TMA201

1. HISTORIOGRAPHY
The Writing of History
TMA 201 - Fall 2014

2. HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
“What historical discourse produces are
interpretations of whatever information about and
knowledge of the past the historian commands.”
- Hayden White, Figural Realism

3. HISTORICAL DISCOURSE
✤ Causality of History
✤ “The writing of an event is as important if not
more important than the event itself.”
✤ Wicked – The “Wonderful” Wizard of Oz
✤ Elphaba, where I'm from, we believe all sorts
of things that aren't true. We call it - "history."

4. HISTORIOGRAPHY
“A man's called a traitor - or
liberator
A rich man's a thief - or
philanthropist
Is one a crusader - or ruthless
invader?
It's all in which label
is able to persist
There are precious few at ease
with moral ambiguities
So we act as though they don't
exist.”

5. Theatre History vs.
✤ What should be studied?
✤ What is “theatre”?
✤ Highbrow/Lowbrow
✤ Theatricality
✤ Performativity
Performance Studies

6. Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History
✤ Discourses of history are already in history
✤ Historical discourses are bound & produced by
the cultures from which they emerge
✤ History is a practice (a discipline) and a result (a
discourse); the relation between the two is
production

7. 01
HISTORY
From Sarah Vowell, The Partly
Cloudy Patriot
Audio 1:
Audio 2:

8. History
“On the first day of school when I was a kid, the guy teaching
history—and it was almost always a guy, wearing a lot of
brown—would cough up the pompous same old same old
about how if we kids failed to learn the lessons of history then
we would be doomed to repeat them. Which is true if you’re
one of the people who grow up to run things, but not as
practical if your destiny is a nice small life.
For example, thanks to my tenth-grade world history textbook’s
chapter on the Napoleonic Wars, I know not to invade Russia in
the wintertime. This information would have been good for an I-told-
you-so toast at Hitler’s New Year’s party in 1943, but for
me, knowing not to trudge my troops through the snow to
Moscow is not so handy day-to-day.”

9. History
“The more history I learn, the more the world fills up with stories.
Just the other day, I was in my neighborhood Starbucks,
waiting for the post office to open. I was enjoying a chocolatey
caffé mocha when it occurred to me that to drink a mocha is to
gulp down the entire history of the New World. From the
Spanish exportation of Aztec cacao, and the Dutch invention of
the chemical process for making cocoa, on down to the
capitalist empire of Hershey, PA, and the lifestyle marketing of
Seattle’s Starbucks, the modern mocha is a bittersweet
concoction of imperialism, genocide, invention, and
consumerism served with whipped cream on top. No wonder it
costs so much.”
–Sarah Vowell, The Partly Cloudy Patriot

10. RECENT HISTORICAL APPROACHES
✤ Revisionist
✤ Feminist
✤ Deconstructionist
✤ Multicultural
✤ Gay & Lesbian
✤ Marxism & Class-Oriented

11. TEXTS AS HISTORICAL
EVIDENCE
✤ Texts survive their historical moment. We can use them
to “read” those cultures.
✤ What do we mean by “texts”?
✤ Scripts
✤ Elements of Theatre
✤ Performative Styles
✤ Philosophical Works
✤ Use surviving texts to discover “ideologies”
✤ Beliefs that inform or influence what and how people think,
understand, and behave
✤ Generally, people do not even recognize the influence or
presence of the ideology; it is unstated.

12. What are theatre historians trying to “recover”?
✤ A playing space
✤ The audience
✤ The performers
✤ Visual elements
✤ Texts
✤ Coordination of the elements
✤ Social requirements

13. ON THE ORIGINS OF
THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE
✤ Imitation, role playing, and storytelling
✤ Popular entertainment
✤ Ceremonies and rituals
✤ Abydos Passion Play, 2500-550 b.c.e.
✤ Indigenous Ritual in Latin America
✤ Efficaciousness & Methexis
✤ “Participatory” theatre
✤ Prohibition of theatre

14. HISTORIOGRAPHY
The Writing of History
TMA 201 - Fall 2014