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Performing the knowing archive: heritage performance and authenticity

This article presents findings from the Performance, Learning and Heritage project at the University of Manchester 2005–2008. Using evidence from four case studies, it provides insight into the ways visitors to museums and heritage sites utilise their understandings of ‘the authentic’ in making sense of their encounters with performances of the past. Although authenticity is a contested and controversial concept, it remains a significant measure against which our respondents analyse and critique their encounters with ‘the past’. Beyond superficial analyses, however, it is noted that many respondents demonstrate more sensitive and nuanced reflections on the museum as a site of authenticity and authority, reflections aided by the very fictionality of the mode of interpretation.