Description
About the Author
Scott Magelssen is associate professor of Theatre at Bowling Green State University. He has published articles on living history museums in many theatre journals, including Theatre History Studies and The Drama Review. The author won the 2005 Gerald Kahan Award for the Best Essay in Theatre Studies by a Younger Scholar for his article "Performance Practices of [Living] Open-Air Museums (And a New Look at 'Skansen' in American Living Museum Discourse)," published in Theatre History Studies in 2004.
Reviews
After outlining a new history of these performances in the United States and Europe, Magelssen offers suggestions for their improvement, which he sates is achievable if museums abandon their 'just-the-facts' mentality and embrace alternative modes of performance. * Museum News, Vol. 86, No. 4, July/August 2007 *
...points out the dilemmas of living interpretation, from misleading visitors about time and history to perpetuating outmoded linear views of historical progress. * Zentralblatt fur Geologie und Palaontologie, Vol. 68, No. 8, September 2007 *
An external researcher rather than a participant in living museums or a particular fan of them, Magelssen (theater arts, Augustana College, Illinois), examines the performance practices, philosophies, and curatorial methods they have used to stage the past through the 20th and into the 21st centuries, and how they see themselves as the very products of these practices. * Reference and Research Book News, May 2007 *
Book Information
ISBN 9780810858657
Author Scott Magelssen
Format Paperback
Page Count 252
Imprint Scarecrow Press
Publisher Scarecrow Press
Weight(grams) 399g
Dimensions(mm) 232mm * 155mm * 15mm