The paper focuses on the methodological challenges of handling the material remains of banned theatre practices in Cold War Hungary. Focusing on the case of the collective Apartment Theatre (1972–6), it examines the relation of material remains, originally created by or for the socialist authorities in order to prove the danger caused by the collective, and the materials which were created by the group members as a countermovement to preserve their own memories and narratives. Consequently, archival practices of care as well as archival practices of suspicion together contribute to situating the collective in Hungarian and European cultural memory and theatre history.

Stage machinery enters the historical narrative often enough through mishaps and interruptions. This article takes as its starting point a report of the Paris opera director Véron in order to think about the role of materiality in the analysis of past performances. The occasion, depicted in the report, is the opening night of Robert le Diable, written by Eugène Scribe and composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The article discusses two key questions on the historiographic value of the report as a source for performance analysis. (1) How can we unfold the performativity of a past performance through archival documents? (2) What is the impact of the materiality of machinery, bodies and space in the theatrical interplay?

This paper discusses the use of a documentary film as source material for theatre history. The central case study analyses Theatre, directed by Jack Witikka in 1957. This film presents the making of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot at the Finnish National Theatre, which premiered on 5 October 1954. The paper follows the process of an event turning into an object, and at the same time I explore how the film preserves and traces material conditions of the theatre production: the physicality of the actors, their moving bodies, their position on the stage and the sound of their voices.

This paper probes into the 1964 Israeli performance of Rolf Hochhuth's controversial drama The Representative. Staged by Habima National Theatre under the direction of Avraham Ninio, the majority of the cast engaged in this production comprised European-born Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors. In its cultural context, the theatrical image of Jewish refugees dressed in Nazi uniforms or, conversely, staging visual, gestural or aural markers of Auschwitz prisoners imbued the drama with political meanings, triggering a debate about agency and forms of social and material participation in the aftermath of calamity. Examining the subterranean world of artists and craftsmen and women whose labour is deliberately obscured from view, I argue that the work of theatre emerges as a creative and generative energy that filters from the staged fiction into the ‘real’ world.

This article focuses on the Indian feminist director Anuradha Kapur's unique approach to theatrical objects and practices as stimulating gendered behavior. Analysing her play Jeevit Ya Mrit (Alive or Dead), I show Kapur's deliberate emphasis on the surplus of material objects and the devising of props as related to the figuration of the women actors onstage wherein the attempt is to focus on the mise en scène rather than the character being portrayed. With a discerning and a percipient eye for detail and an assemblage of objects onstage, the paper will focus on how Kapur deals with the mediality of the event, the format in which it is structured for the performance and the effect on the audience.

Over the last years, the National Theatre, London (NT) has presented props and costumes in its restaurant, the Green Room, and in its bar, the Propstore, thereby shedding a different light on theatre objects. It also widely advertises the option of hiring costumes and props from its Hire department. These practices challenge theatre studies to reconsider the usage of theatre objects and their manifold stage lives not only as stories of (in)animation, but as what I call potentials of reusage. Presenting theatre objects in unusual locations like a restaurant emphasizes that these objects are built or manipulated in theatre workshops, thereby shedding light on the craftsmanship that is foundational to every production. The labour of the workshops, as well as different backstage operations, has been ignored by theatre historiography. Analysing the NT's different staging of props invites us to look into the hidden histories of theatre materiality.