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INTRODUCTION
expand our set of memories without leaving todays theatre out of sight. In
short, they may have realized that they cannot escape into the past without
looking at the Jetztzeit.
Although contemporary research still includes the simplest form of
reconstruction, i.e. the collection and setting out of documents, theatre studies
have already irrevocably questioned the validity of positivist theatre history.
(In fact, for the first time in the 1980s and by means of phenomenology.)
This was the result of a new orientation of historical science in the 1960s and
1970s, which had a major impact on art sciences as well. The changes in the
assumptions of the philosophy of history, the “metahistorical turn” brought
about by Hayden White, had a serious influence on theatre history (and, of
course, on literary history behind it, which often served as a model). Together
with the turn to the process of reception and the multiplication of trends in
understanding theatre, they called forth a pluralism of methods. Taking into
account the specific ontological status and mediality of their subject, theatre
studies, which focused on performance, and theatre history, which defined
itself as the history of performances, had to give a special answer to the
questions raised in the corresponding arts and sciences. Since performance
understood as an event cannot be recorded or “passed on”, only documented,
the investigation of past performances can only undertake the analysis
of documents conjuring up memories of the performances in question.’
The difficulty of our research, however, is frequently in determining where to
find these documents and how to approach them, and we often have to face the
immensely sporadic nature of the memories of even legendary performances.
While there are far more documents about theatre performances in recent
decades than about (let us say) theatre of the Hungarian Reform Era, none
of these documents can be expected to speak for themselves. In other words,
we cannot hope that a document will bring the performance directly to our
eyes, without the medium of the document itself, which confronts us with
many problems. While positivist theatre history minimizes source-criticism,
contemporary research pays as much attention to the epistemological status
of sources (see e.g. the chapter on the Operetta Theatre’s Free Wind) as to the
definition of the researcher’s own position of understanding.
Consequently, theatre historiography has actively followed the end-of-the¬
century developments in historical science, which motivated dissatisfaction
with the canonical way of narrating and representing theatre history as much
as other serious influences did: anthropological research, Michel Foucault’s
discourse theory, Hans-Robert Jauss’s reception aesthetics and Stephen
7 As Metzler’s lexicon of contemporary theatre theory puts it, “sofern [Theatergeschichts¬
schreibung] als Geschichte von Aufführungen betrieben soll — ausschließlich über
Dokumente, nicht über Monumente verfügt.” Erika Fischer-Lichte et al. (eds.): Metzler
Lexikon Theatertheorie, Stuttgart-Weimar, Verlag J.B. Metzler, 2005, 344.
* 10°