History?

how we write it, remember it, perform it

whose

The Archive ~ The Repertoire

What is an archive?

What is a repertoire?

The Archive

The Smithsonian (The Bureau of American Ethnology)

Museum of Natural History

Library of Congress

ar·chive [ahr-kahyv] noun 1. documents or records relating to the activities, business dealings, etc., of a person, family, corporation, association, community, or nation. 2. a place where public records or other historical documents are kept. 3. any extensive record or collection of data: The encyclopedia is an archive of world history. The experience was sealed in the archive of her memory.

1

1 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/archive?s=t

The Repertoire

enacts embodied memory

performances, gestures, orality, movement, dance, singing -- non-reproducible knowledge

from Diana Taylor’s The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory On The Americas

Frances Densmore(May 21, 1867 – June 5, 1957)

source: Minnesota Public Radio/American Public Media: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org

source: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/densmore/docs/8desert.shtml

source: http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/densmore/docs/8desert.shtml

Nebraska

South Dakota

Iowa

Minnesota

Wisconsin

Illinois

North Dakota

1916- recording and playback with Blackfoot leader Mountain Chief

source: Minnesota Public Radio website http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/06/23_sommerm_mickeyhart/

“Even though the relationship between the archive and the repertoire

is not by definition antagonistic or oppositional, wr i t ten documents have repeated ly announced the disappearance of the performance practices involved in mnemonic transmission.”

~Diana Taylor from The Archive and the Repertoire

Writing Prompt• Rendon’s play articulates what might be seen as two competing

versions of historical method in Jack and Chris’s relationships to tribal heritage. We might describe Jack as having an investment in the archive in terms of his fascination with the documentation of Densmore (musical notation, biography, etc.) and Chris as having a relationship to the repertoire in terms of her embodied and experiential knowledge of culture.

• How does the play complicate this distinction between archive and repertoire? Your answer should consider formal devices in the play (the use of realism and non-realism; specific staging demanded by the text, etc.). Ultimately, how does the play articulate history?