The Routledge Companion to Vsevolod Meyerhold

Introduction

Jonathan Pitches

DOI: 10.4324/9781003110804-19

Primary sources, or what Phillip Zarrilli (et al.) call ‘the material remains of a culture’ (2006: xxv), take multiple shapes and form the bedrock of historiographical enquiry. From the remains of ancient (and modern) theatres, to the eye-witness testimony of actors and directors; from the visual ephemera produced in the documentation of performances, to the relatively dry records of theatre governance or attendance figures, primary sources capture cultural production, feeding the act of interpretation and the subsequent formation of secondary sources. Theatre history needs its primary sources, like any other discipline, to feed the industry of theatre criticism. They are the fossil ...