1st Edition
Performance Making and the Archive
This book investigates theories and practices shaped by a performance’s relationship to the archive. The contributions in the volume examine how the changing nature of performance practices has made it imperative to understand how the archive and archival practices could add to the performance work. They explore a variety of themes, including artistic engagement with the archive in both conceptual and material terms; physical, virtual and digital forms; publicly and privately collected; oral, written and digital ways; or organized and unorganized collections. Finally, the volume examines how archives are modelled on existing structure and the ways in which they can be brought into discourses and practices of performance making through engagement and contestation.
A novel approach to performance theory, this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of performance studies, media and culture studies, studies of technology and art as also literature and literary criticism.
Foreword: Performance, Memory and Absence
Sundar Sarukkai
Introduction
Sharmistha Saha and Ashutosh Potdar
PART I: Concepts, histories and performances
1. Archive and Performance; Madness and revolution: On Marat, Sade and Theroigne de Mericourt
Soumyabrata Choudhury
2. Interpreting Material
Ashutosh Potdar
3. Performance, its archive and historicity: notes on intercultural critique
Sharmistha Saha
4. Invisible Histories: Tracing displacement, bondage and resistance through adivasi songs and performance practices in Wayanad
Devika N Menon
5. Materialising Site
Nela Milic
6. From Oblivion to Acceptance: Sadir dancer Muthukannamal's presence as a challenge to representations
A.P. Rajaram
7. Archiving for New Emerging Disciplines
Samik Bandyopadhyay
PART II: Dramaturgical shaping and re-shaping
8. The Dramaturgy of the Archive: An interview
Freddie Rokem
9. Rehearsing the Witness-The Bhawal Court Case
Zuleikha Allana
10. Documentary theatre and my performance practice
Anuja Ghosalkar
11. Archiving Tamasha and Lavani through Performance
Sharvari Sastry and Savitri Medhatul
12. Narratives of Existence: Witnessing Lived and Imagined Realities
Hina Siddiqui
PART III: Design and directorial methods of creation
13. C’EST LA CEPT: ARCHIVING THE ARCHIVE
Ishita Jain and Gavin Keeney
14. INSIDE OUT
Aram Lee, Anais Borie and Ottonie von Roeder
15. The Performance Archives Itself
Amitesh Grover
16. On Aaydaan
Sushama Deshpande
17. Conversation with Sunil Shanbag
PART IV: Many methods, multiple archives
18. Archiving Performing Arts in India: An overview
Shubha Choudhury
19. Filming the River.
Notes and thoughts from The Chronic Life film edition.
Chiara Crupi
20. No Context: Curatorial Writing, Contemporary Dance and The Archive
Victoria Mohr-Blakeney
21. 30 Minutes About Mumbai’s Theatre History
Ramu Ramanathan
Biography
Ashutosh Potdar is a scholar and creative writer writing in Marathi and English. He is Associate Professor at FLAME University, Pune, India.
Sharmistha Saha is a theatre practitioner and researcher based in Mumbai. She is Assistant Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India.
