That's been my working hypothesis, too - there are certainly reports of people reading works in instalments to important people, but whether it was ever made a formal part of entertainment more generally we'll probably never know. And yes, the recreation of it all is a bit of a problem - I did approach a couple of week-long festivals with that as part of what I could offer, but so far no offers. The frustration for me is that when I'm telling the one hour standard set I'm obviously going to go for the central "meat" in the story, which means there are some episodes I've never tried out with a modern audience. And that also means I can't find out how the structure of the piece works.
A weekend festival might be OK if I could have, say, three chunks of time over the weekend. Whether I would find an audience ready and willing to come to each chunk of course is another question, and perhaps the thought of the festival organisers, too.