| Abstract: | History—the past transformed into words or paint or dance or play—is always a performance. An everyday performance as we present our selective narratives about what has happened at the kitchen table, to the courts, to the taxman, at the graveside. A quite staged performance when we present it to our examiners, to the collegiality of our disciplines, whenever we play the role of “historian.” History is theater, a place of thea (in the Greek, a place of seeing). The complexities of living are seen in story. Rigidity, patter, and “spin” will always destroy the theater in our history performances. That is because we are postmodern. The novelists, the painters, the composers, the filmmakers give us the tropes of our day, alert us to the fictions in our non‐fiction, and give us our freedoms. How do I persuade anyone that the above theory is true? By thea, by seeing its truth. By performing. I have a true story to tell about beaches and those who cross them—Paul Gauguin, Herman Melville, and I. |
