Performing Remains At last, the past has arrived! Performing Remains is Rebecca Schneider's authoritative statement on a major topic of interest to the field of theatre and performance studies. It extends and consolidates her pioneering contributions to the field through its interdisciplinary method, vivid writing, and stimulating polemic. Performing Remains has been eagerly awaited, and will be appreciated now and in the future for its rigorous investigations into the aesthetic and political potential of reenactments. Tavia Nyong’o, Tisch School of the Arts, New York University. I have often wondered where the big, important, paradigm-changing book about re-enactment is: Schneider’ s book seems to me to be that book. Her work is challenging, thoughtful and innovative and will set the agenda for study in a number of areas for the next decade. Jerome de Groot, University of Manchester. Performing Remains is a dazzling new study exploring the role of the fake, the false, and the faux in contemporary performance. Rebecca Schneider argues passionately that performance can be engaged as what remains, rather than what disappears. Across seven essays, Schneider presents a forensic and unique examination of both contemporary and historical performance, drawing on a variety of elucidating sources including the “America” plays of Linda Mussmann and Suzan-Lori Parks, performances of Marina Abramovic´ and Allison Smith, and the continued popular appeal of Civil War reenactments. Performing Remains questions the importance of representation throughout history and today, while boldly reassessing the ritual value of failure to recapture the past and recreate the “original.” Rebecca Schneider is Chair of the Department of the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies at Brown University. She is the author of The Explicit Body in Performance (Routledge, 1997) and co-editor of Re:direction: A Theoretical and Practical Guide (Routledge, 2001). Performing Remains Art and war in times of theatrical reenactment Rebecca Schneider First published 2011 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2011 Rebecca Schneider The right of Rebecca Schneider to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Typeset in Baskerville MT by Keystroke, Station Road, Codsall, Wolverhampton Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Schneider, Rebecca. Performing remains : art and war in times of theatrical reenactment / Rebecca Schneider. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Performing arts. 2. Historical reenactments. 3. Historical reenactments-- United States. I. Title. PN1584.S36 2011 792.02'8–dc22 2010032074 ISBN: 978–0–415–40441–9 (hbk) ISBN: 978–0–415–40442–6 (pbk) ISBN: 978–0–203–85287–3 (ebk) For my father, Peter Schneider In advance of memory and always, again Contents List of illustrations ix Acknowledgements xi Foreword – By way of other directions 1 1 Reenactment and relative pain 32 2 Finding faux fathers 61 3 In the meantime: performance remains 87 4 Poor poor theatre 111 5 Still living 138 And back – Afterword 169 Notes 187 Bibliography 233 Index 251 Illustrations 0.1 Reperformance of Marina Abramovic´, Nude with Skeleton (2002/05), 2010 5 0.2 Unnamed Civil War reenactor, lying “dead” after having been carried off the battlefield to the surgeon’s tent at a 2005 reenactment 8 0.3 “Allison Smith, Mustering Officer” 12 0.4 The Wooster Group’s Hamlet 16 0.5 The statue Return Visit by J. Seward Johnson, Jr. 20 0.6 A wax effigy of Lincoln working on the Gettysburg Address at the Wills house, Gettysburg, PA 21 1.1 Contemporary professional doctors reenacting surgical procedures at the Civil War Reenactment Field Hospital at Hearthside Homestead, Lincoln, RI 34 1.2 “Abes in the Grass.” A gathering of the Association of Lincoln Presenters 46 1.3 Faux finger 52 1.4 A renewal of vows at the Gettysburg, PA, Civil War Reenactments 56 2.1 Reggie Montgomery and Michael Potts in The America Play by Suzan-Lori Parks 68 2.2 Claudia Bruce in Cross Way Cross, directed by Linda Mussmann 71 2.3 Eleanor Antin, “Myself 1854” from The Angel of Mercy 74 2.4 Claudia Bruce and other players in Cross Way Cross 85 4.1 The Wooster Group’s Poor Theater 117 4.2 Rehearsal photograph, taken in advance of Grotowski’s first version of Akropolis 118 4.3 The Wooster Group’s Poor Theater 120 5.1 Ghent altarpiece, Adoration of the Mystic Lamb 147 5.2 Félix Nadar’s 1854 photograph, Pierrot the Photographer, also called The Mime Artist Deburau 150 5.3 Cindy Sherman, Untitled, no. 96, 1981 151 5.4 Jane Fonda at a prisoner of war camp in North Vietnam, 1972 153 5.5 Cindy Sherman, Untitled, no. 210, 1989 155 5.6 Cindy Sherman, Untitled, no. 242, 1991 156 5.7 Yasumasa Morimura, To My Little Sister: For Cindy Sherman, 1998 157 x Illustrations 5.8 Yasumasa Morimura, Self-portrait (Actress)/after Jane Fonda 4, 1996 158 5.9 Hippolyte Bayard, Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man, 1840 166 A.1 Allison Smith, The Muster, Governors Island, New York Harbor, New York, 2005 170 A.2 Actor Matthew Floyd Miller delivering Howard Zinn’s 1971 speech with Mark Tribe’s Port Huron Project, 2007 179 A.3 Spectators at Mark Tribe’s Port Huron Project reenactment of Howard Zinn’s Boston Common Speech, 2007 181 A.4 Sharon Hayes, In the Near Future, New York, 2005 183 Acknowledgements For a long time, this book was forthcoming. So long, in fact, that I considered titling it Forthcoming, as I had grown somewhat fond of knowing it in that way, and it even seemed appropriate to the subject matter. However, so many people have helped me finally bring the book through to completion, however vexed “completion” is as a category in this book, that it seemed appropriate to acknowledge them with a real title, and to put the project, unlike my gratitude, to rest. My colleagues at Brown University deserve my deep thanks for their conversation over the years on the topics that take shape here. I am particularly grateful for the way they never fully separate art practice and the practice of scholarship. My thanks to the students in the grad seminars in “Photography and Performance,” both at Brown and as a Visiting Professor at New York University – it was with and through them that much of my thought took place. My participation in the Pembroke Center seminar on temporality, led by Rey Chow, was key in my thinking, and fellow participants were invaluable interlocutors. I enjoyed a Fellowship as Visiting Distinguished Professor at Queen Mary University in London in 2006 while working on this book, and I thank colleagues there as well. My time in London generated important conversation with a wide range of artists and scholars at Queen Mary, at Roehampton, at Kings, and at Goldsmiths. To the Centre for Performance Research in Aberystwyth, and particularly Richard Gough, I am indebted. Marten Spangberg is a hero for the incredibly smart encounters he organized in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Stockholm, Lisbon, Berlin, and elsewhere, bringing artists together with scholars to think/do performance based in dance. He introduced me to so much important work and conversation – Xavier Le Roy, Jérôme Bel, La Ribot, Tino Sehgal. Without his inspiration I might not have obsessed on the Michel de Certeau passage about the monument and the passer- by that appears at least twice in this book. To those who read and responded to the manuscript (in part or in whole), I am most grateful. As the labor of some readers is meant to be anonymous, I can only signal my gratitude while blindfolded, but truly, the help was sincere and significant. From theatre/performance friends and colleagues too numerous to name, I lift out a few who directly discussed and helped me frame the issues presented here: Nicholas Ridout, Ann Pellegrini, Sally Charnow, Jennifer Brody, Richard xii Acknowledgements Schechner, Diana Taylor, Shannon Jackson, P. A. Skantze and Matthew Fink, Tavia Nyong’o, Patricia Ybarra, Michal Kobialka, Karen Shimakawa, Marvin Carlson, Paige McGinley, Harvey Young, Chris Salter, Nicole Ridgway, and Thalia Field among many others – thank you. Art historians who patiently put up with my rants, and who provided inspiration and support: Jane Blocker, Peter Chametzky, Amelia Jones, Julia Bryan-Wilson. My thanks to Carrie Lambert- Beatty for sharing her essay draft. And to Jennifer Blessing and Nancy Spector as well. I only wish that my editor, Talia Rodgers, lived next door – for reasons of friendship particularly. And to Niall Slater at Routledge as well, who helped with images and other particulars. To students who pitched in in various ways beyond the seminars: Michelle Carriger, James Dennen, Anna Fisher, Laura Green, Hollis Mickey, Christine Mok, Elise Morrison, Andrew Starner – my thanks. Thanking family is like thanking your own skin. Bethany, Paul, and Pat Schneider all read the manuscript and provided invaluable comments. Peter and Laurel might as well have, because their support was equally significant.