Heather Fitzsimmons Frey, Awarded Tenure
Arts and Cultural Management, Faculty of Fine Arts and Communications
Performing Remains by Rebecca Schneider
Could reimagining the past encourage people to reimagine the future? Rebecca Schneider describes living history reenactments as a disruption: "Rather than a unidirectional art march toward an empiric future of preservation, time plays forward and backward and sideways across the imagined community of an otherwise spatialized national plot." I love the idea of shifting time sideways. I love the possibility that the past may have yet another future, and that the present may involve reenacting a new past. This brilliantly written time-bending work influenced my PhD dissertation regarding children and at-home theatricals, and my current research in living history museums. As statues are toppling, the failures of the TRC Calls to Action are apparent, and the climate crisis forces people to rethink choices, Schneider asks readers to consider what the past drags with it into the present, how critique may interrupt and change the past, and how people create futures.
Year of Recognition: 2023