This Introduction - an indispensable "how to" guide for students and teachers alike - investigates the methods and aims of historical study in the performing arts, from archival research to historical writing. Beginning with case studies on Shakespearean theatre and avant-garde theatre, this study examines fundamental procedures and problems in documentary history and cultural history. It demonstrates how historians not only construct various kinds of performance events but also place them in relation to the historical agents, the political and social conditions, artistic traditions, audience responses, and historical periods. Drawing upon scholarship in classics, literary studies, art history, performance studies, and general history, Postlewait shows how to ask appropriate historical questions, construct evidence, use plays as historical documents, eliminate faulty sources, challenge unreliable witnesses, and develop historical arguments and narratives. The book concludes with a survey of the "twelve cruxes" of research, analysis, and writing in theatre history.

This analytical history is the most comprehensive and accurate record of the Ibsen campaign in London. Postlewait places major emphasis on the activities of William Archer, the theatre critic, translator, and director who zealously campaigned for the acceptance of Ibsen's works in particular and the new drama in general. He argues that proper appreciation of Archer's often devious role as the foremost advocate of Ibsen is vital to understanding how and why Ibsen was ultimately received on the London stage. Postlewait's reassessment challenges all previous histories and critical studies of this theatrical era and confronts the many contradictions of Archer's life and works that have previously clouded more straightforward histories. He presents Archer as a man with a sense of missionary urgency but also as an individual with an often paradoxical character and numerous self-defeating attributes. This process of reconstituting history and reexamining the career of William Archer, especially in light of his close relationships with Bernard Shaw and Elizabeth Robins, reveals the importance, complexity, and even brilliance of a man who may fittingly be called the prophet of the new drama.

Specially-commissioned essays explore the element of performance theory known as "theatricality" in six case studies that use specific circumstances to illustrate how the concept of "theatricality" developed. Topics covered include early use of the term; employment of theatricality by other disciplines to describe events; non-Western interpretation of theatricality; and its role in analyzing political and cultural events and philosophies. The book provides an introductory guide for those discovering the complex yet rewarding world of performance theory.

Bernard Shaw and William Archer is the final volume in the series on the Selected Correspondence of Bernard Shaw. Throughout their four decades of friendship the two men campaigned for the 'New Drama' and the 'New Theatre." In the early years of their activities, Archer led the campaigns with his theatre reviews and his books on contemporary British theatre. He also translated, published, and helped stage the London premieres of Henrik Ibsen's plays. During the 1890s both Archer and Shaw used their theatre reviews to support their campaigns, and Shaw began to step forward as a playwright. As Shaw established himself as a leading modern playwright, Archer wrote dozens of reviews and articles, often arguing with Shaw over his philosophical ideas that increasingly became a defining feature of his discussion plays such as Man and Superman and Major Barbara. The two colleagues loved to debate with one another in public, and these feisty arguments regularly carried over to the letters, which bear witness to the vital partnership between a theatre critic and a playwright.

This Introduction - an indispensable 'how to' guide for students and teachers alike - investigates the methods and aims of historical study in the performing arts, from archival research to historical writing. Beginning with case studies on Shakespearean theatre and avant-garde theatre, this study examines fundamental procedures and problems in documentary history and cultural history. It demonstrates how historians not only construct various kinds of performance events but also place them in relation to the historical agents, the political and social conditions, artistic traditions, audience responses, and historical periods. Drawing upon scholarship in classics, literary studies, art history, performance studies, and general history, Postlewait shows how to ask appropriate historical questions, construct evidence, use plays as historical documents, eliminate faulty sources, challenge unreliable witnesses, and develop historical arguments and narratives. The book concludes with a survey of the 'twelve cruxes' of research, analysis, and writing in theatre history.

Specially-commissioned essays explore the element of performance theory known as "theatricality" in six case studies that use specific circumstances to illustrate how the concept of "theatricality" developed. Topics covered include early use of the term; employment of theatricality by other disciplines to describe events; non-Western interpretation of theatricality; and its role in analyzing political and cultural events and philosophies. The book provides an introductory guide for those discovering the complex yet rewarding world of performance theory.