This book—a collection of works from artists, scholars, students, and activists from around the world—is a compendium of resources for those interested in engaging in conversations of justice, diversity, and historiography in the fields of theatre and performance studies. The project seeks to reconsider and reframe issues that are endemic in our field and comes at the request of our students. Feeling disserved by narratives of history and formats of discussion with which they have been presented, students have come to us to ask what alternatives are possible as our field moves forward. This book is an offering to them.

 

For these students, and for the present and future instructors in our field who will use this book, we hold a tripartite hope: to expand, to enable, and to provide access. To expand: we hope to grow the idea of what performance history is and can be. To enable: we aim to offer tools to students and teachers who wish to further explore alternate histories and methods of historiography. To provide access: we hope to lift up modes of thought and creation not regularly prioritized in the fields of drama and performance studies.

 

As a whole we intend for this book to provoke its readers to question the narratives of history that they’ve received (and that they may promulgate) in their artistic and scholarly work. We aim to question methods and ethics of reading that are present in the western mode of studying drama and performance history. In hearing from students, artists, and specialists about their experiences in drama pedagogy, we hope to provide structures that instructors and students can use to pursue greater wisdom. This book is not a textbook that provides instruction, but rather a collection of ways of thinking—about organizing curricula and presenting resources to give students new ways of seeing the past and present of performance.