The Oral History Project: Practice-Based Research in Theatre and Performance

Abstract

I like it that Portelli invokes Marx for the thinking of Oral History methodologies (borrowing that iconic sentence, “a spectre is haunting Europe, the spectre of communism,” from the first lines of the 1848 Manifesto) because this phrasing makes explicit for oral historians and arts researchers alike that central task of thinking about the relations of production. Oral history differs from other historiographic modes in that it privileges the shared narrative authorities of speaking subjects in relationship to one another — valuing the vernacular propinquities of highly particular and historically located voices which may otherwise remain marginalized by the hierarchical conventions of power that organize social activities.³ This includes teaching and research activities that usually narrate and authorize the fields of theatre and performance.

A spectre is haunting the halls of the academy: the spectre of oral history. Alessandro Portelli²

A version of this chapter was shared with the Performance as Research Seminar at the 2006 American Society of Theatre Research (ASTR) Conference, Chicago. Many thanks to Kris Salata and Lisa Wolford Wylam for organizing the seminar, and to its participants for their comments.