"Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions is an important collection. The essays on theater history are models of meticulous research engaged through rigorous theorizing and analysis; they often yield striking new insights into subjects we might think we already know well. Other essays provide new perspectives on how to approach theater and performance, and are passionate calls to reconsider how we engage objects of study. The larger cultural contexts and analyses in the section 'Theatre History's Discipline' should prove invaluable for furthering important conversations about...

At an ecopark in Mexico, tourists pretend to be illegal migrants, braving inhospitable terrain and the U.S. Border Patrol as they attempt to cross the border. At a living history museum in Indiana, daytime visitors return after dark to play fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. In the Mojave Desert, the U.S. Army simulates entire provinces of Iraq and Afghanistan, complete with bustling villages, insurgents, and Arabic-speaking townspeople, to train soldiers for deployment to the Middle East. At a nursing home, trainees put on fogged glasses and earplugs, thick bands around their...