Theatre, Performance and Analogue Technology: Historical Interfaces and Intermedialities by Kara Reilly (review)

In spite of its title, there is no over-arching narrative to this book. Indeed, as you read the chapters the possibilities and implications of “technology” and “analogue” within theatre and performance expand and diversify. The Greek root techne is marvellously imprecise and expansive and, as Adrian Curtin paraphrases Philip Auslander, “theatre is always-already an intermedial art; performance is itself a technology” (227). Such lack of precision is not necessarily a bad thing, but, nevertheless, the twelve chapters surprise with their diverse interpretations. To some extent all have been unified, as Reilly’s introduction argues, by a desire to historicize contemporary discourses of digital performance.

The collection is organized into three parts: “Interrogating Historiography”, “Industrial Bodies and Dance”, and “Performing Science and Technology”. Part One opens with a well focused essay by Richard Beacham on Heron of Alexandria’s Toy Theatre automaton using extremely convincing computer visualization as his research methodology. Odai Johnson reflects upon the craft of making history as a technology and considers the history constructed around the making of a huge army of artificial, mechanical elephants for the Babylonian Queen Semiramis to do battle against the real elephants of the King of India. Victor Holtcamp continues this approach by taking techne as meaning “an art or craft employed to exert control over the world” (54), as he considers issues of reality and truth in the dramaturgy that Steele Mackaye added to Buffolo Bill’s basic Wild West Exhibition in The Drama of Civilization shows of the 1890s. The fourth essay in Part One, “Forgotten Wizard” by Brandin Barón-Nusbaum, attempts an introduction to Mariano Fortuny, although this important early twentieth century scenographer is not as forgotten as Barón-Nusbaum thinks. Fortuny is oddly contrasted with Adolphe Appia, which is not useful and detracts from the ambition of the chapter. The remarkable technology of Fortuny’s lighting equipment is not well served by the lack of illustration.

Beginning Part Two, Katherine Newey’s “Fairies and Sylphs: Femininity, Technology and Technique” is an essay of considerable discernment that, whilst focusing upon the technology of the ballerina’s blocked pointe shoe, skillfully contextualize this micro-study within the broader context of the nineteenth century spectacular theatre. Kara Reilly’s essay “The Tiller Girls: Mass Ornament and Modern Girl” interestingly places their dance and cultural significance within the context of the Taylorism of factory economy and production processes and the militaristic routine and training of mechanistic repetition. Johannes Birringer’s “Retro-Engineering: Wearable Sound” is a complex and somewhat opaque essay that brings together his own work of “audible dance” in UKIYO (2010) and sets it within the context of the evolution of audio, video and motion capture technologies.

Part Three begins with Ciara Murphy’s excellent examination of “Participatory Electrical Performances in the Enlightenment Period – Shocks and Sparks”. Like Newey’s essay, this offers a micro-study, but here the history of electrical demonstrations are framed within much broader enlightenment issues of religion, useful knowledge and rational pursuits (“scientific practice as a necessary addendum to religious worship” (176)) and the commercialization of culture. Naomi J. Stubbs introduces early American pleasure gardens where the presentation of the rural idyll was facilitated by new technologies of light and fire. Beth A. Kattelman ably takes us through the better-known paths of Pepper’s Ghost, but her essay would have been enhanced by locating this technology within a broader framework of period spectacle and illusion. Adrian Curtin describes the phenomenon of the “theatre phone” whereby during the first decades of the twentieth century subscribers could listen in to theatre and opera from the comfort of their homes. Michael M. Chemers writes perceptively in his “Lyke Unto a Lively Thing: Theatre History and Social Robotics” about early forms of artificial intelligence manifest in the animated rood screens, automata and mechanical avatars, created mainly in sixteenth century churches, to “perform” miracles of prayer and emotional display. His...