Archive or Memory

''Theatre is by its nature an art of the present moment, and the theatre artist focus their energies on the present of the lived experience. Performance is unrepeatable and it is fascinating because it is unique and ephemeral...  Theatre is by its nature an art of the present moment, and the theatre artist focus their energies on the present of the lived experience. Performance is unrepeatable and it is fascinating because it is unique and ephemeral''

Gay McAuley, ‘The Video Documentation of

Theatrical Performance’, New Theatre Quarterly, X, No. 38

(1994), p. 183–94 (p. 184).

What McAuley is saying here is that every time you do a performance certain things will happen differently each time that are completely out of your control, for example is could be something as small as the temperature of the space being warmer or colder which wold give he audience (and the performer) a different experience, therefore theater is in the present moment being that it is in the now not in the future (you cannot plan it) or in the past (you cannot replicate it).


QUESTIONING THE ARCHIVE


Is evidence gathered from the archive actually 'evidence' at all? this is a big topic in the world of history and the question of how and where information is gathered and what were the sources is commonly asked.

We usually look at the collection of things kept in the archives of the world as 'facts' from the past kept to sow people how it was back then. 

But in may cases the archival evidence has been altered to meet the desires of the rulers of the time or controllers of the archive/evidence. For example, the bible and most of the holy books of the world have been rewritten many times to adjust for the socio-political zeitgeist of the time.