Theatre History Studies 2015, Vol. 34

By Alan Sikes, Andrew Gibb, Nicole Berkin and 27 more

Volume 34 of Theatre History Studies revisits the foundations of theatre, explores the boundaries and definitions of theatre, and illuminates how writing about the history of theatre is itself a form of historiography.
 
The five essays are arranged chronologically, starting with Alan Sikes’s discussion of the Abydos Passion Play. Sikes challenges the long-held interpretation of that ritualized annual reenactment of the death, dismemberment, and return to life of Egyptian god-king Osiris as the world’s first recorded dramatic production. In analyzing the “Passion Play”—Sikes argues the term is not apt—he applies semiotic theory using "sign and referent" to revise general concepts of mimesis, and in so doing clarifies the fundamental answer to the question, “What is theatre?”
 
In a pair of essays, Andrew Gibb and Nicole Berkin both explore theatre during America’s antebellum period. Gibb examines minstrelsy in antebellum California, exploding narrow definitions of minstrelsy as a primarily Eastern phenomenon and one reflecting a stark interaction of two races. Following the story of Jewish African Caribbean immigrant William Alexander Leidesdorff, Gibb demonstrates that national forms are always affected by their local productions and audiences. Berkin’s essay focuses on the struggles over cultural power that took place between popular entertainers and theatre managers. She examines how both parties used touring strategically to engage with antebellum notions of deception and fraud.
 
The last two essays, by Megan Geigner and Heide Nees, present findings from performance studies which, by examining a wide array of dramatic and performative texts, expands the interdisciplinary foundations of theatre history studies. This fascinating collection is rounded out by an expanded selection of insightful reviews of recent literature in the area.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Dec 31, 2015
• ISBN: 9780817389482

Book preview

Theatre History Studies

Theatre History Studies

2015 VOLUME 34

Edited by

ELIZABETH REITZ MULLENIX

PUBLISHED BY THE MID-AMERICA THEATRE CONFERENCE AND THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Copyright © 2015

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Production Director: Steve Halle

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Typeface: Minion

Essays appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life

∞

The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8173-8948-2 (electronic)

MEMBER

CELJ

Council of Editors of Learned Journals

Cover: All Saints Cathedral flag ceremony, 1918; courtesy of Chicago History Museum

Cover Design: Todd Lape/Lape Designs

Editor

Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix, Miami University of Ohio

Book Review Editors

Cheryl Black, University of Missouri

Robert B. Shimko, University of Houston

Editorial Assistant

Laura Ferdinand Feldmeyer

Book Review Editorial Assistants

Carrie Winship

Rachel Aker

Editorial Board

John Fletcher, President of MATC

Felicia Hardison Londré, University of Missouri–Kansas City

Ron Engle, University of North Dakota

Consulting Editors

Rosemarie K. Bank, Kent State University

Peter A. Campbell, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Dorothy Chansky, Texas Tech University

Mark Cosdon, Allegheny College

Sara Freeman, University of Puget Sound

Andrew Gibb, Texas Tech University

Ann Haugo, Illinois State University

Stuart J. Hecht, Boston College

David Jortner, Baylor University

John Poole, Illinois State University

Alan Sikes, Louisiana State University

Shauna Vey, New York City College of Technology

Past editors of Theatre History Studies

Ron Engle, 1981–1993

Robert A. Schanke, 1994–2005

Rhona Justice-Malloy, 2005–2012

Theater History Studies is an official journal of the Mid-America Theatre Conference, Inc. (MATC). The conference encompasses the states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin. Its purposes are to unite people and organizations within this region and elsewhere who have an interest in theatre and to promote the growth and development of all forms of theatre.

President

John Fletcher, Louisiana State University

President Elect

Peter A. Campbell, Ramapo College of New Jersey

Vice President, Conference Coordinator

Elizabeth A. Osborne, Florida State University

Associate Conference Coordinator

Christine Woodworth, Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Secretary

Kate Roark, Blackburn College

Treasurer

Tyler A. Smith, Ball State University

Webmaster

Mark Mallett, Richard Stockton College

Immediate Past President

Scott Magelssen, University of Washington

Theatre History Studies is devoted to research in all areas of theatre history. Manuscripts should be prepared in conformity with the guidelines established in the Chicago Manual of Style, and e-mailed to [e-mail], or submitted in duplicate and sent to Sara E. Freeman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Puget Sound, 1500 North Warner St., Tacoma, WA 98416. Consulting editors review the manuscripts, a process that takes approximately four months. The journal does not normally accept studies of dramatic literature unless there is a focus on actual production and performance. Authors whose manuscripts are accepted must provide the editor with an electronic file, using Microsoft Word. Illustrations are welcomed and should conform with the instructions listed on the style guide on the website: http://matc.us/theatre-history-studies-4/theatre-history-studies-the-matc-journal.

This publication is issued annually by the Mid-America Theatre Conference and The University of Alabama Press.

Subscription rates for 2015 are $15 for individuals, $30 for institutions, and an additional $8 for foreign delivery. Back issues are $29.95 each. Subscription orders and changes of address should be directed to Allie Harper, The University of Alabama Press, Box 870380, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487; [phone] phone; 205-348-9201 fax).

Theatre History Studies is indexed in Humanities Index, Humanities Abstracts, Book Review Index, MLA International Bibliography, International Bibliography of Theatre, Arts & Humanities Citation Index, IBZ International Bibliography of Periodical Literature, and IBR International Bibliography of Book Reviews, the database of International Index to the Performing Arts. Full texts of essays appear in the databases of both Humanities Abstracts Full Text and SIRS. The journal has published its own index, The Twenty Year Index, 1981–2000. It is available for $10 for individuals and $15 for libraries from Elizabeth Reitz Mullenix, Ph.D., Dean of the College of Creative Arts, Miami University of Ohio, Oxford, OH 45056; [phone].

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Introduction

— ELIZABETH REITZ MULLENIX

Theatre History, Theatrical Mimesis, and the Myth of the Abydos Passion Play

— ALAN SIKES

William Alexander Leidesdorff and the American 1847: Minstrelsy and Race in California Before the Gold Rush

— ANDREW GIBB

Antebellum Touring and the Culture of Deception: The Case of Master Diamond

— NICOLE BERKIN

Performing the Polish-American Patriot: Civic Performance and Hyphenated Identity in World War I Chicago

— MEGAN E. GEIGNER

New Paths to Representation; or, How Under the Cherokee Moon Broke the Outdoor Historical Drama Mold

— HEIDI L. NEES

BOOK REVIEWS

Valleri J. Hohman, Russian Culture and Theatrical Performance in America, 1891–1933

— REVIEWED BY SHARON MARIE CARNICKE

Elizabeth A. Osborne, Staging the People: Community and Identity in the Federal Theatre Project

— REVIEWED BY JOHNATHAN CHAMBERS

Eli Rozik, Comedy: A Critical Introduction

— REVIEWED BY MIRIAM CHIRICO

Jill A. Sullivan, The Politics of the Pantomime: Regional Identity in the Theatre, 1860–1900

— REVIEWED BY MEREDITH CONTI

Barbara Ozieblo and Noelia Hernando-Real, eds., Performing Gender Violence: Plays by Contemporary American Women Dramatists

— REVIEWED BY JERRY DICKEY

Rebecca Schneider, Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Reenactment

— REVIEWED BY JULIA FAWCETT

Alfonso Ceballos Muñoz, Ramón Espejo Romero, and Bernardo Muñoz Martinez, eds., Violence in American Drama: Essays on Its Staging, Meanings and Effects

— REVIEWED BY IRIS FISCHER

Stacy Wolf, Changed for Good: A Feminist History of the Broadway Musical

— REVIEWED BY BRETT D. JOHNSON

Noelia Hernando-Real, Self and Space in the Theater of Susan Glaspell

— REVIEWED BY EMELINE JOUVE

Keith Garebian, The Making of Cabaret

— REVIEWED BY VALERIE JOYCE

Ruth Feldstein, How It Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement

— REVIEWED BY KEITH BYRON KIRK

Helen Smith, There’s a Place for Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein

— REVIEWED BY JENNA L. KUBLY

Scott Magelssen, Simming: Participatory Theatre and the Making of Meaning

— REVIEWED BY MARTHA S. LOMONACO

Susan Bennett, Theatre and Museums

— REVIEWED BY SCOTT MAGELSSEN

Simon C. Estok, Ecocriticism and Shakespeare: Reading Ecophobia

— REVIEWED BY THERESA J. MAY

Alastair Brotchie, Alfred Jarry: A Pataphysical Life

— REVIEWED BY LANCE MEKEEL

Elizabeth C. Ramírez and Catherine Casiano, eds., La Voz Latina: Contemporary Plays and Performance Pieces by Latinas

— REVIEWED BY BELIZA TORRES NARVÁEZ

Robin Bernstein, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights

— REVIEWED BY TAVIA NYONG’O

Theresa Robbins Dudeck, Keith Johnstone: A Critical Biography

— REVIEWED BY ALEXIS RILEY

Rosemary Malague, An Actress Prepares: Women and the Method

— REVIEWED BY KRISTEN ROGERS

Iris Smith Fischer, Mabou Mines: Making Avant-Garde Theater in the 1970s

— REVIEWED BY CINDY ROSENTHAL

Stuart J. Hecht, Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation, and the American Musical

— REVIEWED BY JUDITH SEBESTA

Joshua David Bellin and Laura L. Mielke, Native Acts: Indian Performance, 1603–1832

Hanay Geiogamah, Ceremony, Spirituality, and Ritual in Native American Performance: A Creative Notebook

— REVIEWED BY TERESA STANKIEWICZ

Philip C. Kolin, ed., Suzan-Lori Parks: Essays on the Plays and Other Works

— REVIEWED BY KEVIN J. WETMORE, JR.

Brandi Wilkins Catanese, The Problem of the Color[blind]: Racial Transgression and the Politics of Black Performance

— REVIEWED BY HARVEY YOUNG

Books Received

Contributors

ILLUSTRATIONS

GEIGNER

Figure 1. All Saints Cathedral flag ceremony

NEES

Figure 1. Mountainside Theatre, site of Unto These Hills

Figure 2. Tsa-La-Gi Amphitheatre

Figure 3. Tsa-La-Gi Amphitheatre

Figure 4. The General Store at Adam’s Corner Rural Village, site of Under the Cherokee Moon

Introduction

—ELIZABETH REITZ MULLENIX

In the essay that opens this volume, Professor Alan Sikes describes teaching the Abydos Passion Play during the first week of class (as many of us do) because he wants to help students to think about what theatre is and what it does and how to recognize it when they see it. This volume has made me think about theatre history in that way, for it is a different practice now in 2015 than when this disciplinary journal was founded by Ron Engle in 1981. Indeed these essays on the history of performance and theatre are also evocative treatises on historiography, for they all ruminate in their own way about the practice of writing history.

The essays are arranged chronologically, beginning at the beginning with the exploration of the Abydos Passion Play. In a provocative rethinking of this text, Sikes takes a new look at history by questioning our position of inquiry as theatre historians in claiming such an event in our chronology—a query that examines how mythmaking lies at the center of historiography. Sikes’s rich contextualization—the work of an expert historian indeed—sheds light on the Abydos ritual and proves that terms like passion play and mimesis are not relevant signifiers for the funerary expressions of ancient Egyptians. The conceptual tool Sikes uses to unlock this new interpretation is semiotic theory; using sign and referent to revise previous ideas about mimesis, he sheds new light on a familiar subject, the origins of theatre itself. Andrew Gibb also considers sign and referent as he discusses the complex meanings of minstrelsy in antebellum California. For Gibb, previous scholarship that interprets minstrelsy based on its performances in the eastern United States fails to explain the way a white performer in blackface signified to a San Francisco audience, whose ancestries might be Native American, Mexican, African American, or Anglo—or, more likely, representative of a rich intermingling of multiple ethnicities. Through the story of Jewish African Caribbean immigrant William Alexander Leidesdorff, a californio elite in Mexican California, Gibb reminds theatre scholars that despite the national scope of the argument, any performance text is always, to a greater or lesser degree, played out at a local level. Nicole Berkin’s essay, like those of Gibb and Sikes, examines a subject familiar to theatre historians: the antebellum star system. Her study expands our understanding of this well-known practice, however, and contributes to a recent body of work on cultural circulation in nineteenth-century America. Berkin, employing theories adapted from cultural geography, argues that actors and managers attempted to use circulation to reinforce or re-map the social and cultural categories that circumscribed them, including legitimate vs. popular, respectable vs. scandalous, and star vs. unknown.

The last two essays in the volume reflect current theatre scholars’ interest in performance studies, a term not widely in use when this journal began. In 1980, when TDR added a journal of performance studies as a subtitle, the majority of theatre historians were not engaged in what they would term performance studies scholarship despite certain shared methodologies. As the studies by Megan Geigner and Heide Nees demonstrate, theatre scholars now look at a broad range of texts, both dramatic and performative, for unlike that of more traditional historians, our work has always been interdisciplinary, relying on diverse approaches and theoretical frameworks.

As you examine this volume of Theatre History Studies, you will notice that the typical balance of essays and book reviews is a bit askew. In volume 34, the scale has tipped toward the review; book review editor Rob Shimko and I have decided to include all of the reviews written for the original 2013 issue of the journal, an issue that never materialized due to changes in editorial staff and unexpected circumstances relative to key personnel. I would like to extend my thanks to Rob Shimko, who did the lion’s share of editorial work for this issue, and together we would like to recognize the former book review editor Cheryl Black for her expert editorial work on many of the reviews that appear in this volume.

Theatre History, Theatrical Mimesis, and the Myth of the Abydos Passion Play

—ALAN SIKES

The impetus for this essay came from my recent charge to write comprehensive exam questions for one of our Ph.D. candidates here at Louisiana State University. I wanted to write a question on the origins of theatrical practice, but I thought about veering—both culturally and historically—from ancient Athens, the usual locus for speculation on theatre origin theories. After a quick review of suitable source materials, I devised the following question: What was the Abydos Passion Play? Discuss its content and principal characteristics in context of its production history. It is, admittedly, a challenging question for a Ph.D. candidate, and probably for many credentialed theatre scholars. Still, after composing the question, I decided to try composing a response, one suitable for our short-answer exam format: The Abydos Passion Play is the name given to an event staged during the annual Khoiak festival in the ancient Egyptian city of Abydos. Evidence for this event is found on a stela, or inscribed stone memorial slab, erected by the courtier Ikhernofret during the Middle Kingdom, circa the nineteenth century BCE; but the event was likely staged for many centuries both before and after the dedication of the stela itself. The event commemorated the mythical death and resurrection of Osiris, god of the afterlife, and scholars of the source material claim that it exhibited many elements that we recognize today as theatrical.

I realize that my sample response is quite short, even for a short-answer exam, but its brevity is due to the fact that I have supplied nearly all there is to say with certainty about the event called the Abydos Passion Play. I set aside my sample question for the upcoming exam, but I continued to query myself about my drive to develop such a question in the first place, and to query the field of theatre studies about the position of the Passion Play within the discipline. And indeed, after some reflection on the so-named Ikhernofret Stela, the event recorded there, and the specific cultural contexts for them both, I have come to question the designation of the event as a play and the stela as a document of theatrical practice. Still, I have also come to believe that the Passion Play has an important role in theatre studies: It prompts us to revisit the use of terms most basic to our discipline, as well as the borders that delimit the practices falling within its purview. In other words, rather than undermining our disciplinary claim to archive and investigate the Passion Play, I seek instead to rethink the sort of claim that we might make of it.

Certainly the event described by the Ikhernofret Stela already holds a prominent, if ambiguous, place in narratives on the origin and history of the theatre. Consider these accounts of the event from three popular theatre history textbooks. The tenth edition of Brockett and Hildy’s History of the Theatre remarks that calling the event a Passion Play deliberately links it to a European religious drama of the Middle Ages but notes that scholars are divided as to whether it more closely resembled a public spectacle or a royal funeral. In conclusion, the textbook reports that information sufficient to resolve the dispute is not presently available, although all apparently agree that some sort of performative event took place. The sixth edition of Wilson and Goldfarb’s Living Theatre calls this event the Abydos Ritual, in deference to the religious aspects of the Ikhernofret Stela, but states that it is clear from this account that the ceremony had unmistakable theatrical elements: people played the roles of characters in the story and acted out episodes from the life of Osiris. Finally, the first edition of Zarrilli, McConachie, Williams, and Sorgenfrei’s Theatre Histories concedes scarce knowledge of this event, noting that the little that is known to us of this quasi-dramatic commemorative ritual is the information inscribed on a single stele, but offers Ikhernofret performance credit by calling him both overseer of the ceremonies and a participant/actor playing the role of the Beloved Son of Osiris.¹

In sum, Brockett and Hildy claim that Passion Play may or may not be the right term for the event but argue that it was performative in spirit; Wilson and Goldfarb label the event a ritual but argue that it exhibited theatrical elements; and Zarrilli, McConachie, Williams, and Sorgenfrei claim the event was a commemorative ritual of a quasi-dramatic nature. All the texts, in other words, hesitate to give the Abydos event a definitive description at all, and given the dearth of concrete surviving evidence the authors probably err admirably on the side of caution. Yet more or less implicit in the narratives offered by all three texts is the assumption that the Abydos event prefigures theatre in the Western tradition as we understand the term today.² Certainly all three textbooks place their discussions of the Abydos event before their introductions to ancient Athenian theatre—a term derived, as we know, from the Greek theatron—and given the fact that the Ikhernofret Stela predates Athenian theatre by at least twelve centuries, the placement of their discussions seems justified. Still, the textbooks tell us that the event displayed theatrical elements, or at least performative elements, or at any rate was quasi-dramatic in nature. Perhaps the Abydos event possessed theatrical qualities that somehow predated the advent of Athenian theatre itself; this seems to be the conclusion to derive from the textbooks. Here, however, I offer an alternate possibility. Perhaps our act of placing the Abydos event alongside the term theatre embeds in our inquiries a set of guiding assumptions, assumptions with a certain mythmaking power of their own.

To be sure, the Abydos event and Athenian theatre share much in common: both were conducted at specific dates on festival calendars; at specific sites designated for the purpose; and by specific individuals gathered to take part in the unfolding action. Yet one expectation of Athenian theatre is particularly problematic when applied to the Abydos event, namely, the expectation that the acts in question are imitative. Our earliest extant commentaries on the theatre are explicit on the mimetic nature of the drama, its marked difference from an original, discrete reality. In the Republic, Plato takes great care to distinguish imitation from reality, famously claiming that the former is so apt to be confused with the latter that he would banish imitation from his ideal state. As in a city when the evil are permitted to have authority and the good are put out of the way, so in the soul of man, as we maintain, the imitative poet implants an evil constitution, for he indulged the irrational nature. . . . He is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth. Conversely, in the Poetics Aristotle places great stock in imitation and defines tragedy as first and foremost the imitation of an action. Still, he is careful to maintain the distinction between imitation and reality; indeed, tragedy, as the highest form of imitation, is carefully structured and embellished in ways that insist upon its difference from everyday, original reality. Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete, and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable; each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear purification of such emotions.³

I realize that my reliance on the likes of Plato and Aristotle is decidedly old school for contemporary theatre studies, but many theatre historians continue to rely upon Platonic and Aristotelian notions of mimesis as central to the nature of theatre itself. Such reliance may be either implicit or explicit on the part of theatre scholars, but it remains pervasive in current critical thought on theatrical practice. Consider the conceptual parallels between ancient theories of mimesis and the insights derived from modern semiotics: specifically, the homology between imitation and reality, on the one hand, and sign and referent, on the other. In his famous 1913 Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure demands careful scrutiny of the relation between sign and referent; he remarks that some people regard language, when reduced to its elements, as a naming process only—a list of words, each corresponding to the thing that it names, and then maintains that this view of language lets us assume that the linking of a name and a thing is a very simple operation—an assumption that is anything but true.⁴ Saussure proposes that the sign operates as a conjunction between a communicable signifier and a conceptual signified that the signifier itself can call to mind. If all goes well with this conjunction, then the sign can successfully designate a referent. Yet Saussure gives almost no consideration to the referent; his concern is with the dynamics of the sign, and this singular attention to the sign dramatically attenuates its relation to the referent it ostensibly designates. In fact, it seems that the very gulf between sign and referent secures their respective identities: sign and referent are what they are by virtue of their difference, their mutual singularity and specificity.

Here the modern semiotic relation of sign to referent bears a striking affinity with ancient Athenian relation of imitation to reality; indeed, their correlation marks a conceptual inheritance passed from early Western thought to the critical thinking of the present day. Just as the sign maintains its integrity only through its difference from its referent, so the signs employed in the theatre, called imitations by Plato and Aristotle, maintain their integrity only in distinction to the reality they endeavor to represent. The one cannot be confused with the other, lest the entire theatrical enterprise be thrown