Introduction [Histories]

Abstract

The study of theatre history and its historiography has often been postulated in terms of the difficulties that it advances. These difficulties include a concern for the invariable absence of the events that it studies, the ethical implications involved – especially when coupled with issues of what is ‘truth’ – and even the overarching value of historical study itself. Nathan Thomas’ chapter, titled ‘Meyerhold, the Musician’, offers one example of this kind of periodisation. The essay opens with a bold statement, that ‘Meyerhold was a musician’ and builds up from there by signalling how music was consistently at the centre of his theatrical practice. When periodisation flows downwards to the work of a single practitioner it invariably brings with it issues related to microhistory, focused as the latter is on more contained research units, be they a particular event, reality, group of people, or, in actual fact, individual.