Dramatic Arts

This project develops theoretical intersections between theatre and human rights and provides methodologies to investigate human rights questions from within the perspective of theatre as a complex set of disciplines. While human rights research and programming often employ the arts as representations of political, social, and economic abuses, this study focuses on the intricacies of dramatic form and structure as uniquely positioned to interrogate important questions in human rights theory and practice. This project positions theatre as a method of examination, or as Alexander Baumgarten discussed, art as a way of knowing, rather than emphasizing more limited however important purposes the arts serve to raise conscious- ness that accompany other, often considered more primary modes of analysis. A main feature of this approach includes emphasis on dialectical structures in drama and human rights, and integration of applied theatre and critical ethnography with more traditional theatre research. This integration will demonstrate how theatre and human rights operates beyond the arts as representation model, offering a primary means of analysis, activism, and political discourse.

Contrary to previous scholarship, which has claimed that university drama did not occur at the English universities before the Tudor period, Meacham argues that there was a vibrant tradition of performance throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He suggests an earlier tradition has not been recog- nized because, in addition to the false assumption that medieval pedagogy can- not support such activity, the full range of medieval performance practices or “texts,” beyond the traditional play text, have not been considered. This book takes as its focus one of the last medieval university plays, Thomas Chaundler’s Liber apologeticus de omni statu humanae naturae (A defense of human nature in every state, ca. 1460). Meacham positions Liber apologeticus and the texts of its parent codex, Cambridge: Trinity College MS R.14.5 (in addition to select texts from another manuscript compiled by Chaundler), as the culmination of a substantive and nuanced medieval university performance tradition, incorpo- rating pedagogical, devotional, and ceremonial practices.

A response to: Alexandra Johnston. Review of Thomas Meacham, The Performance Tradition of the Medieval English University: The Works of Thomas Chaundler. Speculum 97/2 [April 2022]: 541-543.

http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/category/letters-to-the-editor