The Death of Literature and History

The Death of Literature and History1 Richard Hornby The study of dramatic literature and theatre history in the United States is dying out. A generation ago, these subjects were the primary focus of college and university theatre departments; today, they are seen as irrelevant in practical theatre programs, or as politically incorrect in scholarly ones. Indeed, there is little scholarly study of theatre going on anymore of any sort, whether P.C. or not. The MFA is now the standard graduate theatre degree , which typically includes very little history or literature. (This does not prevent holders of the MFA from using it to get jobs as professors!) Major traditional doctoral programs at Iowa, USC, and Tulane disappeared long ago, to be followed more recently into oblivion by programs at Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA Lesser programs are given back burner status, while their departments emphasize practical study. When I left my position at Florida State University in 1991 as director of the doctoral program in theatre, I was replaced (two years later!) by an associate professor, as was Thomas Postlewait when he left the equivalent position at Indiana University. While this downgrading of rank does not necessarily imply a downgrading of quality for these programs, it certainly implies a lowering of priorities and a decline in prestige. I can hardly imagine a doctoral program in, say, physics or anthropology or English being headed by an associate professor, but in those subjects there is no competition from an alternative "terminal" degree that is quicker, cheaper, and easier than the PhD. The largest remaining doctoral program is at New York University, which graduates some two dozen students per year. But is their Ph.D. truly in theatre ? The department is called "Performance Studies," a catch phrase standing for a hodgepodge of anthropology, pop culture research, and avant-garde performance criticism. Students do very little traditional theatre history and no dramatic criticism at all. Scripted drama is considered obsolete, with literature all but banned from the program. Thus there are courses with titles like "Storytelling Performance in Africa and the Diaspora" and "Aesthetics of Everyday Life" but nothing on the drama of Sophocles, Moliere, Goethe, Ibsen, O'Neill, or Pinter. (There are two courses on Shakespeare, however; even NYU could not stamp out html) 143 144 Richard Hornby The separation of academic study from performance is a long-standing problem in American theatre departments. One might expect that "Performance Studies" would bridge the gap to include at least some investigation of acting per se, but even there, only non-Western or non-traditional performance rates attention. Unsurprisingly, the Department of Performance Studies is separate from the NYU Graduate Acting Program; intellectual or artistic exchange between the two is nil. For a long time, the NYU Department of Performance Studies could be written off as anomalous. No other such departments existed, and no one was hiring its graduates. Recently, however, Northwestern University added a Performance Studies Department, and UCLA is considering one. Furthermore, "performance theory" has been gaining intellectual respectability, dominating journals like The Drama Review, Performing Arts Journal, and Theater (the last edited by onetime personnel from the first), while growing in influence in formerly conservative theatre publications like Theatre Studies and Theatre Journal . Performance theory, like the performance studies that spawned it, sounds like an expansion of traditional theatre history and dramatic criticism but is actually a rejection of them. Performance theory today, when it deals with theatre at all (there is much study of popular entertainment, or even the "performative" aspects of completely non-theatrical events), consists of semiotic analysis of theatrical presentation, sociological analysis of the audience, anthropological analysis of exotic non-Western performance, or inflated discussion of avant-garde performance here in the West. The results may be of interest to the sociologist or anthropologist but not to the American theatre professional , nor to the American theatregoer. Thus if American actors today show no interest in theory of any kind, performance theorists return the favor by writing on issues that rarely concern the actor, at least directly. Conspicuously lacking is any analysis of Western actors in Western plays or films, particularly of the sort he or she is likely to...