Performance, Identity and Community: Addressing archives

Date: Thursday 18 April 2024

The focus on Addressing Performance for our 2023 conference prompted reflections on how we research in the discipline – and the inequalities and harms perpetuated in our epistemological practices. One recurring topic was addressing archives, with several of our speakers turning to the challenges of archival study. These challenges ranged from the difficulty of finding the sources themselves, the politics of archiving, and the narratives that we build around this material.

How do we piece together a historical picture? How do we assemble the fragments that we have? What do we ‘value’ in these assemblages and what do we disregard? What is missing? What social, cultural and political forces haunt these spaces?

Schedule:
12 Performance Identity Community TaPRA working group welcome (ally)
12.15 Special Collections intro – John Bedford Room (Tim Procter)
12.25 group intro (find out who has experience and who would like to learn more)
12.40 Kate Dossett Talk Re-Making Black Theatre History through Censorship Archives
13.00 New Archival Encounters – Kate
13.20 refreshment break [leave the Brotherton]
13.50 PIC brief intro to getting into archives
14.00 archival fragments task – play in pairs (all)
15.00 Provocation & Collective discussion (Gemma and Eli)
15.45 wrapping up & thanks (ally)

New archival encounters (Kate)
Before:
·What do you want to know about archival material before you encounter it? What might you need to help you prepare?
During:
·How does the experience of the reading room impact your engagement with archival materials?
Changing:
·What rules of the reading room would you like to break?
·What new ways of engaging with archival materials would you create?

Questions for archive pedagogies (Gemma)
What is the fragment (e.g. annotated script/correspondence)?
Where does this source material fit in the story of the company/artist? What does it tell us?
What is the context surrounding the fragment and the collection (e.g., funding conditions that support the material/any existing critical engagement (academic or industry) on the collection)?
Is there anything that you’d like/need to know?
How would you use this fragment? How usable is it?