Theatre Journal

Abstract:

This essay investigates how spectators, performers, and those beyond the theatrical space negotiate the role of theatre during and after a public health crisis. In doing so, this essay interrogates how theatre—as an industry, a profession, a live medium, an art form, a cultural product, and as a physical space—is intertwined with the history of epidemics. Tracing how the 1832 cholera epidemic affected New York City theatrical culture, the essay examines how theatre audiences, artists, and managers responded to the outbreak to consider how an epidemic's dramaturgical form extends beyond the point when an outbreak is officially declared over. Looking to John Brougham's 1848 farce The Revolt of the Sextons; Or, The Undertaker's Dream, the essay expands the temporal boundaries of Charles Rosenberg's epidemic dramaturgy to explore how theatres can function as rejected archives for epidemics, and how the memory of an epidemic continues to be rehearsed and reified following an outbreak's conclusion.