12 Recording forbidden careers: Nineteenth-century amateur theatricals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229 EILEEN CURLEY Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Reference List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253 Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 9 Forward: A brief note on AusStage GLEN MCGILLIVRAY The impetus for this collection was a symposium, held in December 2008, at Flinders University in South Australia, for researchers involved with the AusStage: Gateway to Australian Live Performance database (www.Ausstage.edu.au). AusStage is a database that aims to capture event information for every live performance event that occurs and has occurred in Australia in order to develop, as broadly and as deeply as possible, a comprehensive record of Australian performance. For each performance recorded on AusStage an event record is created that in- cludes: the name of the event, performance dates, the contributors in- volved, genre and sources for further information. Although it is a work- ing database, AusStage is also a work-in-progress that has been in development since 2000 and in the current development phase, the AusStage “consortium” is working to make the database even more re- sponsive to researchers’ needs. Several contributors to this volume attended the 2008 AusStage symposium and it was from listening to their stories, often tangential to the focus of their research for AusStage, that I had the idea for this collection. It was here that I first heard the stories of surprising dis- coveries, curious (and alarming!) storage places and nick-of-time res- cues that always seem to dog the footsteps of researchers who go down the dusty paths of archival research. As this collection had its genesis in Australia, it does have an Australasian emphasis; however, I was fortu- nately able, through my use of networks and a call for papers, to bring in several scholars from the United Kingdom and one from the United States and thereby expand the scope of this collection. Although per- formance research is inevitably local, the themes explored in the chap- ters that follow resonate beyond the specific case-studies that are ad- dressed by each author.
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