Analytic Philosophy and the World of the Play by Michael Y. Bennett (review)

In Michael Bennett's thoughtful book, analytic philosophy and dramatic performance share a balancing act between data and potentiality. In the case of analytic philosophy, as explained by Bertrand Russell's landmark essay "On Denoting," logic, mathematics, and epistemology emphasize "knowledge about" and "acquaintance about"—that is, unambiguous (definite data) and ambiguous (indefinite potentiality) knowledge. Definite knowledge employs empiricism (something happens, leading to general knowledge about); indefinite (or subjunctive) knowledge employs logic (something might, should, or could happen, providing an acquaintance about). In theatre the oscillation between definite and indefinite knowledge, or between reality and possibility, coincides with Coleridge's famous maxim, "willing suspension of disbelief." Productions depend on audiences' "willingness" to accept theatre's situated-ness between reality and modality (possibility). Bennett asserts that "fictional entities … exist analogously to 'possible worlds'" (7). The book's fundamental claim is that possible worlds enable theatrical productions to present "the world of the play [through] the developed idea of 're-creation'" (9).

Among Bennett's salient points is that theatre is, or should be, a laboratory for analytic philosophers to examine language, reality, and the imagination; theatre also provides a vehicle for considering distinctions among what is, might be, ought to be, and, for theatre, could be "re-created." He confects the various threads of theatre and analytic philosophy, whereby possible worlds initiate theatrical productions. For Bennett, "the world of play is a 're-creation' of our world" (2; emphasis in original). It is neither a reflection, copy, imitation, nor mirror of nature, nor is it a metaphysical abstraction divorced from reality; rather, theatre is a fungible operation recreating modalities of possible worlds. Modal logic, for Bennett, straddles the lines among necessity, reality, and possibility, sharing with fiction (literature or drama) constructs analogous to possible worlds. Theatrical re-creation, then, is what Bennett describes as a "messy" interface between fiction and reality in which a dramatic character has a "dual existence on the page and stage" (10). Characters share characteristics of reality, but reside onstage in their subjunctive sphere of possibility.

The book is structured in two parts: part 1 "outlines the problems" of comparing analytic philosophy with theatre, then "develops the (proposed) solutions"; part 2 "applies the proposed solutions" to numerous examples (18). This structure enables the author to proceed systematically from problems inherent in his comparison between analytic philosophy and theatre, to its usefulness in practical terms. In the first part Bennett describes theatrical characters as "dialectical-synecdochic objects," encompassing an "entire range of re-creation" (31; emphasis in original). Dialectical-synecdochic objects exist "as a 're-creation' of our world, through a particular combination of synecdochic elements, which are actually existing subjects and predicates" (38). An actor (might, could, would) proceed according to possibilities (predicates); audiences observe productions through the dialectic process of deciphering reality (what is) and possible worlds (what might be). Audiences compare what is given in the world and what is presented onstage, with reality and possibility existing simultaneously through the imagination. This theory implicitly privileges director-producer over author-writer, because directors can recreate the production-performance as the urcreation of a play. Bennett is sensitive to dramatic texts, but eventually comes down on the side of the director, and by extension the actor, because both are able to create a wide range of interpretive and spontaneous choices (possible worlds). The actor and director are, in a sense, creating possibilities of the character: the actor, guided by the director, embodies the role not merely as a surrogate, or simulacrum, of reality, but rather as a re-creator of various possible worlds, since the role has been and will likely be inhabited by many actors over time, with each performer re-creating the role anew, and by extension creating new and possible worlds.

Part 2 examines theatre not as a momentary presence, but as a "past subjunctive," conceptually providing "an accurate description of the temporality of theatre both in the dramatic text and in...