‘Orgies of the upper gallery’: Preliminary reflections on nineteenth-century theatre fans

Abstract

Since the very beginning, fan studies have challenged common assumptions about media fans, gradually opening the research field onto different aspects and dimensions of fan culture. So far, however, little has been done regarding both fandom history and theatre fandoms, which would significantly enrich the landscape of fan studies. This article assesses the current state of research on historical audiences, and how historical knowledge on theatre audiences and methodologies, developed within these studies, can be further explored from a fan studies perspective. It is an attempt to look at nineteenth-century theatre through the lenses of the most engaged spectators, whom I call simply ‘theatre fans’, and recover their experiences, behaviours and practices. Broadly speaking, this article seeks to discuss the challenges and opportunities of fan history research by investigating some examples of historical fan practices in Warsaw Theatres and focusing on the early case of ‘fandom war’ between the czakiści and wisnowczycy, as the groups of fans of two actresses – Jadwiga Czaki and Maria Wisnowska – identified themselves. The aim is to re-evaluate fan practices and media engagements in the nineteenth century to recover the then emerging matrix of meanings essential to the understanding of fandom.