Output details

The space of ‘museum theatre’: a framework for performing heritage’

Brief Description

Performing Heritage brings together academics and practitioners, and is intended to be of use in performance studies, heritage and museum studies, and a professional context. The book, which developed out of an AHRC project and international conference has been widely and favourably reviewed, with reviews in New Theatre Quarterly, Research in Drama Education, and Rethinking Heritage amongst others. Theatre Journal’s review describes it as a “vital” book, and states that “Add to this Paul Johnson’s careful mapping of the relationships among performance, heritage, and learning along axes of history/fiction, external/internal, and risk/safety (55) and the book serves as a model for breaking down efficacious performance into its component parts.” The Journal of Heritage Tourism also singles out this chapter, stating that “In Chapter 4, Johnson finds that performance in heritage is limited because ideas of new performance are not included in heritage or museum theatre. Most commonly, museum theatre encompasses a single character monologue and is absent of developments in performance theory.” The review concludes that “This book successfully merges theories of performance with heritage studies and provides an interdisciplinary research-based approach.” This chapter is also extensively quoted from in Shaughnessy, Nicola. Applying Performance: Live Art, Socially Engaged Theatre and Affective Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.

Research Rationale

This chapter develops and generalises Johnson’s previous work on museum theatre, in a book which is set to become the key academic text in the field of museum theatre.

Strategies Undertaken

The chapter develops a framework for the analysis of heritage performance and applies this through a series of short case studies. It compares developments in the ‘New Museology’ with developments in performance studies, and develops a conceptual ‘museum theatre space’ which discusses museum theatre in terms which move away from the simplistic art or instrument divide.