Theatricality: The Specificity of Theatrical Language

To define theatricality, or the specificity of the theater, is not only to attempt to define what distinguishes theater from other genres, but to define what distinguishes it from other kinds of spectacle—dance, performance art, or multi-media art. It is to bring the nature of theater itself into focus against a background of individual theatrical practices, theories of stage-play, and aesthetics. It is to attempt to find parameters shared by all theatrical enterprises from time immemorial. Although such a project may appear overly ambitious, its pertinence requires an attempt to establish such a definition. This article is such a step, seeking to establish points of reference for subsequent reflection.

During the 20th century, the very foundations of theater were turned upside-down, as were those of other arts. What had been a clearly defined theatrical aesthetic at the end of the 19th century, outlining normative practice, was, during the 20th century, systematically reexamined. At the same time, stage practice began to distance itself from the text, assigning it a new place in the theatrical enterprise. ² Once under siege, the text was no longer able to guarantee the theatricality of the stage. Thus, it is understandable that those concerned began to question the specificity of the theatrical act itself, especially since this very specificity appeared to influence other stage practices as well— dance, performance art, opera, and so on.

The emergence of theatricality in areas tangentially related to the theater seems to have as a corollary the dissolution of the limits between genres, and of the formal distinctions between practices, from dance-theater to multi-media arts, including happenings, performance, and new technologies. The specificity of theater is more and more difficult to define. To the extent that the spectacular and the theatrical acquired new forms, the theater, suddenly decentered, was obliged to redefine itself. ³ From that time on, its specificity was no longer evident.

How then are we to define theatricality today? Should we speak of it in the singular or in the plural? Is theatricality a property that belongs uniquely to the theater, or can it also be found in the quotidian? As a quality— understood here in the Kantian sense of the term—does theatricality pre-exist its manifestation in the theatrical object, with the object then becoming the condition of its emergence? Or is theatricality the consequence of a certain theatrical process related either to reality or to the subject? These are the questions I would like to consider here.

The Historical Context

The notion of theatricality seems to have appeared at the same time as the notion of literarity. However, its dissemination in critical literature was less rapid; in fact, the texts that I have been able to assemble dealing with theatricality date back only 10 years. ⁴ This means that attempts to conceptualize the notion of theatricality are linked to recent preoccupations with the theory of theater. One might well object, maintaining that such works as Aristotle's Poetics, Diderot's Paradoxe du comédien, and the prefaces of Racine and Victor Hugo, among others, are efforts to theorize in matters related to the theater. But "theorizing" understood according to contemporary usage as a reflection upon the specificity of genres and upon abstract concepts (sign, semiotization, ostension, fragment, distance, displacement, etc.), is a much more recent phenomenon. As Roland Barthes has pointed out, the attempt to define a theory of theater is itself the sign of an era fascinated by theory.

Recent dissemination of the notion of theatricality can lead us to forget its more distant history. In fact, we can retrace the notion of theatricality back to the first texts of Evreinoff (1922) who spoke of "teatralnost," stressing the significance of the suffix "ost" in order to underline the importance of his discovery. ⁵

Lexically speaking, theatricality is both poorly defined and etymologically unclear. It seems to be much like the "tacit concept" defined by Michael Polany: "a...