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Reconstruction of Lucinda Childs' Dance. Photo by Sally Cohn.

Questions of Practice: "What is Reenactment?"

Questions of Practice: “What is Reenactment?”

Patricia Lent of the Merce Cunningham Trust, theater-maker Richard Schechner, and video/installation artist Sharon Hayes gather to discuss the question of reenactment in cultural practice, with UC Berkeley professor Shannon Jackson as moderator. These thinkers consider the line between historical reenactment and artistic restaging, and whether our terminology matters. “[Historical reenactment] is…about the reproduction and naturalizing of history,” says Hayes, but “then there are these counter-reenactments that are about keeping a wound open…”

Excerpt from “Again, in another time and place: A conversation on reconstruction, restaging, and reenactment,” produced by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and presented at FringeArts in Philadelphia, on October 5, 2013.

This event “Again, in another time and place: A conversation on reconstruction, restaging, and reenactment” was produced by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and presented at FringeArts in Philadelphia, on October 5, 2013. That same weekend Lucinda Childs re-presented a half-dozen of her early dance works, with Center funding.