Museum Theatre

The last decades, museum studies and practice are marked by a shift in traditional museum views that emerged from a strong critique towards the narratives, values and, finally, the very definition of museums in contemporary western society. The emergence of New Museology was decisive in theorizing and putting this turn into a larger context that involved ideological, political and aesthetic dimensions. Museums, far from being neutral spaces of knowledge have a significant function in the mediation of memory, identity and cultural values. Vergo (1999) argues that museum exhibitions involve not only a science but also an art of display. In that respect, the art of the exhibition designer is closely related to that of a stage designer. Therefore,
Museum theatre may broadly be defined as the use of theater and theatrical techniques as a means of mediating knowledge and understanding in the context of museum education (Jackson & Rees Leahy 2005, 304). By definition, museum theatre is an eclectic medium that draws from a significant variety of theatrical techniques and aligns them with the museums’ respective goals. Theatre can even be presented as an exhibit in its own right, as opposed to an interpretive vehicle. It can also be used in the promotion process of an exhibition. However, its use in museums and heritage sites has been a highly contested practice. As stated by Jackson and Rees Leahy (2005) this opposition is the result of the “distrust of the fictionalizing effect of museum theatre” that is based on “a refusal to acknowledge the role of the subjective, the arbitrary and the expedient in the construction and narration of history” throughout the museum. The last decades, museum theatre scholars have focused on museum theatre’s potential to challenge what Smith defines as “Authentic Heritage Discourse”: the dominant ways of thinking, talking and writing about heritage (Smith 2006). “Authentic Heritage Discourse” (AHD) excludes the sense of ‘action’ or critical engagement on the part of non-expert users of heritage, as heritage is about receiving the wisdom and
Aiming at filling some gaps concerning mainly visitors’ experience and focusing on museum theatre’s ability to promote critical engagement, a pilot systematic evaluation on audience experience concerning a performance walk in the city of Thessaloniki, Greece, has been implemented. The evaluation was part of the research project “Museums and education: methods of approaching and interpreting museum objects” (University of Thessaly, Greece). The performance walk, addressed to secondary school groups and aimed to interpret parts of the history of the city, connecting short theatre plays to selected monuments. It dealt with several sensitive social issues, such as immigration and the displacement of populations, labor rights violation and the violent suppression of their demands, as well as with the elimination of the Jewish community after the 2nd World