Shakespeare, Performance and the Archive

Description

Shakespeare, Performance and the Archive is a ground-breaking and movingly written exploration of what remains when actors evacuate the space and time of performance. An analysis of ‘leftovers’, it moves between tracking the politics of what is consciously archived and the politics of visible and invisible theatrical labour to trace the persistence of performance. In this fascinating volume, Hodgdon considers how documents, material objects, sketches, drawings and photographs explore scenarios of action and behaviour – and embodied practices. Rather than viewing these leftovers as indexical signs of a theatrical past, Hodgdon argues that the work they do is neither strictly archival nor documentary but performative – that is, they serve as sites of re-performance. Shakespeare, Performance and the Archive creates a deeply materialized historiography of performance and attempts to make that history do something entirely new. Dedication Contents List of figures Acknowledgements Introduction: the lure of leftovers 1 Material remains at play 2 Rehearsal remains or reading from the margins: actors’ scripts 3 Storytelling, anecdotes, ethnography: the ESC’s Wars of the Roses 4 Dreaming in the archives Looking forward: an epilogue Bibliography Index