Theatre Museum Research Articles

Performing Heritage: Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation ed. by Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd, and: Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment by Rebecca Schneider (review)

Performing Heritage: Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation ed. by Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd, and: Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment by Rebecca Schneider (review)

Heritage theatre and semiotics: Framing a performance at an ancestral hall

ABSTRACT This ‘heritage theatre’ programme was an innovative venture in 2009 by the Hong Kong Drama/Theatre and Education Forum as a way of introducing history education to primary and secondary school students in Hong Kong. Through an interactive performance given in two ancestral halls of the oldest Tang clan, which were categorized and protected by the government as Grade 1 heritage architecture, students and teachers were given the chance to discuss the relationship between history and heritage buildings, as well as the meanings of and difficulties in preserving these buildings. I was a consultant and participant-researcher in this study. This article\ highlights a critical incident that occurred at the final rehearsal, which pushed us to rethink the function of heritage theatre as museum theatre, and the methodological elements we need to take into consideration for the best facilitation of such an applied art form.

Insect pest management programmes and results from their application in two large museum collections in Berlin and Vienna

Since the 1980s the concept of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) has been applied in museums, historic houses and archives to reduce the application of pesticides and damage to historic objects. Insect pests such as the webbing clothes moth (Tineola bisselliella), drugstore beetle (Stegobium paniceum), different Attagenus and Anthrenus species or the common furniture beetle (Anobium punctatum) have been known as museum pests for a long time, having caused major damage to the collections of natural or cultural history. The monitoring (regular inspection) with sticky blunder and pheromone traps plays a major role in IPM to detect an infestation and to locate damaged objects. The results of a monitoring in 2010 in ten museums in Berlin of the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the Museum of Ethnology, Vienna, the Austrian Theatre Museum and six collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Vienna, are presented. The most common pests found in both cities were webbing clothes moths (T. bisselliella), the drugstore beetle (S. paniceum), the varied carpet beetle (Anthrenus (Nathrenus) verbasci) and silverfish (Lepisma saccharina). The khapra beetle (Trogoderma angustum) and the brown carpet beetle (Attagenus smirnovi), both common pests in homes and museums in Berlin, were not yet found in Vienna. A. smirnovi may be replaced in Vienna by the ecologically similar species, the black carpet beetle (Attagenus unicolor). Four wood destroying pests were found in the study, Nicobium castaneum in Berlin and the common furniture beetle (A. punctatum), Hexarthrum exiguum and the powderpost beetle (Lyctus brunneus) in Vienna. The distribution of these species, other insect pests and the success of the IPM programs are discussed.

<i>Performing Heritage: Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation</i>, and: <i>The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time</i>, and: <i>Filming and Performing Renaissance History</i> (review)

Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd, eds. Performing Heritage: Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation. Greg Colón Semenza, ed. The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time. Mark Thornton Burnett and Adrian Streete, eds. Filming and Performing Renaissance History. Performing Heritage: Research, Practice and Innovation in Museum Theatre and Live Interpretation.Edited By Anthony Jackson and Jenny Kidd. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011. Pp. xiv + 282. $90.00 cloth.The English Renaissance in Popular Culture: An Age for All Time.Edited By Greg Colón Semenza. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Illus. Pp. x + 232. $84.00 cloth.Filming and Performing Renaissance History.Edited By Mark Thornton Burnett and Adrian Streete. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Illus. Pp. xii + 212. $80.00 cloth. Pascale Aebischer Pascale Aebischer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Shakespeare Quarterly, Volume 63, Issue 2, Summer 2012, Pages 283–287, https://doi.org/10.1353/shq.2012.0018 Published: 01 July 2012

Ten years of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Wien

The Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien is one of the largest fine arts collections worldwide, comprising the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Austrian Theater Museum, the Museum of Ethnology, all placed in Vienna, and Schloß Ambras in Tirol. We present results from up to 10 years of insect pest monitoring in different collections and the implementation of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) concept. The Kunsthistorisches Museum was the first museum in Vienna to introduce such a concept. We also present specific insect pest problems such as a biscuit beetle (<em>Stegobium paniceum</em>) infestation of paintings lined with starch paste backings (linings) or the webbing clothes moth (<em>Tineola bisselliella</em>) infestation at the Museum of Carriages, both repeatedly occurring problems in the museum. With the help of the insect pest monitoring programs, these and other problems were found and the infested objects treated, usually with anoxia (nitrogen).

Performative Galleries: Integrating Applied Theatre and Digital Media Into Museum Settings

Many parallels exists between museum and theatre practices, as both fields work to become culturally and personally relevant and accessible, as well as competitive and compatible with rapidly developing media and technology. Through an exploration of mappingDESIRE, an applied digital media and performance project, this article examines the use of live performance and online story-mapping to (re)present marginalized narratives and local points of view. The author explores new approaches to actively engaging young audiences, and offers possibilities for re-imagining traditional structures of knowledge production in museum settings.

Margot Fonteyn and Fashion Designers in the 1940s

This paper examines the role that ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn played as an advocate for British fashion in the 1940s, with particular reference to the Sadler's Wells tour of the USA after the Second World War. The article draws on surviving ensembles from Dame Margot's wardrobe in the collection at the Fashion Museum (formerly the Museum of Costume) in Bath as well as material in the Theatre Museum Archive in London.

The Ordering of Things: Allure, Access, and Archives

Responding to recent theoretical discussion of the archive as both alluring and an object of hostility, this article examines this hostility towards the archive (evidenced in the work of Helen Freshwater in particular), claiming for workers in the archive a degree of awareness of theoretical critiques of archive use that shows an understanding both of the agency of the archive worker and of the implications that agency holds. It also draws upon the author's personal experience as a curator in order to discuss the presence of Shakespeare in the Theatre & Performance department of London's Victoria & Albert Museum (formerly the Theatre Museum): the largest of its kind in the world. By acknowledging the inherent ephemeral nature of performance, the essay centralises the role of the archive worker as an active agent in the archive's creation process, as well as its literal and metaphorical protector, offering insight into the mediated relationship between archive worker and researcher. By way of response to the notable absence of Shakespeare scholars from the V&A's archive, the article also seeks to highlight the breadth and depth of the collections' Shakespeare holdings by offering a brief survey of some of the archive's most interesting and esoteric items relating to Hamlet.

Cueing the Visitor: The Museum Theater and the Visitor Performance

AbstractThere are an estimated 17,500 museums in the United States. If people think these institutions are pretty much the same once you get inside or that the differences between them are unimportant, it might be hard to persuade them that all 17,500 are needed. Exhibitions can have great transformational power; why don’t they exercise that power more often? Have museums not fully understood exhibitions as a medium? Have we not devoted enough attention to the full repertoire of visitor feelings? Have visitors been telling us this and we have failed to listen? For many people, museums play many roles in their lives; for most others few or none. How can this be? “Museum‐adept” visitors seem to prize museums as theaters in which their own emotional and spiritual journeys can be staged, but what about the non‐museum‐adept? Can the museum‐adept teach us how to realize our medium’s full potential?

Performing Arts Archives: Dynamic Entities Complementing and Supporting Scholarship and Creativity

Performing Arts Archives:Dynamic Entities Complementing and Supporting Scholarship and Creativity Francesca Marini (bio) Francesca Marini Francesca Marini is Assistant Professor of Archival Studies at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies of the University of British Columbia, Canada. She has a B.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies and a Ph.D. in Information Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research interests focus on performing arts archives and digital preservation; she publishes internationally in archival and theatre journals. Notes 1. Richard Pearce-Moses, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2005), s.v. "record." 2. The InterPARES 2 Project, Terminology Database-Glossary (current as of April 26, 2007), s.v. "record," http://www.interpares.org/ip2/ip2_terminology_db.cfm. 3. See the Society of American Archivists, "Guantanamo Detainee Records May Be in Jeopardy; SAA and Others Seek Clarification," April 20, 2007, http://www.archivists.org/news/Guantanamo.asp. 4. See Carolyn Hamilton et al., eds., Refiguring the Archive (Cape Town, South Africa: David Philip, 2002). 5. See, e.g., Randall C. Jimerson, "Embracing the Power of Archives," American Archivist 69, no. 1 (2006): 19-32. 6. See, e.g., Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression, trans. Eric Prenowitz (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); and Verne Harris, "A Shaft of Darkness: Derrida in the Archives," in Hamilton et al., Refiguring the Archive, 61-81. 7. Among many postmodern archival writings, see Terry Cook and Joan M. Schwartz, "Archives, Records, and Power: From (Postmodern) Theory to (Archival) Performance," Archival Science 2, nos. 3-4 (2002): 171-85; and Tom Nesmith, "Seeing Archives: Postmodernism and the Changing Intellectual Place of Archives," American Archivist 65, no. 1 (2002): 24-41. 8. As an example, see Jimerson, "Embracing the Power of Archives." 9. See, e.g., Matthew Reason, Documentation, Disappearance, and the Representation of Live Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). 10. Ibid. Among many writings that address performance documentation, see, e.g., Kenneth Schlesinger, Pamela Bloom, and Ann Ferguson, eds., Performance Documentation and Preservation in an Online Environment (New York: Theatre Library Association, 2004); Denise Varney and Rachel Fensham, "More-and-Less-Than: Liveness, Video Recording, and the Future of Performance," New Theatre Quarterly 16, no. 1 (2000): 88-96; Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993); Diana Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003; reprint, 2005); and Reason, Documentation. 11. "L'archivio deve vivere, deve essere un nucleo attivo con tutti quanti. Agli scenografi che . . . ho il piacere di conoscere, dico 'Questo qui è un archivio che aspetta le vostre opere. Sapete che c'è.'. . . Perché [l'archivio] deve vivere. Se non è conosciuto, se non convive con la città, con le persone, con gli studiosi . . . è un archivio morto. E il teatro non deve assolutamente essere un discorso morto, anzi deve far capire agli altri tutto quello che c'è, la possibilità proprio di fare, di scoprire." Francesca Marini, "Sources and Methodology of Theater Research in the View of Scholars and Information Professionals" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2005), 174-75 (interview 3). In the discussion, I am withholding the names of the interviewees and of their institutions. This is an established practice in qualitative research and is required by the regulations enforced by the Office for Protection of Research Subjects of the University of California, Los Angeles, with which I was affiliated at the time of the study. The English translation of the quotes is mine. Since literal translation is not always possible, I have included the original quotes in the notes to allow for comparison. 12. Martha Ullman West, "Dancers as Living Archives," Chronicle of Higher Education, April 7, 2006, B14. 13. Marini, "Sources and Methodology," 107 (interview 28). 14. Taylor, The Archive and the Repertoire. 15. Marini, "Sources and Methodology"; see also Marini, "Archivists, Librarians, and Theatre Research," Archivaria 63 (Spring 2007): 7-33. 16. See Marini, "Sources and Methodology," 148-50. Research on the uses of performing arts archives is currently under way at the Theatre Museum in London, conducted by Bonnie Hewson. Bonnie Hewson, e-mail to author, April 17, 2007. 17. See Richard Schechner...

Sex, Violence and Censorship: London's Grand Guignol and the Negotiation of the Limit

This article provides analysis of the short-lived London Grand Guignol (1920–2). During its brief existence, this institution became infamous – its presentation of acts of murder and violation provoked strong reactions from its audience, the press and the Lord Chamberlain's office. It has not attracted sustained scholarly analysis since, however, and this article draws upon archival material from the Lord Chamberlain's Plays and Correspondence Files, London's Theatre Museum and the Mander and Mitchenson collection in order to assess its audience's scopophilic – and often very physical – responses, as well as the ocularcentric preoccupations of the genre. The article illuminates censorious, critical and academic definitions of value, drawing upon Foucault's essay ‘A Preface to Transgression’ and the work of Georges Bataille.

To Be Virtual . . . or Not to Be: Theatre Museum Canada’s Travels into the World of Technology

Theatre Museum Canada began as an organization dedicated to capturing our theatrical past. But if it is to succeed, it must embrace the present and be on top of the future.

Digging a Ditch with Undergraduates: a Museum Theatre Experience

This article documents a museum theatre project that involved undergraduates as creators and performers of a play for elementary students. Five themes emerged from the project: three relate specifically to museum theatre settings, while two identify areas for further investigation of any student-devised production. The article ends by offering suggestions for involving undergraduates in the development of museum theatre.

Ashton and MacMillan in Fairyland: Contrasting Styles in Le Baiser de la Fée

choreographer for the Vic-Wells Ballet is surprising. The story is complicated and the initial performance of the work, by the Ida Rubinstein company in 1928 with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska, had mixed reviews.3 Ashton knew this well?he had danced the role of a peasant in it?but he felt that the problem was caused by the ungainly dancing of Rubinstein, who played the Fairy.* He chose the ballet because he loved the score and, in an article written in November 1935, he hinted that the music as op posed to the story would take precedence.4 If Baiserwas an unlikely story for Ashton to tackle, it was even more so for Kenneth MacMillan, whose scorn for fairy stories is well known.5 But he, too, was drawn to the music and mounted his version in 1960, later reworking it for a revival in 1986. According to Lynn Seymour, who danced the Bride, her first major role for MacMillan, "Baiser was Kenneth's homage to Frederick Ashton."6 And she points out that because of the earlier Ashton version in which Margot Fonteyn danced the role of the Bride, many critics drew parallels between the Ashton-Fonteyn partnership and that of MacMillan and herself. But forming celebrated dance partnerships

Standing the test of time: long-term results of standard procedures in urology

The Old Operating Theatre Museum is one of London’s most intriguing historic interiors. It is found in the garret of St Thomas’s Church, Southwark, which was originally a part of St Thomas’s Hospital. It is the oldest of its kind in Great Britain (dating from 1822, a similar age to the Etherdome in Boston) and perfectly illustrates why operating rooms in the United Kingdom are traditionally called ‘theatres’: they tended to be semi-circular amphitheatres with the operating table in the centre to allow students to observe the surgical procedures (Fig. 1). It is only a logical extension of this amusing analogy to the performing arts to note that there are premieres, debuts, re-runs and flops, triumphs and tragedies also in surgery. In this issue of the World Journal of Urology we focus on what in theatrical realms is called the repertoire, i.e. ‘a list of pieces, which a company has rehearsed and is prepared to perform’. Like an opera, a surgical procedure has to stand the test of time, surviving fashions, seasons and cycles before it becomes part of the repertoire. In some cases, it even has to overcome the embittered resistance (and envy) of the opinion-leading establishment: When the young physician Werner Forssmann of Berlin, pioneer of cardiac catheterization (and a urologist), later winner of the Nobel prize, performed his spectacular self-experiments in 1929 [1], his famous fellow-countryman and chief Ernst-Ferdinand Sauerbruch commented scornfully that ‘One does not shove spokes up the vessels. That’s for the circus. A German surgeon does not do such a thing!’ and dismissed him from the Charite. Similar reactions were observed, when extracorporeal shockwave lithotripsy [2], ureterorenoscopy and, most recently, laparoscopy were introduced in urology. What are the features of a surgical procedure to make it part of the repertoire? It should be curative in the first place, cost effective, simple, reproducible, feasible under all circumstances, easy to teach, with a short learning curve and a low complication rate. In addition, its benefits should be durable. For this issue of the World Journal of Urology we have invited international authorities in their respective fields to deal particularly with the latter aspect. They were asked to report their own experiences with a certain technique (presenting some of the largest existing contemporary series) and review the literature providing a reference database for teaching students and residents and informing patients and peers. Taran and Elder critically assess the results of orchidopexy for the undescended testis, one of the most commonly encountered congenital abnormalities of the genitourinary tract. As outcome measures they defined the presence of a viable, palpable testis in the scrotum, fertility and risk of testicular cancer. Their analysis provides a perfect basis for counselling parents of affected children. Wilcox and Snodgrass took on the extremely difficult task of addressing a field which is notorious for the lack of a standard procedure. Stratified according to the type of operation performed they specifically look at voiding abnormalities, cosmetic aspects and sexual function outcome, concluding that more detailed studies into the long-term effect in adult life are required before we can fully understand the impact of our hypospadias repairs. Exactly 100 years after Trendelenburg had described his technique for the surgical reconstruction of the exstrophy bladder [3], Woodhouse, North and Gearhart teamed up to combine a pediatric with an adolescent urologist’s view on this complex subject in a unique transatlantic approach. In their thoughtful dissection of the available data on continence, voiding and secondary complications, they also provide an insight into the E. W. Gerharz (&) Department of Urology, Bavarian Julius-Maximilians-University Medical School, Oberdurrbacher Strasse 6, 97080 Wurzburg, Germany E-mail: Gerharz_E@klinik.uni-wuerzburg.de Tel.: +49-931-20132012 Fax: +49-931-20132013

Exploring Museum Theatre (review)

Reviewed by: Exploring Museum Theatre Scott Magelssen Exploring Museum Theatre. By Tessa Bridal. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira, 2004; pp. xiv + 197. $72.00 cloth, $24.95 paper. Tessa Bridal's how-to book for museum practitioners persuasively evinces the importance of museum theatre and the need for a book on the subject. Citing studies by the Smithsonian, museum scholars, and regional institutions, Bridal reminds us that museum visitors find theatre to be more powerful than exhibits when it comes to "presenting information in a meaningful and enjoyable manner" and allowing "self exploration of historical information" (107). Visitors to museum exhibits [End Page 376] are often better able to articulate the desired facts and connections if they also experience a museum theatre performance. Moreover, Bridal argues, museum theatre is instrumental in transforming points of view, helping us be less fearful in our encounters with new ideas, and "teaching through the emotions . . ., inspiring hope and positive change, and therefore being a force to improve the world" (9). Important business, indeed. In her chapter "What is Museum Theatre?" Bridal's informants (from museums such as the Science Museum of Virginia, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis) draw boundaries to constitute their craft—boundaries by turns conservative or loose, depending on institutional goals and interpreter backgrounds. For some, museum theatre must include speaking characters and a narrative; for others, "an experimental, nonlinear approach to theatre" (xiii) can be equally as compelling. By Bridal's own definition, museum theatre is educational and linked to the museum's mission and values: high artistic quality, employing paid and unpaid trained professionals; most often shorter than commercial theatre performances; and frequently interactive. The strongest chapters are four through seven, which comprise an exhaustive tour through the process of making museum theatre: grant writing and sources of funding; development and scriptwriting; auditioning actors and hiring costume and set designers; stage management and technical requirements. Based on Bridal's own twenty years of experience in the field, each of these chapters covers roles and responsibilities, anticipation of snags, supplies needed, sample timelines and employment listing ads, and even the minutiae of union questions, royalties, and copyright issues. Practical questions treated in these chapters include, for example, "When is it appropriate to use color-blind casting? When should it be avoided?" (An Asian Marie Curie, she cautions, might produce unwanted confusion for a museum audience not used to the conceit of color-blind casting). From the suggested budgets and timelines, it is clear that this is a book for serious museums with serious sources of funding, though its advice can probably be adapted and used by smaller institutions and historic sites. What Bridal makes clear to the would-be museum theatre practitioner, however, is that this enterprise takes several months of planning, plus quite a bit of money, institutional support, and outside resources to reach the level of professionalism she insists upon. The weakest chapters are two and eleven. Chapter two, "A Brief History," though admittedly not of primary interest to her target audience, is the most troublesome. Bridal finds it necessary, as do many who write about museums and performance, to establish a genealogy of museum theatre, seeking legitimacy by dissociating her subject from nineteenth-century popular entertainments like Barnum's lectures and curiosities, and instead grounding its origins in diorama rooms and educational forums of the nineteenth century (or, in its "deepest roots" of myth, storytelling, ritual, celebration, and fantasy). Such an unproblematized reiteration of the evolution narrative made fashionable by museum scholars like Jay Anderson and Edward Alexander not only reinscribes a selective and positivist mode of museum historiography; it also perpetuates the imagined distinctions between, say, Skansen, Hazelius's nineteenth-century open-air museum, and the pop-culture landscape of World's Fairs and sideshows. At the very least, this chapter is unnecessary. Bridal clearly establishes the importance of museum theatre in the present; it shouldn't need such a clichéd and trumped-up pedigree to justify its existence. The inclusion of her genealogy does allow the insertion of Bridal's own institution, The Science Museum of Minnesota, as an evolutionary step (the SMM developed some puppetry programming in...

Crisis at the Theatre Museum

As this issue of New Theatre Quarterly was going to press, we learned of a threat to the continued existence of the Theatre Museum in Covent Garden. The following personal response by NTQ Contributing Editor Ian Herbert may well have been overtaken by events by the time this issue is published, but we felt the situation should not go unrecorded or unprotested. Any interested readers who have not yet added their voices in support of the Museum should visit http://theatremuseum.org/news_and_views/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=3582 where up-to-date news is, at the time of writing, being posted.

‘Seeing it for real …?’—Authenticity, theatre and learning in museums

This article reflects on the findings of a nationally-funded research project which investigated the practice and impact of museum theatre at two UK museums: the Imperial War Museum, London, and the People's History Museum, Manchester. The research team tracked the museum experiences of eight groups of primary school children, half of whom encountered a theatre event during their museum visits, while the other half followed alternative routes (including elements such as a guided tour, object-handling, role-play, and task-oriented workshops). The aim of the investigation was to assess the effectiveness of theatre within the education programmes of the respective museums, and to compare and contrast the different learning outcomes of theatre and non-theatre sessions, monitored over a period of two months. Although based on a small sample, the findings (which we consider under such headings as ‘active learning and ownership’ and ‘empathy and the making of connections’) suggest that, when well designed and sufficiently integrated into the museum experience as a whole, theatre can offer a significant enhancement to learning by children of this age. Far from being a distraction from the collections and themes of the museum, the incorporation of performance alongside other more traditional approaches, demonstrably improved children's grasp of the personal stories associated with, but not always explicit in, the museum collections and displays, and created strong and memorable resonances still evident several months after the visit. We further consider some of the implications of the research for current museum theatre practice and, in particular, the questions it raised about the interplay between different notions of ‘authenticity’ in the museum displays and the performed narratives.

Acoustical design of the Randall Jr. Museum Theater

Acoustical design of the Randall Jr. Museum Theater

She Also Wrote Plays: An International Guide to Women Playwrights from the 10th to the 21st Century, and: Women Who Write Plays: Interviews with American Dramatists (review)

These two books are a boon to researchers, students, and performers with a solid commitment to, or even a mild curiosity about, the practice of feminist theatre. Susan Croft's She Also Wrote Plays bears evidence of the author's expertise as a curator of contemporary performance at the Theatre Museum in London. Approximately two thirds of the entries in Croft's guide are devoted to British and North American women playwrights of the later twentieth century. The remaining one third include entries for earlier writers, such as Elizabeth Inchbald and Jane Austen, as well as more recent women playwrights from Jamaica, India, Singapore, Israel, Denmark, Egypt, and other international locations. Further, Croft's book documents the dramas of authors widely known for their writing in other genres, such as fiction (e.g., Kathy Acker, Edna O'Brien), poetry (e.g., Michael Field, Edna St. Vincent Millay), or gender theory (e.g., Hélène Cixous).