Theatre History and Historiography

Ethics, Evidence and Truth

Claire Cochrane, Joanna Robinson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781137457271
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137457288
• Topic: Mezzi di comunicazione e arti performative
• Subtopic: Arte generale

This collection of essays explores how historians of theatre apply ethical thinking to the attempt to truthfully represent their subject - whether that be the life of a well-known performer, or the little known history of colonial theatre in India - by exploring the process by which such histories are written, and the challenges they raise.

1

Introduction

Claire Cochrane and Jo Robinson

Historians are, of course, not responsible for what actually happened. […] Historical responsibility for the past means that historians’ set of norms and values is a part of the past they interpret with them. In this respect the past is a moral predetermination of the intentions of present-day activities. It is an ethical legacy, already inbuilt in the cultural framework of topical life. Historians have to pick it up in order to become aware of the cultural constitution of themselves and their world. (Rüsen 2004, 203)

The essays collected in this volume look back from the world of the early twenty-first century — and from the United States of America and India as well as the constituent parts of the United Kingdom — to a variety of pasts, stretching from the late seventeenth-century English Restoration period to the individual pasts still alive and painfully active in twenty-first-century Northern Irish collective memory. All contributors, as individual historians and historiographers, question dominant narratives of theatre history. Some take on the responsibility of representing the histories of the living, while some show the way definitions of models of theatre and performance have broadened significantly in recent years. All grapple with the ethical issues raised by the concrete demands of specific histories; and in doing so, all seek to make clear the ways in which, in Rüsen’s terms, the creation of their histories is shaped by the ‘cultural constitution of themselves and their world’ (2004, 203).

In her essay for this volume, ‘Mind the Gaps: Evidencing Performance and Performing Evidence in Performance Art History’, Heike Roms argues — by way of analogy with Stephen Bottoms’ critique of theatrical approaches that obscure their own representational strategies behind truth claims derived from a supposed unmediated use of ‘real’ archival material — for the importance of historiographic methods that ‘have the potential to make the research effort transparent’ (Chapter 9). Such methods, she suggests, enable ‘others to experience and evaluate the conditions under which scholarly evidence is conceived and interpreted’. All contributors to this collection similarly seek to make their research effort ‘visible’ to the reader: in the process, this volume highlights the importance of addressing the historiography of the histories we tell, and seeks to pay equal, critical attention to the key terms of ethics, evidence and truth in the representation of our different subjects.

To represent means variously to stand for, to speak for, to fill the place of or to embody another or others. To do this ethically in relation to past human lives demands, we would argue, painstaking attention not just to the historian’s methodologies but also to her or his individual aims and objectives. Nevertheless as a re-presentation of the past, the gap between the actuality of the historical moment and the attempt to speak for it again in the historian’s ensuing moment is fundamentally unbridgeable. To put it in human terms, we speak for the dead but we cannot speak to the dead and they cannot speak back to us. Even when the agents of the past are still available to bear live witness, such is the unreliability of memory and the instability of the mediating efficacy of interpersonal and intertextual exchange that the constructedeness of the historian’s representation remains obstinately incontrovertible.

Such concerns are increasingly central to discussions of theatre history and historiography. In their introduction to Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography Charlotte Canning and Thomas Postlewait explore the ‘foundational’ concept of representation as ‘a common concern’ unifying the work of the contributors to their collection (2010, 7). They acknowledge, however, that ‘The historical representation seeks to be an objective image of the thing itself, yet it cannot avoid being, in some capacity, a subjective distortion of that thing.’ ‘The fundamental principle of historical enquiry’ is, they affirm, the ‘attempt to represent the past truthfully’, but ‘whose truth, what truth, which truth?’ (2010, 11). Yet even when some kind of plausible resolution is reached about these questions, we would suggest that a further concern can be raised about the consequences of the truth, and of truth-telling. To deploy the terminology of ethical philosophy, which we will explore in more detail in the following sections of this Introduction, the deontological obligation to tell the truth foregrounded by Postlewait and Canning as the fundamental duty of the historian may be countered and potentially reversed by the consequentialist appraisal of the extent and utility of the likely effects. This fundamental tension between an ethics of truth and an ethics of care lies at the heart of our approach to theatre historiography, and is central to the work of the contributors to this volume.

Published in 2010, Representing the Past builds on and serves as a companion volume to Interpreting the Theatrical Past, published in 1989 and edited jointly by Thomas Postlewait and Bruce McConachie. The enhanced depth of enquiry and scope — not least in the greater international inclusiveness — of the later volume testifies to the current strength of disciplinary confidence. The exponents of theatre history no longer have to struggle, as R.W. Vince claimed in Interpreting the Theatrical Past, ‘for a sense of professional identity’. We are no longer uncertain ‘of defining our study as an independent branch of knowledge, of professing a kind of knowledge and a kind of truth intrinsically valuable’ (Vince 1989, 1). To be sure, as Rebecca Schneider has acknowledged in Theatre & History, some present-day theatre-makers who are focused on the ‘nowness’ of live performance can and do reject theatre history as ‘an oxymoron’, a ‘time-suck’ (2014, 21). But the considerable body of recent historiographically aware scholarship in a widening range of historical theatre and performance topics confirms, as David Wiles puts it, ‘that history matters’ and reinforces our shared desire ‘to resist “presentism” which may be defined as a belief that the past is irrelevant because its inhabitants, people like us, are now irretrievably gone’ (Wiles and Dymkowski 2013, 3).

Until now, however, there has been little attempt to address explicitly the historiographic challenges raised by ethical principles in theatre history. In general, as Mireia Aragay explains in her introduction to Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, the academic field of theatre studies has been a latecomer to what has been dubbed the ‘ethical turn’ which began to gather momentum in the humanities in the late 1980s (Aragay and Monforte 2014, 3). This absence is a glaring one, for in many ways theatre is an ideal site for ethical study. Writing in Ethics Theory and Practice, Jacques Thiroux states that ‘the most important human moral issues arise for most ethicists when human beings come together in social groups and begin to conflict with one another […] most ethical systems meet in the social aspect’ (2007, 12). As an inherently social art form, produced in the necessary presence of an audience and through the collaborative activity and enabling capacity of others, theatre is thus, arguably, the art form which provides the ultimate forum for ethical debate. For thousands of years it has enacted stories framed by the moral codes which inform human behaviour and life choices. Contractarianism, the social contract tradition of ethics, which interrogates both the legitimacy of political authority and the moral norms established to maintain social cohesion, draws on dilemmas arising from individual self-interest (Shafer-Landau 2013, 555) which have preoccupied dramatists from Sophocles onwards: certainly the ‘uneasy interactions’ of participatory theatre and performance discussed by Helen Freshwater (2009, 62) and in Gareth White’s Audience Participation in Theatre: Aesthetics of the Invitation (2013) highlight the particular potential of this bringing together of audience and performers in a shared and social space.

Aragay identifies the key publications which have addressed the relationship between theatre and ethics since the publication of Nicholas Ridout’s Theatre & Ethics in 2009 (Aragay and Monforte 2014, 3).¹ Ridout’s concise guide is particularly pertinent to our collection because it is grounded in history and chronologically structured, arguing that ‘the ethical dimensions of theatrical production and spectatorship cannot be separated from the specific historical circumstances in which they take place’ (2009, 7). Ridout thus emphasises that as a branch of human knowledge and understanding, ethics itself has a history. One major historiographic task is to discuss the extent to which the ethical codes and authorities of the past continue to inform the present.

In an attempt to begin to fill that gap, the essays here thus seek to explore the ways in which theatre historians apply ethical thinking to the truthful representation, recovery or re-visioning of the different ways and means by which theatre-makers in the past have enacted stories or scenarios related to human experience, and in so doing be alert to the fact, highlighted by both Ridout and Rüsen, that the ethical codes and authorities of the past continue to shape the ‘cultural constitution of themselves and their world’ (Rüsen 2004, 203). We would argue — albeit fully aware that this assertion has been much contested by postmodern historiography — that the primary ethical obligation of the historian is to try to tell the truth, however difficult this may be; the probity of the evidence which is adduced in support of historical truth claims is thus of equally primary importance. Hence, therefore, the dual focus of these essays is on ethics and evidence. But none of the concepts and strategies which will be explored is easy — not least the question of what we mean by the truth. There are no clear-cut answers, although we hope these essays will produce fresh perspectives, broadened horizons and new knowledge.

Basic facts about the identity, objectives and circumstances of theatre-makers and their audiences can seem obvious and even (sometimes) easily confirmed. But as Rosemarie K. Bank makes clear in Chapter 3 of this volume, in her essay on ‘Ethics and Bias’, such facts are not immutable and separate from explanations of them. What historians think they know about the past, even the recent past, may not — often does not — necessarily correspond with the ‘knowledge’ of those who lived that past. Our knowledge of where performances happened, how and within what kind of material conditions is constantly being adjusted in the light of fresh evidence or, perhaps more crucially, through the process of the reappraisal of existing evidence. And of course, what may be defined as ‘theatre’ has been challenged many times over by proponents of performance studies and, increasingly, within the field of applied theatre practice. Admitting to uncertainty is an ethical act in itself.

Beginning with Ethics

In answering the question ‘what is ethics?’ the explanation offered by the moral philosopher Peter Singer acknowledges a degree of ambiguity even around a definition: ‘The word itself is sometimes used to refer to the set of rules, principles, or ways of thinking that guide, or claim authority to guide, the actions of a particular group; and sometimes it stands for the systematic study of reasoning about how we ought to act’ (1994, 4). If we look to the first meaning should we, as a group of twenty-first-century professional historians, try to formulate a set of authoritative guidelines which direct how we should approach our work, an ethics of theatre history? Or if we move into the deeper waters of moral philosophy where ‘moral’ pertains to ‘good’ or ‘bad’ principles or habits of living — how we ought to act — are we openly inviting obfuscation in the practice of history as the representation of the past? As becomes rapidly obvious, the systematic study of ethics as a branch of knowledge concerned with human conduct raises many more questions than it answers. In his preface to the 2013 edition of his monumental anthology of ethical theory, Russ Shafer-Landau highlights obligatory areas for inclusion: consequentialism, deontology, contractarianism and virtue ethics — and then adds in ‘separate sections on moral standing, moral responsibility, moral knowledge’ before concluding with examples of work which question whether systematic ethical theory is even possible. All address, but in radically different ways, two questions ‘at the heart of ethics: (1) What should I do?, and (2) What sort of person should I be?’ (2013, xi). In saying that we cannot ‘plausibly’ answer one without making some sort of commitment to answering the other, Shafer-Landau asks also ‘whether such answers are in some way reflective only of personal opinion, or whether they might be best measured against some more objective standard’ (2013, xi). This last is a question that is of particular relevance for the contributors to our collection as they consider, and articulate, their own positions in their task of representing the past.

Despite the fact that many of most influential ethical systems of the past derived from explicit alignment with, or reaction against, the doctrines of the major world religions, Peter Singer is at pains to point out that ethics has no necessary (our emphasis) connection with religious belief. As he puts it, ‘we can understand ethics as a natural phenomenon that arises in the course of the evolution of social, intelligent, long-lived mammals who possess the capacity to recognise each other and to remember the past behaviour of others’ (1994, 5): in Ridout’s terms, it has a history. Untied from fixed positions or religious certainties, ethics can thus be questioned and challenged.

The collapse of confidence in Enlightenment faith in rationality and steady progress has at its most extreme provoked what the historiographer Keith Jenkins has described as ‘postmodernism’s celebration of the moral “undecidability” of a decision’ which signals the end not just of traditional ethics but also of history (1999, 1). In a response published in her book Historical Theory, Mary Fulbrook sets herself to oppose not just this nihilist perspective, but also (again put at its most extreme) the proposition that ‘any [historical] narrative is merely a fictive construct imposed almost arbitrarily at the whim and fancy of the historian’. Fulbrook asserts firmly that the aim to say ‘something true (however limited, temporary, inadequate) about a real past (however essentially unknowable in any totalizing sense)’ is still worth holding on to ‘even in the wake of the postmodernist challenge’ (2002, ix). The essays collected together in this volume are predicated on the understanding that telling ‘something true’ about the past is an ethical responsibility.

Pleasing Ourselves

While we do not doubt the centrality of ethical dilemmas to theatre as a medium concerned with enactments of human behaviour, it is worth asking about the extent to which the history of theatre has characteristics which distinguish it as a discipline from other branches of historical scholarship and thus bring wider — or different — ethical challenges. As David Wiles points out, most theatre historians practise their profession because of an emotional attachment: ‘I love the theatre and I love thinking about what I love.’ ‘As creative beings’, he argues, ‘they imagine how they would love theatre better, or even better, if it were different, and at least in some respects more like the way it once was’ (2013, 5). This suggestion that historians recover and represent the theatre of the past as a kind of exemplary exercise conducted for the edification of the present is highly debatable, although of course the provision in historical writing of human exempla taken from the heroic deeds or misdeeds of the past was classically a way of acquiring virtus for the reader. But that theatre historians in thrall to the emotional intensity generated by ‘great’ performances of past experience seek to recall that momentary glamour in order to recapture, pin down and account for it in terms of past audiences’ aesthetic pleasure or indeed their own is certainly the case. The selection of key individuals, institutions and events for inclusion in the histories which have formed traditionally accepted historical canons or master narratives of theatre have been inextricably linked to the value judgements of individual historians. The typically combative argument which Jenkins has made, that as a ‘contested discourse […] people(s), classes and groups autobiographically construct interpretations of the past literally to please themselves’ (1991, 19), resonates particularly strongly where the subject of historical analysis is cultural practice predicated on the delivery of pleasure, however broadly that is defined and whatever the values associated with that.

Debates about value are fundamental to ethical enquiry, whether it be the core meta-ethical question of what human beings consider to be of ultimate value, or the normative ethics which are deployed in the interests of establishing rules, standards or principles to guide what we do in a specific field of activity. Value as a concept also opens up meta-ethical questions about relativism and the status of human values within the systems of morality that each society constructs. If, as Russ Shafer-Landau puts it, ‘the central meta-ethical question is whether moral views can be true, and, if so, whether they can be objectively true’ (2013, 10), then the objectivity of the values underpinned or produced by those moral views becomes part of that central question. When the object of enquiry is art, the value placed on the process and production of art — which, within the academy especially, may be formed by aesthetic or ideological preferences — can determine the value which is placed on the histories which are written and the writers of those histories.

‘Good’ or successful art can make possible the success of ‘good’ historians whose expertise is further validated by the association with the public — popular or coterie — acclaim accorded to that art. This has implications for professional success and indeed for the economic success of the historical product as commodity. ‘Good’ quite clearly here is a relative value and raises questions about why some theatre-makers or models of theatre are deemed of greater importance or value than others and thus worthier of the historian’s attention. What were and are the criteria for what is thought to be effective theatre and how they influence the historian’s interest need to be considered. If, at the historical moment of performance, the product was deemed to be ineffective or unsuccessful, why did that happen, and if the passage of time has brought about altered perspectives on that perception of effectiveness, how should the historian mediate truthfully between the values of the past and what came later to influence the present?

To use an obvious example, the priority given to the avant-garde within academic theatre studies since the Second World War has led to the recognition of the conceptual importance of formerly marginalised experiments and individuals who were disparaged and dismissed in their own time. However, as Mireia Aragay has pointed out, a consequence of this is that an increasingly dominant discourse has seen formal innovation or experimentation become ‘the cornerstone for the spectator’s ethical engagement […] capable of engaging audiences “emotionally, viscerally and intellectually”’ (Aragay and Monforte 2014, 6). To assume that audiences for intellectually undemanding popular performance are not capable of experiencing, in their experience of shared pleasure, what Jill Dolan has called ‘utopian performatives’ (2005, 5) is exclusionary and thus ethically questionable. Jacky Bratton has argued forcefully that the battles waged by the modernist radicals in the nineteenth century to raise the intellectual level of drama on the British stage created a grand narrative of British theatre which effectively obliterated the strength of the popular experience from the historical record (2003, 12–13). Indeed the recent growth of studies of popular, mass pleasure-giving theatre such as commercial theatre, variety theatre and pantomime and amateur theatre is undoubtedly the result of academic historians recognising and questioning their own criteria of value: not least because in the attempt to construct a fuller, more equitable representation of the past, something arguably much more fundamental is being tested in disciplinary practice.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Introduction
• Part I: Re-Writing (Master) Narratives
• Part II: ‘Other’ Histories
• Part III: The Ethics of Evidence
• Bibliography
• Index