Modernism and Anti-theatricality: An Afterword

Modernism and Anti-theatricality: An Afterword MARTIN PUCH NER Two views of anti-theatricalism emerge from Jonas Barish's Antitlzeatrical Prejudice (I 98 t). According t o the predominant one, anti-theatricalism is a prejudice that is inextricably woven into the very fabric of Western thought, from its Greek origins to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers of modernity. Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche, St. Augustine and Theodor Adorno, Pagan Rome and the Puritans - the most disparate philosophers apparently share one troubling flaw: their hatred of the theatre. When faced with such stubborn opposition, such a repetitive history of a prejudice seemingly untouched by the most revolutionary social, philosophical, and artistic upheavals, it is not surprising that Theatre Studies would go into a defensive mode, that exposing this prejudice would be seen as a first and necessary step to bring about its demise. The Antitheatrical Prejudice contains a second understanding of anti-theatricality as well, one that remains somewhat beneath the surface to emerge primarily in the last chapter, when Barish deals with modem theatre, drama, and thought. Here Barish notes that the anti-theatrical prejudice is at times curiously complicit with the theatre, that it has been embraced not only by critics and philosophers, such as Nietzsche or the now-forgotten new critic Yvor Winters, but also by the great modernist playwrights and directors, such as Eugene /onesco or Samuel Beckett. Theatre and anti-theatricality suddenly no longer appear as opposing forces, as two camps that have been fighting for 2,500 years, but as deeply intertwined systems, enabling one another and propelling one another forward in history. Once we no longer think of anti-theatricalism as the eternal enemy of the theatre, we can also begin to see the multiplicity of anti-theatrical moments and effects, opinions and trends, in a variety of disciplines, from philosophy to literary criticism and from religious studies to cultural institutions. Most importantly, perhaps, we can recognize the significance of anti-theatricalism for the modernist theatre itself. It is this Modern Drama, 44:3 (2001) 355 MARTIN PUCHNER second notion of anti-theatricality, which Barish mentions but considers only as a temporary trend, that emerges with particular clarity from the articles collected in this issue of Modern Drama. Noticing the multiplicity of anti-theatricalisms means that we can no longer isolate different attacks on the theatre and hold them up as examples of an ingrained prejudice. Instead we must ask which particular understandings of the theatre stand behind the various forms of anti-theatricalism, what draws them to the theatre that they would bother to attack it so vehemently, what values motivate these attacks, and from what position or discipline they are launched. As the essays in this collection show, each anti-theatricalism tends to construct its own horror fantasy of the theatre, its own version of the inherent limits of theatrical representation, so that we can know each fonn of antitheatricalism by the phantasm of the theatre it has created. Anti-theatricalism certainly describes an opposition to the theatre as such and not just to some historically contingent theatre. At the same time, however, any such general attack on the theatre takes its point of departure from a critique of a historically specific theatre, from which a general understanding of theatre is then distilled. We must therefore examine, in each ca.e, what kind of theatre stands in for this construction of the "theatre as such," who personifies it, and what specific theatrical practice defines its limits and excesses. For naturalist theatre , for example, it is the melodrama that represents the theatre, while for the symbolist theatre and opera it is naturalism. Kirk Williams's essay on naturalism , Herbert Lindenberger's discussion of the symbolist opera, and Elinor Fuchs's analysis of twentieth-century theatre study this historical dynamic behind the seemingly ahistorical nature of anti-theatricalism.' Once we have historicized the extraction of a general theatre from a particular one, we can move on to investigate the mode in which the theatre, thus stabilized and generalized, is to be opposed. Are we faced with a strategic opposition, one that uses the rhetoric of anti-theatricalism in order to differentiate itself from contemporary...