»Curating Theatre Histories« is intended to introduce and develop theoretical and practical curatorial research skills in the field of theatre historiography, through an international collaboration between the theatre programs and archives at the University of Cologne, Germany and at Tel Aviv University. Accessing and researching past theatre performances requires innovative professional tools that grow out of the disciplinary characteristics of the art of theatre: live ephemeral performances, which integrate visual, acoustic, embodied, textual, and technological components. Whereas traditional theatre historiographical methodologies have focused on written texts (dramas/scripts and plays) as the research starting point, contemporary digital tools enable the creation of novel modes of studying and curating theatre histories, presenting, and disseminating its outputs.
This international collaborative project focuses on curating and exhibiting theatre histories, by engaging graduate students with the theoretical, methodological, and practical intricacies related to theatre archival research. It fosters a scholarly and pedagogical dialogue between two prominent theatre departments and archives in order to develop digital models for researching, curating, and presenting theatre historical objects and artifacts to international audiences. Thus, in each stage of this project the participants and faculty members challenge issues of international dialogue and cross-cultural understanding.
This first stage of the project will focus on the multi-layered question of »Dreams and Dreaming in the Theatre: Archival, Technological, Dramaturgical, and Performative Perspectives«. Dreams are a central theatrical element in many cultures and epochs: conceived of as an act of imagination that bears complex relations to ‘reality’; theatrical dreams have a material, collective, and medial dimension and become constitutive for an act of social communication. Eli Rozik suggested that theatre is »a social and institutionalized way for ‘dreaming’« (Rozik, 250). Staging dreams often represents social and projective ideas and artistic trends. Looking into archival histories of staged dreams in the German and Israeli contexts, will lead us to the creation of new curatorial models that shed light on theatrical mechanisms and social perceptions, comparatively and internationally.
While the project is planned to begin as a two-party initiative, it aims to broaden its boundaries and to include more theatre archives and academic programs. By doing so, it will revise established national narratives in theatre historiography, providing the crucial momentum towards the formation of a transnational network of theatre archives. Researching theatre histories unfolds the creative processes and its sociocultural entanglements. The proposed international collaborative project sets out to develop novel models and methodologies for curating theatre histories, and for making it accessible to scholars and the public. The project offers to connect two prominent theatre departments and archives (TAU and UoC), through a joint research and pedagogical initiative that will take place under the auspecies of the Lowy International School, at Tel Aviv University.
The timeline of the project is the following:
Curating Theatre History is starts with introductory online courses and workshops to establish a common ground for the theoretical and methodological framework. Over the course of time, these online collaborative seminars, in which each the bi-national group of graduate students will meet, grant a time frame to agree on and present a selection of archival materials compiled for physical and digital exhibitions and catalogue. The first on-site working phase takes place in November 2024, at the Theatre Collection Cologne. During this time frame graduate students of TAU and UoC will focuse on theoretical approaches to theatre curatorial practices of archival materials: from physical objects to digital representations. The archival work will be based on German productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other related works in the Cologne Theatre Collection. The second on-site working phase is planned for Spring 2025 in Tel Aviv. Similarly, archival work on Israeli productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and other related works at the Israeli Center for the Documentation of Performing Arts will be conducted. In addition, the focus will be on theoretical and aesthetic approaches to staging dreams in the theatre and to the theatre as ‘a dreaming apparatus’. In June 2025 (Cologne) and Fall 2025 (Israel) the physical exhibitions of the project »Dreams and Dreaming in the Theatre: Israeli and German Perspectives.« will celebrate their opening. This physical exhibition of the original archival objects is to be regarded as the first step in developing a digital three-dimensional (3D) online platform for the curation of theatre history exhibitions.
