Schneider tackles the relationship between theatre and history with exuberance, humour and diligent attention to Western philosophical traditions, which makes her work accessible to novices and still useful to experts. This book will find its way into undergraduate and graduate syllabi alike, in classes including theatre history, historiographic modes, anti-theatrical prejudices, and even general theatre theory.
This text provides an overview of the debates surrounding the keywords in its title – although Schneider does interpose her own argument – namely that, despite their apparent differences, neither subject is complete without the other. The first quarter of the book is a straightforward set of definitions of key terms in which Schneider establishes theatre's relationship with the words ‘live’ and ‘theatricality (and ‘anti-theatricality’) and history's claim on ‘authentic’ and ‘historicity’.
Schneider then expands upon these secondary terms, highlighting particular areas of tension between theatre and history. In a convincing, if brief, interjection, Schneider notes that, despite its transient nature, all theatre is cross-temporal and cross-geographical, in contrast to history's claims to be grounded in particular moments. At breakneck speed Schneider moves through the tension between thought (the supposed domain of history) and feeling (the supposed domain of theatre), the anti-theatrical prejudice both in theatre and in history, the nature of historical re-enactment relative to ‘reality’, and the ideas of the body as text and text as performance. In each of these sections, Schneider carefully plots out various classical and contemporary philosophical sources, providing a bibliography and a sad reminder of the intransigent nature of the various prejudices surrounding theatre and history.
Having laid out the groundwork, Schneider points out the limitations encountered when theatre and history avoid one another. She begins by stating that anti-theatricality leads easily to a bias against oral histories, which must always be performed (and returns, for a tantalizing sentence, to the racial issues brushed against by her cross-geographical comments). From there she notes that written histories are no less performative and should be understood as such: indeed, while she has earlier traced the potential anti-intellectual biases of theatre, this final section is much more concerned with history's need for a more developed understanding of theatre and performance.
Schneider is both limited and liberated by the abbreviated format of the series in which she writes. On the one hand, it gives her space to explore potential connections between fields without creating the expectation that she fully exhaust any of these connections, which allows for an exuberant and exhilarating presentation of an array of ideas. On the other hand, Schneider's arguments and her take on the field are worth much more than the space they are given here. In the end, the brevity has a dual impact: the clear, playful authority of the volume leaves readers simultaneously eager for Schneider's next book and inspired to expand the interdisciplinary dimensions of their own work.
