Lease, Bryce (2023) Theatricality & spectacle: the museum as object. In: Staging difficult pasts: transnational memory, theatres, and museums. Routledge, London, pp. 386-52. ISBN 9781003315827

Abstract

Exploring the eschewal of fascism and the Holocaust in favour of communist terror in The House of Terror, Vilnius’ Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, and the Warsaw Uprising Museum, this chapter explores the fundamental question of theatricality these sites produce. While many critics of these museums simply point to theatricality as either offering curators the artistic means of achieving their ideological and political ambitions or as obscuring them through imitation or spectacle, Lease suggests that, conversely, defining theatricality as a form of material practices and dynamic relations enables a more nuanced understanding of curatorial technique and the positioning of the spectator, while also offering new insights into the pervasive move towards the theatricalisation of memorial museum displays.