An Interesting Experiment

I've decided to undertake a Herculian task: to re-read Brockett. The great tome, which as a graduate student I found to be so heavy with information as to become soul-crushing, still stands as the archival Bible of sorts, though seemingly every few years someone creates a new theatre history book that seeks to rival its dominance. I'm curious to see if, with PhD in hand, the book becomes something new to me. I also want to determine if I can find through this experience a new pedagogy, a way of teaching theatre history so that it becomes alive and vital.

Right now, the biggest hurdle to this experiment is finding where I've stowed the book. During the dissertation writing and the dramaturging I've done of late, I have pulled it out on more than one occasion, just to check a name or review a snippet of history to make sure it's as I remember it. The problem is that I tend to leave my Brockett carelessly lying about after I've exhausted it or it's exhausted me. Then something happens - a house guest arrives, a party ensues, I rebel against the mountains of paper that clutter my world - and I shove it somewhere out of sight. This happens with some frequency. Other books get carefully reshelved in the haphazard yet workable library system I keep in my head (fiction here, theory there, plays in the bedroom closet, loosely grouped by topic or genre and sometimes even alphabetized), but Brockett always gets shoved somewhere nonsensical.

Case in point, I pulled my Dukore off of the shelf where it always is - in the back row of the scholarly works section, next to Foucault perhaps, hidden behind the works on consumer culture theory and democratic negotiation I find more pleasurable, and thus more useful. But there he was, waiting for me patiently, knowing I would want to supplement my Brockett with him.

Where are you Brockett? And what will you hold for me when I find you and once again crack your cover?