The Drama Review Fall 1984 [antikvár]

Reconstruction An Introduction Attempts to reconstruct or re-create performances that have passed into history are becoming more and more prevalent. That is one reason why The Drama Review is devoting an issue to the topic. Reconstruction appears to be an unannounced and leaderless "movement" that helps to identify our theatrical moment. We are also focusing on reconstruction because, in addition to its inherent historical aspect, it involves both the theory and practice of performance. All three are continuing concerns of The Drama Review. The articles, following our usual orientation, cover a wide range of performance: drama, dance, music, popular and hybrid forms. Some have been written by practitioners of reconstruction about their own work; all attempt to explain the motivations, intent, approaches, problems and techniques of this kind of theatre. The particular issues involved in the re-creation of performance will become clear from the various articles. Here we will say only that we do not believe that a performance can be completely re-created because we consider it to exist, ultimately, in the experience of the spectator, the historical context, the moment in time, parts of the experience that cannot be recaptured. This does not mean that reconstruction is futile nor that it is not tremendously important. It merely draws attention to the difference between the visitor to an art gallery who looks at, let us say, an early Cubist painting as if it had been painted today and the viewer who is able to mentally place the work in an historical context. All art is an art of time. The reconstructed performance is not (only) an artifact but a work of art that is the potential source for a complicated (and sophisticated) experience. It is as theatrical experience, not as an academic exercise, that we are presenting it. Historical attempts to reconstruct past performances have had great importance. The endeavors of William Poel to re-create Shakespeare, for example, were a significant factor in changing traditional and established 19th-century views of what a stage and a performance had to be or should be. Because reconstruction, theoretically, is guided by standards other than contemporary taste, it offers us the possibility of something unexpected, surprising and radically different. When this happens, when looking toward the past creates a new view of the future, reconstruction fulfills the goals of the avant-garde—always a central interest of The Drama Review. M.K.