Playing with Theory in Theatre Practice (review)

The title of this recent collection suggests an upbeat engagement with critical theory targeted toward the practitioner, or at least a very practically oriented theorist. The full spectrum of this book places it within a more historically refined and perhaps even historically anxious moment and location. While the collection as a whole contains interesting articles by Michal Kobialka, S. E. Wilmer, Harry Feiner, and John Bell, along with helpful introductions by the three editors, each of the essays is quite short, preventing any of the authors from going into great complexity about the central interplay of contemporary critical theory and theatrical practice. Perhaps the deeper message here is what types of new issues have arrived in the last five to ten years, and what remains in an age where theory is no longer as fertile or, dare I say, as popular as it once was. The answer seems to be that developments in cognitive theory, as well as the ongoing impact of phenomenology, postcolonial perspectives, landscape theory, feminist thought, or an interdisciplinary mix of these and other fields, must be engaged, even as the glory days of high theory have passed. As contributor Alissa Melo suggests, "[r]emoving the capital 'T' from Theory" (239) allows for theory to be an accessible tool for the creative process.

With an editing collective mostly based out of the University of Central Florida, this is primarily a US-based collection. As the editors note in their introduction, "several readers for this book project questioned whether the theory/ practice gap as we discuss it even exists within the UK and elsewhere" (3). One does have to wonder, in this age of international cross- pollination, what this book offers to a market fairly saturated with books negotiating the divide between theory and practice. Mark Fortier's monograph Theory/Theatre: An Introduction (originally published in 1997, with a second edition in 2002) differs from the present collection, which is dizzying in its vast contribution from numerous voices. Perhaps one could say that the closest ancestor to this title was Janelle Reinelt and Joseph Roach's Critical Theory and Performance (originally published in 1992, revised in 2007), which also includes extensive editorial introductions defining terms and summarizing central debates, paired alongside original essays. Yet when one compares the quality and quantity of Reinelt and Roach's tome, this relatively slim volume reveals itself to be a guide for someone who moves between the worlds of theory and practice, and who might want this text in their proverbial (or perhaps literal) back pocket.

Fortier remains a central landmark for these editors. Thus it is no surprise that the first section, "Contexualizing Theory and Practice," begins with his chapter "The Function of Theory at the Present Time?" As with the other two authors in this most theoretically sophisticated section of the book, Fortier spends some time grappling with anxiety about the place of critical theory in both contemporary theatre and academia more generally. He invokes the warning of Bruce McConachie (whose chapter on Brecht and Cognitive Theory is a high point of the second section) that "our age of theory will not last" (22). While Fortier is reasonably troubled by such words, he spins such concerns into a more intriguing set of questions: If we must ask what is the use of theory, then we must also ask, "what is the use of theatre"? (23). His answer turns him toward the words of Jill Dolan (also an omnipresent touchpoint in this volume) and Herbert Blau (another central figure who contributes a rather dated though still fascinating essay on his production of Kraken from 1975). Fortier's essay presents the challenging idea that the death of theory may also beg us to return to the repeated death of the theatre, and that the interplay between theory and theatre may create a more hopeful answer to both of these fraught claims.

The second section, "Interrogating Theory in Theatre Practice: Productive Tensions, Questions, and Implications," is wide-ranging in...