PARIP 2003

NATIONAL CONFERENCE: 11-14 September

CONTRIBUTORS

BRATTON: JACKY / BUSH-BAILEY: GILLI
department of drama and theatre
royal holloway, university of london
revival: a way forward to the past

Our presentation argues for the importance of practice-based research to the field of theatre history via a consideration of the methods and processes deployed for an AHRB Innovations Award research project undertaken at Royal Holloway, U of London, in July 2002. This project focussed on the work of Jane Scott, a little known early nineteenth century actress / playwright / manager, who performed in many of the fifty melodramas and burlettas specially written for her own theatre and its company at the Sans Pareil (Adelphi) in the Strand. Working historically through practice is a procedure without secure precedent or agreed protocols: this project combined the expertise of academic historians and professional practitioners in order to develop a theorised method that would elucidate nineteenth-century theatre practice beyond the limitations of reconstructive approaches to place and/or play. Using examples from the visual documentation of the four-week workshop process to illustrate our findings, we will discuss the processes and approaches that enabled a modern company to reveal traces of an earlier performance language erased by the dominance of Naturalism. We will address the thorny question that has worked to divide conventional research from new methodologies — when is it practice and when is it research? — and suggest a theoretical model that, we believe, offers a way forward for the wider project and practice of theatre history.

Professor Jacky Bratton has published extensively in the field of theatre and cultural history. Her latest book New Readings in Theatre History Cambridge University Press is published this autumn. She is currently working under an AHRB grant on a revisionist history of the Victorian stage, beginning with an edition of two previously unpublished clown manuscripts.

Dr Gilli Bush-Bailey brings the experience of her first career as a professional actress to her academic research on the work of actresses and female playwrights. She has recently published an article on the possibilities of practice-based research for theatre history in Contemporary Theatre Review (Summer 2003). Her work as principal investigator on the practical project follows her earlier published work on Jane Scott, co-written with Jacky Bratton.

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