Using the Philther Method for Writing Theatre History

Abstract

The paper presents a research project that has created a methodology to reconstruct the theatrical events of the last 70 years. I was motivated by the recognition that the methodology of theatrical historiography prepares a web of interconnected past events based on stories of institutions and artists, and this historiography presents us with solid lines of processes. The cultural events of state-socialism are difficult to follow with this historiographical process-analysis, as the narratives that keep them in the memory are also censored narratives themselves, and the rewriting, loosing and counterfeiting of the memories present us with double history: the sites of memory of the official public sphere and those that remained from the local interpersonal spaces, or the “secondary public sphere”. The analysis of theatrical performances writes a micro-history based on the reconstruction of aesthetic values, and it achieves the perception and understanding of secret, hidden interrelations and rewritten phenomena by the impact-analysis of the events. The aim of my study is to present the method called Philther.