Performing History: Theatrical Representations of the Past in Contemporary Theatre by Freddie Rokem (review)

Reviews 329 FREDDIE ROKEM. Performing History: Theatrical Representations ofrhe Past in Con· temporary Theatre. Studies in Theatre History and Culture. IowaCity: University of Iowa Press, 2000. Pp. xiv + 241, illustrated. $42.95 (Hb). Reviewed by Leigh Clemons, Louisiana State University The relationship between "history" and "perfonnance" has become a rich area of exploration for scholars in perfonnance studies, cultural geography, and theatre. As perceived barriers between "fictional" perfonnance and "real" history become ever more penneable, new sites of engagement become visible, and the discourses surrounding them are continually re-presented, contested, and inverted. Nowhere are the myriad processes of "perfonning history" more fully examined than in Freddie Rokem's recent book of that name. PeTforming History investigates "how flashes of memory from the past can become transfonned into theatrical images on the stage" (209). Rokem's "hyper-historian," the actor who "serve[s] as a connecting link between the historical past and the 'fictional' perfonned here and now of the theatrical event" (13), becomes the agent through which past events and present representations converge in the performance space. His investigation focuses on three particular sites of engagement: perfonnances in Israel relating to the Shoah, three European interpretations of the French Revolution, and American productions of Georg Btichner's Danton's Death. Using these three sites as test cases, Rokem then draws ontheories of representation from Aristotle to Foucault to show how the "theatrical energies" of historical perfonnance are distinct from those found in other types of perfonnances, suggesting that this uniqueness provides insight into "aspects of theatrical communication that have only rarely been examined in detail" (188). The performance practices he examines range from "traditional" theatre pieces like Yehoshua Sobol's Ghetto, to Peter Brook's famous production of Marat/Sade, to Orson Welles's production of Dantoll's Death with the Mercury Theatre in November I938. Of particular note among the works Rokem considers is Ariane Mnouchkine's epic 1789, which used the events of that year to comment upon the upheaval in Paris in 1968. Also impressive is Dudu Ma'ayan's Arbeit macht!rei vom Toilland Europa, a five-hour performance, originally created in 1992, in which the "spectator-participants" travelled to various sites in Israel, as well as through images of ancient Palestine, the Shoah, and contemporary Ismel. Part museum tour, part survivor testimony, part home visit, Ma'ayan's work serves, in Rokem 's analysis, to foreground both the power of language to secure visible testimony and the limits of language in conveying the depth of suffering and tmgedy evident in most historical perfonnance narratives. The first two sections of Rokem's book centre on event-specific narratives - the Shoah and the French Revolution - and their subsequent historical repre- 330 REVlEWS sentation. The perfonnances relating to the Shoah occurred within the geographic confines of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people that was created largely due to the horrific historic events the perfonnances attempt to represent . The interpretations of the French Revolution by the directors in England, Paris, and Stockholm Rokem considers reflect on the impact of these historical events on the creation of "Europe." In his third section, Rokem examines, along with the 1938 Welles production, stagings of Danton's Death by Herbert Blau, in 1965, and by Robert Wilson, at Houston's Abbey Theatre in 1992, probing the impact of the 27-year gap between productions on each director's presentation of Buchner's play, both within very specific timespaces and in terms of the historical events that infonned and were contained within the play. In each instance, Rokem foregrounds the ways in which the productions he considers functioned in their respective times to re-tell the "history" of a given event, country. or person to a contemporary audience, using a variety of theatrical techniques, characters, and spatial configurations. The book's final section lays out the way in which the role of the actor perfanning history has shifted from "eavesdropper" to "survivor-witness," from secret witness who must be punished to public witness whose testimony gives "the victim [...J the power to speak about the past again," as part of what Rokem tenns a "ritual" of resurrection (205), particularly powerful in the...