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The Fiery Pacific: Volcanic Eruptions and Settler-State Theatricality in Oceania, 1780–1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2014

Diana Looser
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Extract

In the closing scene of René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt's melodrama La Tête de mort; ou, Les Ruines de Pompeïa (1827), audiences at Paris's Théâtre de la Gaîté were presented with the spectacular cataclysm of an erupting Mount Vesuvius that invaded the city and engulfed the hapless characters in its fiery embrace. “The theatre,” Pixérécourt writes, “is completely inundated by this sea of bitumen and lava. A shower of blazing and transparent stones and red ash falls on all sides…. The red color with which everything is struck, the terrible noise of the volcano, the screaming, the agitation and despair of the characters … all combine to form this terrible convulsion of nature, a horrible picture, and altogether worthy of being compared to Hell.” A few years later, in 1830, Daniel Auber's grand opera La Muette de Portici (1828), which yoked a seventeenth-century eruption of Vesuvius with a popular revolt against Spanish rule in Naples, opened at the Théâtre de Monnaie in Brussels. The Belgian spectators, inspired by the opera's revolutionary sentiments, poured out into the streets and seized their country's independence from the Dutch. These two famous examples, which form part of a long genealogy of representing volcanic eruptions through various artistic means, highlight not only the compelling, immersive spectacle of nature in extremis but also the ability of stage scenery to intervene materially in the narrative action and assimilate affective and political meanings. As these two examples also indicate, however, the body of scholarship in literary studies, art history, and theatre and performance studies that attends to the mechanical strategies and symbolic purchase of volcanic representations has tended to focus mainly on Europe; more research remains to be undertaken into how volcanic spectacles have engaged with non-European topographies and sociopolitical dynamics and how this wider view might illuminate our understanding of theatre's social roles.

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Articles
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Theatre Survey , Volume 55 , Issue 3: Theatre, Transnationalism, and Economy , September 2014 , pp. 362 - 392
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Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2014 

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References

Endnotes

1. “Le théâtre est entièrement inondé par cette mer de bitume et de lave; une pluie de pierres embrasées et transparentes et de cendres rouges tombe de tous côtés…. La couleur rouge dont tous les objets sont frappés, le bruit épouvantable du volcan, les cris, l'agitation et le désespoir des personnages … tout concourt à former de cette effrayante convulsion de la nature un tableau horrible et tout-à-fait digne d’être comparé aux Enfers.” de Pixérécourt, R.-C. Guilbert, La Tête de mort; ou, Les Ruines de Pompeïa: Mélodrame en trois actes (Paris: Quoy, 1828), 94Google Scholar. All translations from the French are my own.

2. Hibberd, Sarah, “La Muette and Her Context,” in The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, ed. Charlton, David (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 149–67, at 149Google Scholar.

3. A collective term for the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand.

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5. Ibid., 258–9.

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8. I owe this insight to a serendipitous conversation with a curator at the Munger Research Center, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.

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17. The motifs and techniques of the stage volcano were so common that by the mid-nineteenth century they were also being openly and self-reflexively parodied. See Daly, 275.

18. Ibid., 262.

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26. For an elaboration of this concept and readings of several such works, see Balme, Christopher B., Pacific Performances: Theatricality and Cross-Cultural Encounter in the South Seas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 47–73, quotes on 58, 47CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. See ibid., 56–61.

28. Arnould, [Jean-François], La Mort du capitaine Cook, a son troisieme voyage au nouveau monde: Pantomime en quatre actes (Paris: Lagrange, 1788), 5Google Scholar, italics in original. See also The Death of Captain Cook: A Grand Serious-Pantomimic-Ballet, in Three Parts (London: T. Cadell, 1789)Google Scholar.

29. “Pendant la lutte le ciel s'est obscurci par degrés, & une épaisse fumée est sortie detems-en-tems du sommet de la montagne; la lutte finie, le tonnerre gronde, & les Sauvages paroissent consternés.” Arnould, 12.

30. “La montagne qu'on apperçoit dans le lointain laisse d'abord échapper une épaisse fumée; bientôt on en voit sortir des flames, & enfin la lave qui se répand & coule le long de la montagne. Le bruit des explosions se fait entendre par intervalles.” Ibid., 32.

31. Balme, 60.

32. O'Keeffe, John, Omai; or, A Trip Round the World (London: T. Cadell, 1785)Google Scholar is an exemplar.

33. “Entertainment: The Death of Captain Cook,” The Prompter, 27 October 1789, 18. The spectator is perhaps thinking nostalgically of Omai, which did end in this way.

34. Daly, 265.

35. Maréchal, Sylvain, Le Jugement dernier des rois: Prophétie en un acte, en prose (Paris: C.-F. Patris, 1793)Google Scholar.

36. Hogan, Charles Beecher, ed., The London Stage, 1660–1800: A Calendar of Plays, Entertainment & Afterpieces Together with Casts, Box-Receipts and Contemporary Comment, Part 5: 1776–1800 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968), 1144Google Scholar.

37. Playbill advertising The Death of Captain Cook at the New Theatre, Greenwich-Street, New York, 2 October 1797. Capitals and italics in original.

38. King, Pauline Nawahineokala‘i, “Some Thoughts on Native Hawaiian Attitudes towards Captain Cook,” in Captain Cook: Explorations and Reassessments, ed. Williams, Glyndwr (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2004), 94–109Google Scholar.

39. Beckwith, Martha, Hawaiian Mythology (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1970), 167–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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41. Ellis, William, Narrative of a Tour through Hawaii; or, Owhyhee; with Remarks on the History, Traditions, Manners, Customs, and Language of the Inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands (London: H. Fisher, Son, & P. Jackson, 1826), 207–8Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., 209. For a fuller discussion of Ellis's reactions to Kīlauea and a survey of other nineteenth-century literary and artistic responses to the volcano, see Okihiro, 28–40.

43. Bingham, Hiram, A Residence of Twenty-One Years in the Sandwich Islands (Hartford: Hezekiah Huntington, 1847), 388Google Scholar.

44. Ibid., 387.

45. Ibid., 254. One of the most famous examples is that of Kapi‘olani (ca. 1781–1841), a Hawaiian ali‘i and Christian convert who, in 1824, performed a dramatic display of her faith by defying Pele's authority. Kapi‘olani made a deliberate journey to Kīlauea to prove the superiority of the Christian god. After exposing a “prophetess” of Pele as a fraud, she descended to the rim of the crater, broke Pele's taboos, led her followers in Christian prayer, and survived intact. Bingham praised her actions as “a victory over ignorance, superstition, sin, Satan and his legions” (256). See Ellis, 259–60; and esp. Bingham, 254–6.

46. Okihiro, 35–40.

47. Cheever, 328–9.

48. Throughout, I use macrons and other diacritics that conform to the style of modern Māori and Hawaiian. Historical titles and quotations that omit these diacritics are presented in their original formats.

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50. Thurston, Lorrin A., Vistas of Hawaii: “The Paradise of the Pacific and Inferno of the World” (St. Joseph, MI: A. B. Morse, 1891)Google Scholar.

51. Thurston, Writings, 82.

52. The preferred U.S. term for a panorama. The terms panorama, diorama, and cyclorama were often used interchangeably and/or were inconsistently applied to various immersive spectacle formats throughout the nineteenth century.

53. Grau, Oliver, Virtual Art: From Illusion to Immersion, rev. sub. ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), 13–15, 59Google Scholar.

54. Altick, 184.

55. Grau, 65, 91.

56. Thurston, Writings, 82. Walter Wilcox Burridge later designed first stage adaptation of The Wizard of Oz.

57. Kamehiro, Stacy L., “Hawai‘i at the World Fairs, 1867–1893,” World History Connected 8.3 (2011)Google Scholar, http://worldhistoryconnected.press.illinois.edu/8.3/forum_kamehiro.html, accessed 28 May 2014.

58. The Dream City: A Portfolio of Photographic Views of the World's Columbian Exposition, intro. Halsey C. Ives (St. Louis, MO: N. D. Thompson Publishing Co., 1893)Google Scholar. At the San Francisco History Center, The Dream City is bound together in a volume with images from the California Midwinter International Exposition and titled Views of Columbian Exposition and Midwinter Fair (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1894)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

59. There appears to be no evidence for this exhibit after 1901, suggesting that the cyclorama's political and aesthetic purposes had been served. Thurston remarks that by the late 1890s, “cycloramas had had their day” and that the canvas was finally sold to another company that eventually revamped it for its final outing at Buffalo. Thurston, Writings, 83.

60. The Cyclorama of Kilauea became one of the most evident displays of the period to dramatize symbolically and demonstrate materially settler-colonial struggles over Hawai‘i. While one might pursue a fuller reading of the cyclorama throughout this decade in relation to Hawai‘i's political vicissitudes, I concentrate on the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 and the California Midwinter International Exposition in 1894 as major exhibitions with an immediate relationship to the overthrow and the contestations that accompanied it. Moreover, whereas the Cyclorama of Kilauea has been discussed briefly by several dance, tourism, and ethnic studies scholars in the context of Hawai‘i's representation at international fairs, I pay special attention to the volcano's precise symbolism and how the cyclorama's aesthetics and appurtenances produced particular spectatorial responses, with an emphasis on how the volcano's theatrics functioned as a charged locus of these cultural and political contentions.

61. Skwiot, Christine, The Purposes of Paradise: U.S. Tourism and Empire in Cuba and Hawai‘i (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 40Google Scholar.

62. “Kilauea's Crater,” San Francisco Call, 19 November 1891, 2.

63. Dean Itsuji Saranillio, “Seeing Conquest: Colliding Histories and the Cultural Politics of Hawai‘i Statehood” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 2009), 67.

64. Smith, Frank H., Art History, Midway Plaisance, and World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: Foster Press, 1893)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

65. Skwiot notes that on 1 April 1893, James Blount (acting for U.S. president Grover Cleveland) lowered the Stars and Stripes above the government building in Honolulu to proclaim that Hawai‘i was not a U.S. possession, but that at the start of the Chicago Exposition, on 1 May 1893, Thurston raised a complement of five U.S. flags above the Volcano Building to show that Hawai‘i was, for all intents and purposes, already part of the Union. Skwiot, 39–40.

66. “Ramie's Culture,” San Francisco Call, 17 December 1893, 9. See also Dream City.

67. Smith.

68. Rand, McNally & Co., A Week at the Fair, Illustrating the Exhibits and Wonders of the World's Columbian Exposition, with Special Descriptive Articles (Chicago: Rand, McNally & Co., 1893), 233Google Scholar.

69. Beckwith, 190–1.

70. Rand, McNally & Co., 233.

71. Ninetta Eames, “The Wild and Woolly at the Fair,” Overland Monthly 23:136 (April 1894): 356–70, at 360.

72. Smith.

73. Rand, McNally & Co., 233.

74. Eames, 360.

75. From Peristyle to Plaisance; or, The White City Picturesque: Painted in Water Colors by C. Graham; Together with a Brief Illustrated History of the World's Columbian Exposition (Chicago: Winters Art Litho. Co., 1893)Google Scholar, unpaginated.

76. Grau, 126, 111.

77. Oleksijczuk, Denise Blake, The First Panoramas: Visions of British Imperialism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 3Google Scholar.

78. Ibid., 19.

79. Saranillio, 64.

80. Phrases drawn from Eames, 360, quoted in the preceding paragraph.

81. The Official History of the California Midwinter International Exposition: A Descriptive Record of the Origin, Development and Success of the Great Industrial Expositional Enterprise, Held in San Francisco from January to July, 1894 (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1894), 5, 4Google Scholar.

82. “Cyclorama of Kilauea,” Los Angeles Herald, 13 January 1894, 1.

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84. Flinn, John J., comp., The Best Things to Be Seen at the World's Fair (Chicago: Columbian Guide Company, 1893), 169Google Scholar.

85. Official History, 149.

86. Views of Columbian Exposition and Midwinter Fair.

87. See, for example, Robert W. Rydell's seminal text, All the World's a Fair: Visions of Empire at American International Expositions, 1876–1916 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984)Google Scholar.

88. Imada, Adria L., Aloha America: Hula Circuits through the U.S. Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012), 105Google Scholar.

89. Ibid., 106, 131.

90. Views of Columbian Exposition and Midwinter Fair.

91. Eames, 360.

92. Forman, Sands W. and Brandt, Noah, Captain Cook: A Romantic Historical Opera in Three Acts (San Francisco: Sherman, Clay, 1893)Google Scholar.

93. “The Midsummer Shows,” New York Times, 11 July 1897, 12. The piece received mixed reviews. As for the visual effects, compared to the recent exposition displays and the theatrical and pyroscenic spectacles of Vesuvius and Etna that remained perennially popular, the public had seen better. As one reviewer finished, “When it comes to a showing of the great Mauna Loa in a state of eruption, a Roman candle sputtering miserably at the crater of a badly-painted volcano will not do.” See “Clever Music in ‘Captain Cook,’” San Francisco Call, 13 July 1897, 8.

94. Forman and Brandt. Argument.

95. Reed, A. W., Raupō Book of Māori Mythology, rev. Ross Calman (Auckland: Penguin, 2008), 65–6Google Scholar.

96. Lowe, D. J., Newnham, R. M., and McCraw, J. D., “Volcanism and Early Maori Society in New Zealand,” in Natural Disasters and Cultural Change, ed. Torrence, Robin and Grattan, John (London: Routledge, 2002), 126–61Google Scholar, at 153.

97. Ibid., 141.

98. Ibid., 141–3.

99. The play's title is an epithet for New Zealand during the Victorian period, after moa, an extinct native New Zealand bird.

100. Besant, Walter and Rice, James, “Over the Sea with a Sailor,” in The Ten Years' Tenant and Other Stories, 3 vols. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1881), 2.141–3.280Google Scholar.

101. “Theatre Royal: The Land of the Moa,” Star (Christchurch), 3 September 1895, 2.

102. “The Land of the Moa,” Auckland Star, 28 September 1895, 5.

103. “The Land of the Moa,” New Zealand Herald (Auckland), 23 September 1895, 5.

104. Ibid.

105. “The Land of the Moa,” Star (Christchurch), 28 August 1895, 2.

106. Boast, Richard, Buying the Land, Selling the Land: Governments and Maori Land in the North Island 1865–1921 (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2008), 177–93Google Scholar, 202; Werry, Margaret, The Tourist State: Performing Leisure, Liberalism, and Race in New Zealand (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011), 11–12Google Scholar.

107. Boast, 183.

108. Werry, xi.

109. “The Land of the Moa,” New Zealand Herald (Auckland), 14 September 1895, 5.

110. Werry, 8–17.

111. “The Drama. Some Opinions of the Press,” advertising clippings bound with the original script of The Land of the Moa, microfilm, Fryer Library, University of Queensland, Australia.

112. Leitch, George, The Land of the Moa, ed. and intro. Kiernander, Adrian (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 1990), 89Google Scholar; italics in original.

113. Ibid., 122.

114. Ibid., 145–6.

115. For an excellent discussion of this and other issues, see Adrian Kiernander, “Introduction,” in Leitch, 9–64.

116. Leitch, 152.

117. Seddon was sympathetic and brought the Urewera District Native Reserve Bill into effect in 1896. The government's views had changed by the early twentieth century, however. The guarantees of 1896 were forgotten, and purchases of Urewera land commenced in 1910. See Boast, 177, 202–12.

118. “The Land of the Moa,” New Zealand Herald (Auckland), 14 September 1895, 5.

119. “The Land of the Moa,” Auckland Star, 16 September 1895, 3.

120. Chaudhuri, Una and Fuchs, Elinor, “Introduction: Land/Scape/Theater and the New Spatial Paradigm,” in Land/Scape/Theater, ed. Fuchs, Elinor and Chaudhuri, Una (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002), 1–7Google Scholar, at 3.