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  3. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven)
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  7. Theatre, Theory and Culture (F0UO2A)

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Theatre, Theory and Culture
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This document contains *literally* everything that was said during the lectures (class 1-8; only the last two guest lectures are not included). The contents are already structured into a summary-like text.

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  • 2 février 2025
  • 66
  • 2024/2025
  • Notes de cours
  • Jonas rutgeerts
  • 1-8

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Theatre, Theory and Culture: a very Eloquent and
Necessary Summary by Yours Truly

Class 1: introduction

1. What?
●​ Core questions
○​ What is the role of theatre today?
■​ Rise of new media (20th century)
●​ Makes theatre feel anachronistic, old-school medium that asks from
the audience and participants to be somewhere together in one space,
to share an experience.
●​ In a way this asks theatre-makers today: “Why should I make theatre
when there are so many other media that would make it so much
easier to convey my message?” This makes theatre-makers think
through their medium, because there medium isn’t taken for granted
anymore, but also a lot of theorists and philosophers are taking this
idea of theatricality to point out something that these new media are
missing.
●​ Together with the rise of new media there’s also a rise of theorists
and theatre-makers that theorize this idea of theatricality as
something crucial and important in relation to contemporary society.
In doing so, they’re not only relating to new media, but also a certain
history of theatre, a certain conceptualization. (see next point)
○​ What is the historical conceptualization of theatre in the ‘West’?
■​ Anti-theatrical tradition
●​ In the history of western thinking theatre takes on a central role, but
in a negative way, as something that is fake, delusional. Most authors
react to this idea.
●​ We will not stick to western perspectives → a lot of theatre-makers
look to other thinkers (e.g. Sylvia Wynter) to criticize this
anti-theatrical tradition (appropriation, exoticizing, fascination).


2. Plato
●​ Allegory of the cave
○​ A theatrical allegory, decisive for how people think about theatre for a long time.
○​ Theatre is not there as a word or concept, but the picture that has been painted is very
theatrical because it bears a lot of characteristics that are deemed essential to theatre:
■​ 1. Place: theatre is seen as a place, as a specific place in society:
“subterranean cavern with a long entrance open to the light on its entire
width.” → his idea of seclusion, the cave is secluded from reality, but at the
same time it is still connected to reality, there is an entrance, a relation to the
outside, but it is secluded. That is also what makes this place a prison,
because it holds people captive from the outside; if there was no outside, it

, wouldn’t be a prison. The cave is thus a specific place secluded from reality,
but still connected to it.
■​ 1.5 Framing, a positioning of people: much detail is used to describe this
place and each detail is used to make people understand this positionality of
the people who are tied up and can only look upfront. Theatre is not only a
place, but also a ‘framing of the gaze’, the way in which we look at things is
crucial to Plato and theatre. What is specific to theatre is what frames the
gaze, theatre is a way of organizing the way we look at things in sucha way
that we can only look at them from one certain angle.
●​ Bart Verschaffel: “Theatre-making is not performing something, but
determining the point from which something is to be seen and turning
a spectacle into a spectacle that can be seen in a perfect way. the
event is taken together and turned towards one point, to one
viewpoint.” → the idea of framing the gaze, he does not really refer
to the allegory of the gaze, but the birth of theater as we know it. This
is, especially in the West, the idea of Renaissance theatre.
●​ Verschaffel would say that theatre doesn’t start with the play, but with
architecture, the building; the way we look at plays is connected to a
certain architecture, which is based on Renaissance theatre, such as
the ‘Theatro Olympico’, the oldest closed-off theatre that has been
preserved, built between 1580-1585. Two architects: Andrea
Palladio, responsible for building the theatre, and Vincenzo
Scamozzi, responsible for the scenery. They are Renaissance
architects, so they are very much inspired by the Greeks and Romans,
the ground base is very similar. But there is a double shift, according
to Verschaffel, not a radical break with the Greek theatre, but more so
a perfection of it:
○​ It is closed-off from the outside >< open-air theatres with a
background of a city, that showed a connection with the
outside. This is no longer the case, the Theatro Olympico is
one of the first one that is secluded from the outside, the city;
you don’t have open-air, you have a painting of the air.
○​ This escape becomes more prominent when we look at the
scenography of the Theatro Olympico. In ancient theatre the
focus is on the orchestra, a place where the action takes
place. In Renaissance theatre the focus shifts and it is on a
point in space, a vanishing point, which creates perspective,
something that emerges (perspectivism). It is a point that is
quite far, that doesn’t really exists, but it draws you in.
According to Verschaffen this important because for him,
theatre is an idealized way of looking, which does not
correspond to any reality anymore. So, Theatro Olympico is
withdrawing from reality and is instead creating a
simulacrum, an image that has no longer a correspondence to
reality. This is why it is important that the focus becomes a
vanishing point, something that doesn’t really exist, a mere
optical illusion, which is something that is also important in
the theory of Plato.

, ■​ 2. The spectacle: theatre is a pure spectacle. He uses a lot of references to
things that are not real, e.g. “the light from a fire burning” (the shadows are
not created by natural light but artificial light, something that somebody has
put there with reason), “puppet shows” (they are like mirages of real people)
and “shadows cast from the fire”. This idea of shadows is very important.
What the people are seeing is not even the mirages, the “puppets”, but the
shadows of the puppets, which are completely devoid of materiality, just as
the vanishing point in the Theatro Olympico, the actual material is outside the
field of view. It is also telling that Plato talks about a cavernous place, a place
where there should be ground/matter, but isn’t, there is a void. This idea of a
void and shadows will repeatedly come back in Western thinking to describe
theatre; theatre is something that lacks substance and concrete things on
which we can ground (people who are theatrical are people that have no real
reasons behind their actions).
■​ 3. The people/ the audience: there can not be a work of theatre if there’s not
an audience watching.
●​ Plato describes them as prisoners; tied-up, both physically, but also
mentally as they are forced to look at something and take on a certain
perspective, they can not take the reality of the matter into account.
They are not only trapped in their position, but also in this world of
shadows. They are prisoners because they are delusional and can’t
see reality, which will often come back in Western traditions.
●​ They are also strange prisoners: if one of them is unchained and
moves towards the sun and get to see reality as it really is (the
material things, but most importantly to see reality is when you look
at the sun, your eyes adjust and you’ll see reality as it really is
because there is something opposite to the shadows, which you’ll see
from only one perspective, while the sun you can see from every
perspective. When you look at things you see them because the light
shines on them, but when you look at the sun, you no longer see
effects, but the root cause of everything. This is the complete
opposite of what happens in the cave, where you only saw effects,
but now you see the cause of everything, that grounds everything),
and goes back to tell the other prisoners. His eyes have to adjust to
the dark again and the prisoners laugh at him and they see him as
somebody who tries to remove from them from reality and someone
who tries to liberate them. So, even of they were freed, they would
not leave this place → the delusional aspect of theatre is also a
self-delusion. Traditional theatre-theories thinks that theatre is not
only something that delusions you, but there is also a seduction that
makes you want to stay in this world of shadows and not see reality.
This is why theatre seems so problematic to Plato, because it
self-delusional thing that makes you want to look at mere images and
not reality
○​ Conclusion: Plato paints a picture of two worlds that are completely divided; the
world of theatre, the world of shadows, which is particular place, a prison that
doesn’t allow people to see reality as it really is and binds people to a certain
perspective >< the outside world where reality is, which frees people from the

, prison, where the sunlight is, where there are no shadows and which is no longer a
specific place as you can look at it from everywhere.
■​ The problem with theatre is that it is situationally conditioned as it is not
only a specific place, but also a specific placing; it puts you in such a place
that you can look at things from only a very specific perspective that is
idealized and a mere image. This idea is also reflected in the etymology of
the word “theatre”: “theatre” from “theatron”, a place for viewing (certain
perspective) >< “theory” from “theoria”, to gaze upon (encompasses all
perspectives).
■​ Weber: the problem with theatricallity is that it goes against the idea of
self-identity (what you see, is what you get), what you see, is not what you
get. Theory as a place from where you can gaze at everything and theatre as a
place from where you can only look at shadows.


3. J.L. Austin: how to do things with words
●​ Resistance against a positivist philosophy of language, which he finds too limiting:
○​ Language can do two things: it can describe or constate something.
○​ A statement can be true/false
●​ Performative utterances:
○​ Language does/performs something in a specific context (e.g. promises, a warning, “I
do”, ...). Language used within a social context means that you are doing something;
words do something.
○​ Succesful/unsuccesful
●​ ⇒ Scientific language vs. ordinary language
●​ He thinks that most sentences are performative utterances. Positivists think about language as
a description constate, because they are looking at language outside of the ordinary/social
context. But he makes one big exception, namely fictional/theatrical language:
○​ “hollow or void” → Plato’s cave
○​ “parasitic” → resemblance with a shadow as they are both dependent on something
else, with which it does not coincide. This kind of language is dependent on pure
language, it is parasitic on ordinary language, but it is divorced from that language
○​ “etiolations” → a biological term used to describe a biological effect where plants
that hev no sunlight transform their inner structures so that they can survive → the
cave, a lack of sunlight
○​ ⇒ similar words, metaphors as Plato to describe this idea of theatricality, namely as
something that is in the shadows, parasitic and hollow or void.


4. Conclusion on the anti-theatrical tradition
●​ Theatre = different from reality
○​ Shadow/parasite of reality
○​ No real substance
●​ Theatre = displacing reality
○​ Replacing reality with a hollow mirage, something that it isn’t
●​ Theatre = seductive
○​ Makes us want the hollow mirage

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