The prefaces to two collections of essays by feminist scholars, Gerda Lerner and Joan Kelly, reveal a fusion of historical scholarship and feminism. These texts of feminist history are read through the theories of the performative as a way of exploring the intersections of the performances which gave rise to the written texts and the texts themselves, as well as how the texts demonstrate the theatricality of feminist discovery and change. The declaration of their status as feminist scholars, positioning their work within the relationship of the personal and the political, constitutes a performative act of performing their community. The ‘doing’ of history foregrounds and reveals the ‘history done’, as the performative of feminist history constructs a once erased feminist past. Understanding history as performance serves feminism as an active political movement.

Amateur theatre constitutes a largely unexplored narrative within the dominant histories of British theatre that traditionally foreground professional practice. A consequence of advanced capitalism has been an increasing emphasis on professionalism in all sectors of society that constructs the amateur as incompetent and expects guaranteed rewards for professional expertise. Statistically, however, amateur theatre has represented a major experience of performance for a significant proportion of the population especially those of the small nations that have been subsumed within the British nation-state. Much of today's state-funded theatre that ostracizes the amateur, has its roots in early twentieth-century amateur/professional collaborations and grassroots activity in the inter-war years. An examination of the ideological basis of aesthetic value judgements which are, in fact, socially constructed judgements of taste, raises issues about both the cultural value of performance and the responsibility of the historian to the experience of the past.

Comic actors in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as John Liston and Joseph Munden, were familiar not only on stage but also iconographically. Critical writing on both performers indicates their strong visual impact. Some critics accused them of caricature, but references to Hogarth in accounts of these actors by Lamb and Hazlitt imply that they followed Hogarth's own emphasis on observation rather than caricature. Indeed, illustrations of comic actors or inspired by comic actors often hover on the borders of caricature, but ultimately avoid it. In performance the live body of the actor often counters or uses gestically the degradation implicit in caricature, although iconography sometimes fixes the actor in poses and expressions where caricature predominates.

Building on the early European experiments with animated shadow figures, American dalang Larry Reed – narrator and puppet manipulator – has enlarged Balinese shadow puppetry to cinema-sized dimensions and combined it with live actors and dancers. In conjunction with Balinese puppet masters, Reed has created several pieces which explore the interaction between puppets and human shadow figures as well as performers in front of the screen. Moreover, Reed's productions are bilingual and bi-cultural, mixing Balinese and American humour and mythology so that the hybrid creations find favour with audiences in both locations. As his technique increasingly becomes refined in the process, each new production expands more subtly on the theme of melding shadow with flesh and the blurring of illusion and reality.

The spectatorial relationship between sporting events and theatrical performance, based on recent sociological studies, reveals much about the nature of any audience position, and raises issues of class, economic status, and gender. Despite the heavy commodification and internationalization of professional sport, fans retain a remarkable sense of psychological investment in home teams, centred around notions of civic pride and communal ownership. They ardently follow the fortunes of their sides in a manner rarely associated with any other form of entertainment, a devotion that can lead to notable violence. Sporting events also constitute one of the few remaining examples of live television broadcasts. Television extends the implications of the sports spectator enormously, and is the foundation of the globalization of sports, but it also affects live audiences through the mediatization of some events.

Rita, Sue and Bob Too by Andrea Dunbar and A State Affair, by Robin Soans. Co-production Out of Joint, Liverpool Everyman and Playhouse, and Soho Theatre Company. Double bill first performed at Liverpool Everyman on 19 October 2000 and Soho Theatre, London on 5 December 2000.