Keywords

Theatre, william inge, picnic, historiography

Abstract

Historiography is the writing of history based on the examination of sources and synthesizing these sources into a narrative that will stand the test of critical methods. Historiography is not the study of history but rather provides a tool to analyze each written account of a historical event. The concepts of historiography are traditionally reserved for the study of factual based history and not for fictional events or people. However, just as history seems to evolve over time, authors also revise their fiction work. If history is adapted and changed over time to fulfill the historian’s desires, can fictional works also be adapted to better fulfill the author’s intentions through the process of rewrites? Historiography allows us to understand that history is adapted and changed over time. Can the ideas of historiography be applied to fictional stories in order to understand why an author rewrites and revisits older works? How can a theatre practitioner understand and develop the most comprehensive version of a fictional text? Can he apply the same techniques used to deconstruct a historical event? Through a case study using William Inge’s classic play Picnic I explored the possibility of using historiography as a tool for theater practitioners in developing new dramatic texts that synthesize various scripts into one new comprehensive text. Through this case study I developed a framework which allows the theatre practitioner to apply the ideas of historiography to the analysis of a collection of fictional works by the same author in order to create a new text, showcasing the effectiveness of applying four cruxes of historiography to fictional texts.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2013

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Listengarten, Julia

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

Theatre

Degree Program

Theatre

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004729

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004729

Language

English

Release Date

May 2013

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Arts and Humanities -- Dissertations, Academic, Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Humanities

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