Table Of ContentS crapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia : Hidden Archives of Performance G Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia :
asks the questions : What constitutes an archive ? What is worthy of le
being archived ? And who decides ? Performances are ephemeral, so archival n Hidden Archives of Performance
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questions of selection and appraisal determine which performances will be
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remembered by history and which will not. G
Glen McGillivray (ed.)
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The essays in this collection each explore a different facet of the ephemeral- v
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ity of performance, and the traces it leaves behind : from photographic stills a
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of actors or sets ; draft scripts and production notes, theatre programs and
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reviews ; the language used to evoke the experience of watching a dance ; to
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the memories contained within a site which has been used for a site-specifi c .)
performance.
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Each of the contributors to Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia employs r
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pertinent case studies to reveal performances that are so often ‘hidden’ from p
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the authoritative archival view ; for example, those by women, indigenous o
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people, amateurs and working people, and those outside metropolitan cen-
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tres. In this way, they build a powerful argument for reconsidering – or at the s
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very least, broadening – notions of what the performance archive can be. S
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Glen McGillivray lectures in Performance Studies at Sydney University and
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at the University of Western Sydney. He has had extensive experience as a n
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theatre director and dramaturg and is currently working on a major research
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project that explores networks of collaboration between artists. In addition
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to this work, he is researching a book that explores the genealogy of the the- m
atrical metaphor. o
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Peter Lang
Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia
Glen McGillivray (ed.)
Scrapbooks, Snapshots and Memorabilia:
Hidden Archives of Performance
PETER LANG
Bern · Berlin · Bruxelles · Frankfurt am Main · New York · Oxford · Wien
Bibliographic information published by Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche
Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available on the Internet
at ‹http://dnb.d-nb.de›.
British Library and Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data:
A catalogue record for this book is available from The British Library, Great Britain.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Scrapbooks, snapshots and memorabilia : Hidden archives of performance / Glen McGillivray (ed.).
p. cm.
ISBN 978-3-03-430390-3
1. Performing arts archives. 2. Archives--Philosophy. 3. Archives--Management. 4.
Performing arts--Archival resources. I. McGillivray, Glen
PN1575.5.S27 2011
026'.792--dc23
2011021470
Cover illustrations: Gabrielle Enthoven
by George Charles Beresford
sepia-toned platinotype print,1904
© National Portrait Gallery, London.
Blood, Sweat and Tears Progam and Theatre Royal tickets
Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
An Aboriginal Moomba: Out of the Dark, Princess Theatre, Melbourne, 1951
© State of Victoria 2011, Department of Justice. Reproduced with permission.
Cover design: Thomas Grütter, Peter Lang AG
ISBN 978-3-0343-0390-3
© Peter Lang AG, International Academic Publishers, Bern 2011
Hochfeldstrasse 32, CH-3012 Bern, Switzerland
[email protected], www.peterlang.com, www.peterlang.net
All rights reserved.
All parts of this publication are protected by copyright.
Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without the permission
of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution.
This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage
and processing in electronic retrieval systems.
Printed in Switzerland
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the generous assistance of the University
of Sydney through the School of Letters Art and Media and the De-
partment of Performance Studies. I wish to acknowledge, also, the as-
sistance of the School of English, Communications and Performance
Studies at Monash University with the publication of this book.
Chapter 9, ‘Still. Not seen: Photography and the archive under the
bed’, was previously published as ‘Still. Not seen: Hidden archives of
performance’ in About Performance #8, 2008. Reprinted with permis-
sion.
Table of Contents
Forward: A brief note on AusStage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
GLEN MCGILLIVRAY
1 The performance archive: Detritus or historical record? . . . . . 11
GLEN MCGILLIVRAY
2 Tales still to be told: Indigenous Australian theatre practice
and the archive . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
MARYROSE CASEY
3 The ‘not-yet archive’ of Sidetrack Performance Group . . . . . . 45
TOM BURVILL and MARK SETON
4 (Re)Constructing the archive: A regional perspective
on performance histories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
GILLIAN ARRIGHI and DAVID WATT
5 More is less: Public profile and academic representation
in contemporary British theatre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
JOHN BENNETT
6 Accidents of survival: Finding a place in the V&A’s theatre
and performance archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
CATHERINE HAILL
7 Feeling for dancing hidden in the archives of the dead . . . . . . 129
AMANDA CARD
8 Performance, documentation and the archive
within the institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
MATTHEW REASON, JULES DOREY RICHMOND,
VICTORIA GRAY, NATHAN WALKER
8 Table of Contents
9 Still. Not seen: Photography and the archive under the bed . . 173
GLEN MCGILLIVRAY
10 Buried treasure: The lidded box and its function . . . . . . . . . . 191
KIM DURBAN
11 Performance as palimpsest: Leaving a trace memory
in site-specific performance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
LISA WARRINGTON
12 Recording forbidden careers: Nineteenth-century
amateur theatricals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
EILEEN CURLEY
Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Reference List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
Contributors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275
9
Forward: A brief note on AusStage
GLEN MCGILLIVRAY
The impetus for this collection was a symposium, held in December
2008, at Flinders University in South Australia, for researchers involved
with the AusStage: Gateway to Australian Live Performance database
(www.Ausstage.edu.au). AusStage is a database that aims to capture
event information for every live performance event that occurs and has
occurred in Australia in order to develop, as broadly and as deeply as
possible, a comprehensive record of Australian performance. For each
performance recorded on AusStage an event record is created that in-
cludes: the name of the event, performance dates, the contributors in-
volved, genre and sources for further information. Although it is a work-
ing database, AusStage is also a work-in-progress that has been in
development since 2000 and in the current development phase, the
AusStage “consortium” is working to make the database even more re-
sponsive to researchers’ needs.
Several contributors to this volume attended the 2008 AusStage
symposium and it was from listening to their stories, often tangential
to the focus of their research for AusStage, that I had the idea for this
collection. It was here that I first heard the stories of surprising dis-
coveries, curious (and alarming!) storage places and nick-of-time res-
cues that always seem to dog the footsteps of researchers who go down
the dusty paths of archival research. As this collection had its genesis in
Australia, it does have an Australasian emphasis; however, I was fortu-
nately able, through my use of networks and a call for papers, to bring
in several scholars from the United Kingdom and one from the United
States and thereby expand the scope of this collection. Although per-
formance research is inevitably local, the themes explored in the chap-
ters that follow resonate beyond the specific case-studies that are ad-
dressed by each author.
