Staging Philosophy: Intersections of Theater, Performance, and Philosophy

Introduction

Introduction David Krasner and David Z. Saltz Why This Book? Though the past ‹fteen years have observed a veritable golden age of performance theory—a lively discourse that draws on anthropology, sociology , linguistics, psychoanalysis, political theory, cultural studies, feminism , and queer theory—performance theorists rarely draw on works emanating from American philosophy departments.1 Similarly, very few professional philosophers have focused in depth on questions pertaining to the phenomena of theater or performance.2 This situation is especially surprising given the attention recent philosophers have lavished on other art forms, such as painting, music, and ‹lm. The guiding principle of this book is a sustained engagement with philosophy and performance theory. The goal is to raise issues of critical importance by providing case studies of various philosophical movements and schools of thought. The book is designed to be accessible to nonspecialists who might be unfamiliar with philosophy of theater and performance , yet stimulating to experts in the ‹eld. Each chapter addresses fundamental questions about theater and live performance from a philosophical perspective. The contributors are performance scholars and philosophers, with one contribution jointly authored by a representative from each discipline. The chapters encompass a wide range of philosophical approaches, from analytic philosophy to phenomenology, and from deconstruction to critical realism. The concepts put forth in this book are meant to provoke, stimulate, and engage the reader, and ultimately bring the concept of theater to the foreground of intellectual inquiry. No single ideology dominates this work; inclusivity, not dogma, guides our entries. This collection will, we hope, invite further challenges, so that the ongoing dialogue, as Plato might imagine it, continues. As the title suggests, the aim of this book is to examine key issues in theater and performance from a philosophical perspective. What exactly do we mean by a “philosophical” approach to theater and live performance? We can begin by broadly distinguishing a philosophical analysis from a critical study, on the one hand, and prescriptive manifesto, on the other. A critical study interprets particular dramatic texts, performances, individuals , groups, periods, or movements. A manifesto is a statement about how practitioners should go about creating texts and performances. A philosophical analysis might examine the assumptions made by critical studies and prescriptive manifestos. Most signi‹cantly, however, it advances new arguments about—and new approaches to—the nature of theater and performance in general. There are many different approaches to philosophy. The question, “What is philosophy?” is itself a philosophical question—as, for that matter , is the question, “What is theater?” For the purposes of this book, we have established two pragmatic criteria for philosophical analysis: It is ‹rst an analysis of theater broadly construed, or more generally of live performance (a phenomenon encompassing theater); second, it is a theoretical inquiry that does not merely report philosophical claims, but advances new arguments and constitutes an original contribution to the philosophical discourse. We will examine both of these criteria in greater detail. But ‹rst we will consider an enduring connection between theater and philosophy that renders these two disciplines natural allies. Theater and Philosophy: Kindred Disciplines In Connections to the World: The Basic Concepts of Philosophy, Arthur Danto suggests that philosophy has risen “only twice in the history of civilization , once in Greece and once in India.” Both times, Danto posits, it emerged because “some distinction between appearance and reality seemed urgent.”3 Signi‹cantly, both of these civilizations, at much the same time and, arguably, for much the same reason, also gave rise to theater . Like philosophy, theater often sheds light on a reality obfuscated by appearances. Moreover, theater, like philosophy, exposes that reality by representing and analyzing human action and demonstrating causal rela2
Staging Philosophy tionships.4 In theater, writes philosopher Bruce Wilshire, “we can see ‘writ large’ the theatre-like conditions of the coherence and being of actual selves—large enough to see conditions which would otherwise be easily missed.”5 Theater and philosophy shed light on thought, behavior, action, and existence while simultaneously enhancing our comprehension of the world and ourselves. The critical link that holds theater and philosophy together is the act of seeing. Observing events, actions, responses, gestures, and behaviors, along with hearing sounds, voices, tones, and rhythms, brings us closer to understanding the realities that underlie surface appearances. In his essay “Philosophy and Theatre,” Aldo Tassi draws similar observations about theater and philosophy, noting that they are inexorably joined by an “unconcealment process.” Philosophy...