Interpreting the Pictorial Record: Theatre Iconography and the Referential Dilemma

Abstract

In 1926 the German theatre critic and scholar Julius Bab compared the endeavour of the theatre historian engaged in reconstructing past performances with that of the art historian required to study paintings solely on the basis of descriptions. The analogy serves as a justification for Bab's own study of contemporary theatre based on personal observations: only the privileged status of the eye-witness account can do justice to the transitory nature of theatrical performance, he argues. What today may seem like a self-evident truth was in the 1920s by no means so. German Theater-wissenschaft of the time was very much a historical discipline, focusing on the theatrical past and utilizing historiographical tools borrowed from neighbouring disciplines. Contemporary theatre was not in its field of vision.