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Theatre Histories: An Introduction. By Phillip B. Zarilli, Bruce A. McConachie, Gary Jay Williams, and Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei. New York: Routledge, 2006; pp. xxxi + 544. $122.00 cloth, $44.95 paper.
Scholarly folk wisdom has it that translations and historiographical optics wear out after about a generation. Theatre Histories: An Introduction arrives roughly forty years after the advent of Oscar Brockett's History of the Theatre and I don't think it is too much to say that the new book's authors seek to unseat the reigning survey-course "Bible." Theatre Histories stakes its claim on three grounding ideas. First, that theatre can best be understood as a communicative phenomenon that shores up or expresses solidarity, resistance, religious belief, or a political stance, the latter sometimes only unconsciously understood. Accordingly, aesthetics and dramatic literature take a back seat to cultural (writ large) aims and practices. Second is that theatre is a global phenomenon. Finally, Theatre Histories asserts at every turn that history is unthinkable without theory, even hegemonic theory passing as the "natural" or "universal."
The book's four units reflect a commitment to thinking about theatre via communication technologies. Part 1 examines "Performance and Theatre in Oral and Written Cultures before 1600." Part 2 is "Theatre and Print Cultures, 1500-1900." Part 3 discusses "Theatre in Modern Media Cultures, 1850-1970," and the concluding section is "Theatre and Performance in the Age of Global Communications, 1950-present." The first and last sections are the most successful at making good on the goal of planetary inclusiveness. Part 1 works hard to explain ritual, shamanism, orality, and literacy, and to define early religions-the "sponsors" for many performances-as "apparatuses for enacting highly choreographed performances believed necessary for maintaining social, civic, and cosmic cohesion" (53), contra any idea of personal faith we may hold today. This first quarter of the book (edited by Phillip Zarilli) proffers snapshots of performance traditions drawn from Indian vedas to Irish druids via henges in northern England and religious...