Take Back Our Histories: The Colonialist Bias of Theatre History Surveys and Some Practical Steps to Dismantling an Unfair System

Theatre history studies in US universities began with racist assumptions. These assumptions, including which theatres get curricularized, continue to be reinforced by textbooks and the “traditional” theatre history surveys ubiquitous in most undergraduate theatre programs in the country. Surveys of this nature are rarely lessons in historiography but are rather exercises in rote learning and regurgitating historical facts. The curricular biases and the inequities inherent in the academy also plague the way theatre history is studied and understood. The essay offers ways in which possible interventions can be introduced into this complicated landscape using the author’s experience as a theatre history teacher as a case study. The essay suggests not only ways that disrupt the theatre history curriculum but also pedagogical strategies that dismantle academic hierarchies of knowledge production and acquisition.