Realizing a Postpositivist Theatre History

Abstract

Bruce McConachie teaches in the Theatre Department at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. He is one of the leading theatre historians in the United States, who has, as David Mayer put it in his review of McConachie's most recent book, Melodramatic Formations: American Theatre and Society, 1820–1870, ‘been examining, criticizing, and improving the practice of theatre historiography’ for many years. McConachie's re-examination of how history is researched, analyzed, and written has its origins in an article, ‘Towards a Postpositivist Theatre History’, which he published in Theatre Journal in 1985, criticizing scholars who limit their theatre histories to events in the theatre. He called for historians to realize that theatre is only one part of a much larger socio-cultural complex, and that it is the historian's job to analyze theatre in terms of that complex. this article was the point of departure for the following interview, which Ian Watson conducted with McConachie in Philadelphia in January 1993.