Welcome to Performing Premodernity!
We celebrated our ten-year anniversary in 2023 with the publication of Performing the Eighteenth Century: Theatrical Discourses, Practices, and Artefacts, edited by Magnus Tessing Schneider and Meike Wagner.
On 12 September 2024 we launched the anthology in Stockholm, at Stiftelsen Musikkulturens Främjande:
Here is an excerpt from the first review, written by Elizabeth Svarstad (Norwegian Academy of Music) for 1700-tal: Nordic Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies. The review can be read in its entirety (in Norwegian) here:
The joy and enthusiasm of working with practical exploration shines through the book, and as a reader, I become engaged and interested in the thoughts [the authors] had, the choices they faced during the various processes, and how they made decisions. …
The texts provide valuable insight into the interaction between academic and artistic work, and into the exchange between the two through the processes that involved various stagings and the exploration of elements such as the placement of actors on stage, lighting, and costumes. …
It is a solid and rich publication with high interdisciplinary relevance. I hope they are already planning their next project, and I hope that researchers, directors, and theatre artists will engage with the project’s questions and findings and will work with historical pieces with the “reflexivity” and attention presented here. In the words of Mark Tatlow: “Ultimately, these are things you have to explore and experiment with in rehearsal and even in performance.”
Performing the Eighteenth Century: Theatrical Discourses, Practices, and Artefacts
What can artists learn from theatre scholars when it comes to performing historical works on stage today? What can theatre scholars learn from today’s artists when it comes to understanding the works and practices of the past? How is the experience of modern spectators affected by attending performances in historic theatres? And how, aesthetically, do we experience the reconstruction of productions from the remote past?
To read more, and for information about how to purchase or download the anthology, click HERE.
New research report and article:
Theatre historian Petra Dotlačilová and costume maker Anna Kjellsdotter look back at the process of experimental costume recreation for the historically informed performance of Le Devin de village (The Village Soothsayer) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau from 1752/3, put on by Performing Premodernity at the Ulrikdals Palace Theatre Confidencen.
Read their research report HERE.
To learn more about the methodology of historically informed costume, developed by Petra Dotlačilová and Anna Kjellsdotter during their collaboration within Performing Premodernity.
Read their recent article published in Studies in Costume and Performance HERE.
Performing Premodernity began in 2013 as a five-year research project based at the Department of Culture and Aesthetics at Stockholm University, and as one of eight Premodernity projects funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences). Concentrating on repertoire from the second half of the eighteenth century and through both academic and artistic research the project aims to contribute to the revitalizing of historically informed performance today. The aims of the project, couched in terms of a developing manifesto can be read HERE.
Photo: Rousseau’s Pygmalion, Český Krumlov, 15 June 2015. João Luís Paixão (Pygmalion), Laila Cathleen Neuman (Galathée).
