Museum theatre
lighting, or special effects to convey historical or scientific facts, without necessarily portraying a character.
While this has been a strong movement since about 1980, the concern for accuracy and consequent focus on portraying real people is a marker that can be interpreted as a new stage.
[2] The portrayal of a historical character in a museum environment as opposed to a traditional theatrical space is hard to define.
The final distinction to be made is that the portrayal of a historical character is a performance of living history, as opposed to museum theatre.
Common hands-on activities include candle-dipping, butter churning, weaving on a loom, and musket loading.
[4]: 291 This form of second-person interpretation does not necessarily require the visitor to adopt a character or pretend to be part of the past.
[4]: 300 One example is the "Follow the North Star" program at Conner Prairie Interactive History Park in Indiana, where visitors pretend to be fugitive slaves as a way of learning about the Underground Railroad.
[5] Often, such interactions are carefully facilitated so that a desired outcome is achieved, but sometimes visitors are allowed to make their own choices regardless of the historical record.
Theatrical techniques such as characterization, costume, narrative, and special effects are often used to enliven demonstration and draw visitor attention.
[2]: 5 Yet like museum theatre and other forms of live interpretation, demonstration aims to engage visitors, to create interest in a topic, to serve as an alternative to lists of facts and static exhibitions, and to provoke an emotional response that leads to learning.
[6]: 65 For this reason some museums will hire a contract storyteller to add depth and experience to exhibitions or programs by spinning children's tales, appearing as a costume character to aid in an immersive environment and to aid in depicting different cultures by sharing traditions, histories, folklore and myths.
[2]: 19–21 Museum theatre often adapts the archetypal storyteller to a character embodied by a trained and scripted actor.
This is probably due to recently scholarly discourse in the field of museum education that links multi-sensory experiences like storytelling with effective learning in children and adults.
While they can be used separately, dance and music are also used in conjunction with other forms of museum theatre, including each other, to enhance the visitor’s experience.
To help visitors look at the building differently, the dancers move through the space walking up walls, using the elevator as a dance floor, and other unusual ways.
The Museum of Science, in Boston used choreographed dance and music, both as song and for background, to teach visitors about the battle for the rainforest through the life of Chico Mendes, a rubber tapper.
