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A SERIOUS JOY: ASTR FROM 1981 TO 2006

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2007

Gary Jay Williams
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Extract

This history of the American Society for Theatre Research is written on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary and focuses chiefly on the years from 1981 to 2006, but with an overview of ASTR's first twenty-five years as a necessary prologue. A scholarly organization changing in response to complex cultural dynamics, ASTR is very different today from the society of 1956 and the society of 1981.

Type
Research Article
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , May 2007 , pp. 27 - 76
Copyright
Copyright © The American Society for Theatre Research, Inc. 2007

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References

Endnotes

1. A sketch of the early years entitled “The First Quarter Century of ASTR,” by Marshall, Thomas F. (Kent State University), former ASTR president, appears in Theatre Survey 22.2 (1981): 117–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar. My three appendixes list the ASTR officers and editors, recipients of selected awards, and annual conference sites and programs for the entire fifty years of ASTR. Lists of these and other awards, together with reproductions of historical documents, compiled by Heather Nathans, Richard Tharp, and Michelle Granshaw from the archives, are available on the ASTR anniversary Web page at [www.astr.org/ASTR50th.html]. Personal memories of members will also be found on that Web page at the links for “Unofficial History of ASTR Pt. 1” and “Pt. 2 (Green).”

2. This brief history of the society cannot be an intellectual history of the discipline, of course. Recent discussions of the field will be found in the following: Thomas Postlewait, An Introduction to Theatre Historiography (forthcoming), Shannon Jackson, Professing Performance: Theatre in the Academy from Philology to Performativity (2004), and Jacky Bratton, New Readings in Theatre History (2004), all from Cambridge University Press; the sixteen essays in the November 2004 issue (45.2) of Theatre Survey, titled “Theatre History in the New Millennium: A Forum”; Carlson, Marvin, “Theatre and Performance at a Time of Shifting Disciplines,” Theatre Research International 26.2 (2001): 137–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Postlewait, Thomas, “Writing History Today,” Theatre Survey 41.2 (2000): 83–106CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hume, Robert D., Reconstructing Contexts: The Aims and Principles of Archeo-Historicism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Ronald W. Vince's historiographical handbooks Ancient and Medieval Theatre (1984), Neoclassical Theatre (1988), and Renaissance Theatre (1984), all published by Greenwood Press.

3. Web site of IFTR at [www.firt-iftr.org/firt/site/history.jsp] June 2006; Marshall's account of IFTR's development (in “First Quarter Century”) is incomplete.

4. Marshall, 117. Marshall observed that in the United States in 1956 the use of the term “theatre historian,” familiar to European academics since the turn of the century, was relatively recent.

5. Quinn, “Theaterwissenschaft in the History of Theatre Study,” Theatre Survey 32.2 (1991): 123–36Google Scholar, at 126.

6. The Swiss Civil Code, English version by Ivy Williams (Oxford University Press, 1925; rpt. Zurich: ReMak Verlag, 1976), reproduced at [www.servas.org/siexco/images/0/07/The_Swiss_Civil_Code_in_English.pdf], vol. 1, pt. 1, chap. 2, art. 60–79 on societies.

7. Quinn, 126–7. Quinn's article sought to correct oversimplifications about the German developments, explaining the various major lines of inquiry in the Theaterwissenschaft group and their ideological implications.

8. Program for the ASTR meeting, 24 November 1956, box 1, and “In Memoriam: Harry Pedicord (1912–1994),” ASTR Newsletter, Fall 1994, Williams box, both in the ASTR Archives, Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library, University of Maryland-College Park [hereafter, ASTR Archives]. Marshall (see n. 1) gives the working committee names and the approximate figure of fifty attending the first meeting (118). I have not found a document dating from 1956–57 that lists those at this first meeting. (See also n. 9.) A partial list of fourteen attendees was compiled in 1978 by Margaret Ranald for her letter replying to an inquiry from one Joseph C. Kiger, 1 March 1978, box 18, folder 9, ASTR Archives, available within the downloadable file [www.astr.org/50thAnniversary/ConstitutionandFounders.pdf]. Ranald's sources are not given; to her list may be added the three members who delivered papers at the meeting, whose names appear in the program (see Figure 1). In this overview of ASTR's first twenty-five years, I have provided institutional affiliations of members for historical purposes. In the coverage of the second twenty-five years I do so only for those whom I believe to be deceased. Most of the other named members' affiliations can be found in the online directory of members.

9. The 1957 membership figure comes from an ASTR newsletter dated December 1957 and the 1967 figure from the 1967 membership list, box 1, ASTR Archives. The selected names I give of “members in these early years” are derived chiefly from five sources:, the Ranald letter cited in n. 8; the programs from the first and second meetings in 1956 (see Figure 1) and 1957 (program available at [www.astr.org/50thAnniversary/ProgramPapers_1957.pdf]); a handwritten list entitled “Charter Members”; and another handwritten list entitled “Founding Members,” the second line of which is “First Meeting Nov. 24, 1956.” The latter might have been compiled by Paul Myers (New York Public Library), whose name appears at the top and in whose hand the list may be (box 18, folder 9, ASTR Archives). This list, whether derived from some vanished documents or from the memories of Myers and others, had to have been compiled no earlier than 1976; it indicates Nagler as retired, and he retired in 1975. The lists and the Ranald letter are available in the several pages of the downloadable file [www.astr.org/50thAnniversary/ConstitutionandFounders.pdf]. Copies of incorporation papers, Williams box, ASTR Archives.

10. This distinction still obtains, expressed early and late in the mission statements of Theatre Survey. In the version used from 1995 to 2006, the last line is: “Dramatic literature studies not substantively related to actual performances are outside the journal's purview.”

11. For papers given at ASTR/TLA conferences and Theatre Survey tables of contents over these twenty-five years, see the aforementioned ASTR Web site [www.astr.org/ASTR50th.html].

12. See n. 8 on the attendance at the first meeting. In a letter to Phyllis Dircks, I recalled, having been chair for local arrangements for the 1975 meeting in Washington, D.C., that between sixty and seventy members attended that meeting. Letter to Phyllis Dircks, 27 February 1984, box 10, folder 2, ASTR Archives.

13. The following early mission statement, together with a characterization of the membership, was given in a 1960 newsletter: “To encourage theatre scholarship and to provide a direct link with other national theatre research groups represented in the International Federation of Societies for Theatre Research. In the membership of ASTR are educators, writers, librarians, curators, actors' agents, booksellers, theatre technicians, and suppliers of theatre equipment in the United States of America.” ASTR News, 1960, box 1, ASTR Archives. Nagler, citing Max Herrmann as his model, took a very practical view in his Sourcebook in Theatrical History of the value of interaction between historians and artists, saying that directors are “doomed” without a knowledge of theatre history (New York: Dover, 1962), xxii–xxiii.

14. Harry W. Pedicord (President, 1961–70), taped interview with Phyllis Dircks, 21 October 1978, box 6, ASTR Archives.

15. Membership list 1958, in the program for the annual meeting, box 1, ASTR Archives. My figures on women members in this essay must be described as approximate; ASTR did not and does not collect demographic data. In counting the number of women members from the membership lists for various years, I have relied on female first names or personal knowledge. Women scholars then and now often use an initial rather than a first name to avoid gender discrimination; so the number of women members in 1958 may have been slightly higher.

16. Membership directory in the program of the Annual Meeting, 1959, box 1, ASTR Archives.

17. Heinlein is listed in the “Founding Members list cited in n. 9; Marguerite McAneny is listed in the “Charter Members” list cited in n. 9. The ASTR newsletter came to the title ASTR News around 1996. From 1973 until 1993, the banner title was “ASTR” and in 1994 the subhead, “The American Society for Theatre Research Newsletter,” was added. For simplicity I have used ASTR News or ASTR newsletter throughout this article.

18. Annual Business Meeting Minutes, 26 November 1966, and Executive Committee rosters file, box 1, ASTR Archives.

19. Executive Committee minutes, 1964, reporting on the fall 1963 annual meeting, box 1, ASTR Archives.

20. I have not been able to document when, if ever, this policy was formalized. The practice was recalled as a long tradition by William Green, a member since 1957, in my telephone interview with him in July 2006 (no transcript kept).

21. Donald Keene (Columbia University) presented a paper on Japanese kyōgen plays (1959), Lucyle Hook (American College for Girls, Istanbul) on Turkish puppet drama (1961), Henry Wells (Columbia University) on poetry and spectacle in Asian theatre (1969), and Walter Meserve on Uncle Tom's Cabin in China. Programs for the annual meetings in these years, box 1, ASTR Archives. Conference program papers for most years are reproduced on the aforementioned Web page [www.astr.org/ASTR50th.html].

22. Enders, Jody, “From the Editor,” Theatre Survey 47.1 (2006): 1–2Google Scholar, at 2. See also Carlson, Marvin, “Become Less Provincial,” Theatre Survey 45.2 (2004): 177–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. An undated copy of the constitution and bylaws in the ASTR Archives, probably typed in 1956 or 1957, box 11, folder 6, ASTR archives; this is available in the downloadable file cited in n. 8. The voting procedures can be deduced from early minutes and amendments, several of which are noted later in this account. The title “President” replaced “Chairman” in 1972.

24. Program for the 1969 conference, box 1, ASTR Archives; Rachow, Louis A., “Review of Activities of the Sixth Congress,” in Hodge, Francis, ed., Innovations in Stage and Theatre Design (Austin, TX: American Society for Theatre Research, 1972)Google Scholar, [vii–x]. For a full listing of conference sites, themes, and program chairs, see Appendix C.

25. Hodge, ed., Innovations; Matlaw, Myron, ed., Conference on the History of American Popular Entertainment (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1979)Google Scholar; Loney, Glenn, ed., Conference on Musical Theatre in America (Greenwood Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

26. See Appendix A for a full listing of Theatre Survey editors and Book Review editors.

27. Taped interview with Harry W. Pedicord by Phyllis Dircks, 21 October 1978, box 6, ASTR Archives.

28. Executive Committee minutes, 24 November 1967, box 1, ASTR Archives.

29. For Theatre Survey tables of contents, see n. 11.

30. See Appendix A for a list of all Theatre Survey and ASTR News editors.

31. Published as special issues of Theatre Survey were Walther R. Volbach's Memoirs of Max Reinhardt's Theatres 1920–1922, TS 13.1a (Fall 1972), and Samuel N. Bogorad and Robert Gale Noyes, eds., Samuel Foote's Primitive Puppet-Shew Featuring “Piety in Pattens”: A Critical Edition, TS 14.1 (Fall 1973).

32. Executive Committee minutes, 25 November 1967, box 1, ASTR Archives. The minutes include a tribute to Freedley by Robert Hamilton Ball.

33. Letter from ACLS president R. M. Lumiansky, 28 January 1975, box 18, folder 15, ASTR Archives.

34. Letter to members 11 June 1969 on bylaw amendments passed by the Executive Committee, Executive Committee minutes 1964–76, box 1, ASTR Archives.

35. Beckerman's report from the president, ASTR News, Spring 1973, box 1, ASTR Archives.

36. Sarah Kahan, his widow, continued to fund the award for a decade after his death, according to family friend Thomas Postlewait. Telephone interview with Postlewait July 2006; notes in Williams box, “ASTR History–Notes” folder, ASTR Archives.

37. My survey of annual conferences here and elsewhere in this article draws on the programs located throughout the ASTR Archives, most of which are reproduced on the aforementioned Web page [www.astr.org/ASTR50th.html].

38. NHA correspondence with Margaret Ranald, ASTR secretary, box 17, folder 25, and box 13, folder 13, ASTR Archives.

39. Correspondence between IREX representatives and ASTR president Joseph Donohue, November 1985, and IREX materials, box 24, folder 14; correspondence of Kalman Burnim and various documents, including an agenda for the Moscow meeting, box 11, folders 3 and 4; Donohue report to the Executive Committee, 24 April 1991, box 25, folder 59; “General Correspondence 1986–91, box 25, folder 56;” and Executive Committee reports, spring 1988, box 25, folder 1, ASTR Archives.

40. ASTR News, April 1968, box 2, folder 8, ASTR Archives. My account of the IBT project is based in part on these materials in the ASTR Archives: box 1, Executive Committee minutes, May 1990; box 11, folder 16, IBT material, and folder 19, Publications Committee Report 1976; box 15, folder 18, IBT 1988–9, and folder 19, Executive Committee material 1988–90; box 16, folder 1, Executive Committee material 1985–6, and folder 49, NEH grant; box 18, folder 2, Research Committee material, IBT 1977–82; and box 23, folder 3, Executive Committee reports, 1988–91; box 25, folders 11, 18, 25, and 58, the latter of which contains Ron Engle's report from the IBT Advisory Committee. I also have drawn on a helpful, brief history provided to me by Rosabel Wang in August 2006, and an EBSCO brochure, ca. 2005, Williams box, folder labeled “ASTR History–Notes,” ASTR Archives.

41. Benito Ortolani and Irving Brown, report to SIBMAS Council 17th International Congress, Mannheim, West Germany, 18 August 1988; available online at [www.sibmas.org/congresses/sibmas88/mannheim1988_32.html].

42. Executive Committee minutes and materials, including treasurer's reports, various folders, 1988–90, box 25, ASTR Archives; letter from Kalman Burnim to Thomas Postlewait and Ron Engle, 9 May 1990, box 25, folder 25, ASTR Archives.

43. My summary of the review derives from the long excerpt cited from it in Benito Ortolani's Report to the Executive Committee, Spring 1990, box 1, folder labeled “Executive Committee Meeting 5–6 May 1990,” ASTR Archives.

44. Presidential address 1985, box 16, folder 52, ASTR Archives.

45. Letter from Herzel to the Editorial Board, 16 January l986, and related correspondence, especially Bernard Dukore's letter proposing this change in the journal's mission, 20 December 1985, box 25, folder 30, and box 26, Theatre Survey folder, ASTR Archives. Dukore was also dismayed with TDR and Theatre Journal for what he saw as their neglect of dramatic literature. After querying the board, Herzel determined there was a strong consensus for maintaining the original policy.

46. Membership list 1980, box 1, ASTR Archives. See also n. 15.

47. Program Proposal from Gay Gibson Cima to the Executive Committee, 17 September 1987, Executive Committee minutes, November 1987, box 1, ASTR Archives. The Program Committee consisted of Cima, Alicia Kae Koger, Bruce A. McConachie (local arrangements), Thomas Postlewait, Joseph R. Roach, Gary Jay Williams, and Simon Williams.

48. Program from the Williamsburg conference, 1989, Williams box, ASTR Archives. This and other turning-point conferences at the time are discussed in the introduction to Case, Sue-Ellen and Reinelt, Janelle, eds., The Performance of Power (Iowa City: University Iowa Press, 1991)Google Scholar. This anthology includes several papers from the Williamsburg conference and others representing new historiographical issues. See also n. 51.

49. Carlson, “The Theory of History,” in Case and Reinelt, ed., The Performance of Power, 272–9, at 275. Carlson was drawing in part on White, Hayden, “Method and Ideology in Intellectual History: The Case of Henry Adams,” in Modern European Intellectual History: Reappraisals and New Perspectives, eds. Capra, Dominick La and Kaplan, Steven (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), 286Google Scholar.

50. See Appendix B for a full listing of the Younger Scholar's Prizes (now the Gerald Kahan Scholar's Prize).

51. To take just a few examples: IFTR'S 1989 World Congress in Stockholm had been devoted to the theme of new directions in theatre research. An ATHE panel a few months before ASTR's meeting had taken up the untenable distinction between history and theory. Interpreting the Theatrical Past was published in this year (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1989), an anthology of essays in historiography edited by Bruce A. McConachie and Thomas Postlewait. By 1992, the MLA had published its Redrawing the Boundaries, edited by Stephen Greenblatt and Giles Gunn, a summation of the transformations in literature and criticism that had largely taken place by the late 1980s.

52. Figures as of 29 November 2006, provided to me by Nancy Erickson, ASTR administrator. See also n. 15.

53. Executive Committee minutes, including the treasurer's reports, 1982–90, box 1, ASTR Archives. For the long-standing debt to a university press, see Lynn Conolly's report from the Publications Committee to the Executive Committee, Executive Committee minutes, November 1985, box 1, ASTR Archives.

54. This account draws from Executive Committee minutes, November 1991 to November 1995, box 1, ASTR Archives, and reports in newsletters between November 1991 and November 1995, including the Annual Business Meeting minutes for 11 November 1995 in ASTR News, Fall 1995, Williams box, ASTR Archives. It also draws on the author's telephone interview with Kalman Burnim, 13 July 2006; rough notes from this interview are in Williams box, folder “ASTR History-Notes,” ASTR Archives.

55. My account is based on emails from Attilio Favorini, July 2006; Annual Business Meetings minutes, 28 November 1970 and 25 November 1972, box 15, folder 14 (in with the Executive Committee minutes, 1966–84); Executive Committee minutes, 19 March 1971 and 23 November 1973 (the latter records the passing of amendments to the bylaw), box 15, folder 14; ASTR News, Spring 1973, which includes the previous bylaws; a notice from Chairman Marshall in ASTR News, Fall 1973, box 10; and a copy of the bylaws, “revised through 23 Nov. 1973,” box 19, folder labeled ASTR Executive Committee, ASTR Archives.

56. Memo from Margaret Knapp (chair) to members of the bylaws subcommittee, 2 November 1992, with proposed revisions; Executive Committee minutes of 18 November 1992, in folder 31, labeled “Bylaws Revision Committee Correspondence 1991–93,” box 11; Executive Committee minutes, May 1993, box 1, ASTR Archives; and telephone interview with Margaret Knapp, 20 August 2006, notes in Williams box, folder “ASTR History-Notes.” In 1984, the Executive Committee defeated (by a vote of 6 to 5) a motion to adopt the Governance Committee's recommendation for a mail balloting of the general membership for the election of president. Executive Committee minutes, November 1984, box 15, folder 1. It approved a recommendation that presidents be limited to two terms, a rule allowing two consecutive terms, which the 1992 rule, still in effect, does not. See Article V, Section 2 a(i) of the current bylaws on the ASTR Web page [www.astr.org/ASTRByLaws.html].

57. For a copy of the bylaws ratified as of April 1985, see Williams box, folder “ASTR History–Notes,” ASTR Archives. See also the current bylaws, Article 7, Section 2, at the URL cited in n. 56.

58. ASTR News, Summer–Fall 2005, 13, Williams box, ASTR Archives.

59. Minutes of the Executive Committee and the Annual Business Meetings in ASTR News, Summer–Fall 2004, and the Spring and Fall issues of 2005, Williams box, ASTR Archives.

60. Executive Committee minutes, April 2003, Williams box, ASTR Archives.

61. For the 1974 resolution, see Annual Business Meeting minutes, 30 November 1974, and the Executive Committee minutes, 29 November 1974, box 1, folder 4, “Executive Committee meeting minutes 1974–77,” ASTR Archives. For the 1984 resolution, see the full resolution and related correspondence in box 16, folder 36, “Unesco Resolution,” ASTR Archives. See also the Executive Committee minutes, 30 March 1984; President Donohue's report to the Executive Committee and the Executive Committee minutes, 15 November 1984, box 15, folder 1. I can find no ASTR resolution in the minutes of the Executive Committee or in the minutes of the annual membership business meetings in the 1960s and 1970s opposing the war in Vietnam, reported as a recollection of a member in Theatre Survey 44.1 (2003): 3.

62. Postlewait memo of 5 August 1996 to Margaret Knapp, Gay Gibson Cima, and Michal Kobialka, Williams box, folder “Executive Committee Minutes (partial), spring and fall 1996,” which contains related documents, ASTR Archives.

63. Photocopy from Erickson of the ASTR contract with Erickson as of August 2006, Williams box, folder “ASTR History–Notes,”ASTR Archives; telephone interview with McConachie July 2006, notes in Williams box, folder “ASTR History–Notes.”

64. For example, in 1990, a special ASTR subcommittee critiqued the guidelines of National Association of Schools of Theatre for Ph.D. programs at NAST's request, but ASTR declined NAST's suggestion that ASTR offer alternative guidelines on the grounds that ASTR was a scholarly society, not an accrediting organization. Executive Committee minutes, Special Subcommittee Reports, November 1990 and Spring 1991, box 1, ASTR Archives. In 1976, the Executive Committee turned down a request from the National Endowment of the Humanities that ASTR evaluate research projects for NEH.

65. As of 2003, the committee members were Sally Banes, Charlotte Canning, Marvin Carlson, Peter Davis, Tracy C. Davis, Jill Dolan (cochair), J. Ellen Gainor, Barbara Grossman, Frank Hildy, Thomas Postlewait (cochair), Laurence Senelick, Simon Williams and W. B. Worthen.

66. The Directory of Doctoral Programs was part of the documentation of the field in the committee's final report, together with data on organizations, journals, and books serving the field. Postlewait made a presentation to an NRC subcommittee in September 2003.

67. “President's Message,” ASTR News, Fall 1996; Postlewait, “Report of the Ad Hoc Committee on the National Research Council and the Assessment of Doctoral Programs,” Executive Committee minutes, April 2003, and ASTR News, Summer–Fall 2005, Williams box, ASTR Archives. The April 2004 report of the Postlewait committee to the Executive Committee discusses the NRC methods and the resulting issues for theatre, performance studies, and dance; Williams box, folder “ASTR Executive Committee Minutes, April 2004,” ASTR Archives.

68. As associate editors with Roger Herzel in the 1980s, Judith E. Barlow and Sandra K. Fisher seem to be the first women to have had substantial editorial responsibilities on the journal.

69. I expressed concern in a state-of-the-profession paper for the ASTR annual meeting in New York in 2000 about the relatively few submissions the journal had received since 1995 on pre-twentieth-century theatre, providing data almost identical to Enders's.

70. Presidents' Messages, ASTR News, Fall 1996; Summer–Fall 2002, and Winter-Spring 2003, Williams box, ASTR Archives.

71. For this and other bylaws, see the ASTR Web site cited in n. 56.

72. Accounts of the New Paradigms Committee's work are in the ASTR News, Summer-Fall 2005, 8–12, Williams box, ASTR Archives.

73. The figures on member and conference registrants comes from ASTR administrator Nancy Erickson. The number of conference registrants in 2005 was 377 (ASTR News, Summer-Fall 2005, 7.)