Hvad blev der af Julemandshæren? Om arkivering af flygtige scenekunstformer

Abstract

Anna Lawaetz: Whatever Happened to the Santa Claus Army?On Archiving Ephemeral Theatre Forms
 Since the 1960s there has been a paradigm shift in the theatre towards a post-dramatictheatre, in which the playtext is not the most important basis for the staging but is partof an interplay with other parameters such as visuals, sound, and movement. This poseschallenges to traditional archival strategies that rely on the playtext. New collectionstrategies are required to ensure this cultural heritage is preserved.This study takes as its starting point a work that goes beyond the unities of action,time and place and challenges the collection strategies the most: The Santa Claus Army(Julemandshæren) by the theatre group Solvognen (1968‑83). The performance tookplace over five days in the Copenhagen area in December 1974, and was included inthe Cultural Canon in 2006 as an important contribution to Danish culture. The studyexamines only records preserved at The Royal Danish Library due to the legal depositact, as the Special Collection Department made no further acquisitions. Two sources areidentified in the study: first, contemporary and subsequent recollections, and second,works based on material from The Santa Claus Army that paraphrase the original. Thestudy compares the so-called repertoire, the oral narrative of the event, and the archivalrecords and highlights the differences. It furthermore shows how the re-staging of thework in 2006 by a younger artist is based mainly on the so call repertoire.The Santa Claus Army is well documented, although no playtext was collected. Theperformance is unfortunately not representative as Solvognen systematically used themedia to promote and enlarge their work. The main scoop of this study is that itshows how Solvognen are over-represented in contemporary and later media coveragethrough the legal deposit act compared to other theatre groups in the 1970s. This callsfor reflections on collection strategies. A revision of the legal deposit act is proposedas well as archival strategies known from other performing arts archives.