Performing Wales: People, Memory and Place

This book investigates the rise of performative practices at museum and heritage sites in Wales, comparing them with such practices in the UK and the USA, in order to analyse the way in which the concept of the ‘nation’ is created and performed at such sites, and specifically to understand how the project of representing the nation in Wales has been forged by performance practice at sites other than theatre buildings. A wide spectrum of performative practices is investigated, from live interpretations and re-enactments of history to dramatic productions, time-based art practice, and site-specific theatre. Taking key concepts from performance studies as a framework for analysis, this book asks: how might we define what happens at these sites as performance? How is performance constructed here? Who is performing? How do these sites organise audience/visitor behaviour and how might this constitute performance? How does the performance that occurs, in all its possible permutations/definitions, assist in the construction and representation of the ‘nation’? And how might this have a bearing on the construction of national identity/identities? In attempting to answer these questions considerations such as the role of performer, the relationship between performer and site, the performance context, the role of the participant or witness and ideas relating to the construction and definition of site as historical and social are highlighted.