In this essay, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard’s oeuvre can be seen as a theater of ideas. This argument is developed in three steps. First, I will briefly introduce a theoretical framework for addressing the theatrical dimension of Kierkegaard’s works. This framework is based on a distinction between“performative writing strategies” and “categories of performativity.” As a second step, I will focus on Repetition: A Venture in Experimenting Psychology, by Constantin Constantius, one of the best examples of Kierkegaard’s innovative way (...) of doing philosophy. This strange and elusive book introduces the difficult and counter-intuitive notion of repetition. Repetition is a category of performativity that aims to activate the subjectivity of the reader. This performative effect is achieved by confronting the reader with an “unresolved”existential problem that is not yet drawn into clarity but is staged in all its confusions and contradictions. Kierkegaard’s pseudonym Constantius relies here on a performative writing strategy that is animated by a dialectic of advance and withdrawal. In the last and third step, I will analyze Constantius’s own reflection on the performative dimension of his text. Constantius has left several clues behind, each of which suggests that he deliberately developed a performative writing strategy. (shrink)

Nietzsche and the theater -- Zukunftstheater! -- How to theatricalize with a hammer -- Nietzsche contra Nietzsche -- The theater and Nietzsche -- Ecce Strindberg -- The genealogy of Shaw -- Thus spake O'Neill -- Epilogue: Centaurs.

Behandelt die aktuelle und brennende Debatte der Krise des öffentlichen TheatersZukunftsperspektiven für das Theater in Deutschland Erstes geschlossenes Konzept zur Zukunft des Theatermanagements.

In the performing arts, including music, theater, dance and so on, theoretical issues both about artworks and about performances of them must be dealt with, so that their theoretical analysis is inherently more complex and troublesome than that of nonperforming arts such as painting or film, in which primarily only artworks need to be discussed. Thus it is especially desirable in the case of the performing arts to look for defensible broad theoretical simplifications or generalizations that could serve to (...) unify and potentially comprehensively explain these difficult cases. (shrink)

This collection explores the link between theater and human flourishing. It interrogates both the social good of theater and the personally restorative work of a range of live embodied performances. It brings together the disciplines of theater (and performance studies) and psychology, especially positive psychology, to explore the social benefits of theater. These benefits include the formation and participation in community, opportunities to engage in political speech and thought, and the experience of being entertained (or offended) (...) by both the creative work of artists and the individual responses of fellow audience members. (shrink)

Table of Contents: Illustrations Acknowledgments Conventions Introduction 3 Ch. 1 Kinds of Natural Philosophy 14 Ch. 2 Methods of Bookishness 49 Ch. 3 Modes of Argument 82 Ch. 4 Bodin’s Philosophy of Nature 116 Ch. 5 Theatrical Metaphors 153 Ch. 6 The Reception of the Theatrum 180 Epilogue: The Legacies of the Theatrum 225 Notes 233 Bibliography 331 Index 369.

Theater requires artifice, justice demands truth. Are these demands as irreconcilable as the pejorative term “show trials” suggests? After the Second World War, canonical directors and playwrights sought to claim a new public role for theater by restaging the era’s great trials as shows. The Nuremberg trials, the Eichmann trial, and the Auschwitz trials were all performed multiple times, first in courts and then in theaters. Does justice require both courtrooms and stages? In Staged, Minou Arjomand draws on (...) a rich archive of postwar German and American rehearsals and performances to reveal how theater can become a place for forms of storytelling and judgment that are inadmissible in a court of law but indispensable for public life. She unveils the affinities between dramatists like Bertolt Brecht, Erwin Piscator, and Peter Weiss and philosophers such as Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin, showing how they responded to the rise of fascism with a new politics of performance. Linking performance with theories of aesthetics, history, and politics, Arjomand argues that it is not subject matter that makes theater political but rather the act of judging a performance in the company of others. Staged weaves together theater history and political philosophy into a powerful and timely case for the importance of theaters as public institutions. (shrink)

Children love theater without knowing that they “do theater”, without someone teaching them to “play a part”: representing roles and situations is a spontaneous and natural playful dimension. We can call this “animation”, a characteristic feature of childhood: in the proper sense it means “giving life” by impersonating roles or creating scenarios with toys. Theater becomes a pedagogical device when it recognizes and enhances these assumptions by acting on two levels: on the one hand, making theater (...) with children and young people, soliciting their communication and interpretative skills, as a laboratory that, starting from the body, involves all languages. On the other hand, making theater for children, producing shows able to enter a relationship with the imagination of children, as an aesthetic experience; at its best it is experimental theater. (shrink)

A range of seemingly unrelated problems at the forefront of controversy about consciousness, language, and vision, among others, have a deep connection with one another that has gone unnoticed. This book suggests that this mistake arises not from what is put into a theory but rather from what is missing.

This article presents and discusses an innovative pedagogical device designed for training pre-service teachers on the nature of science. We endorse an approach according to which aspects of the nature of science should be explicitly discussed in order to be understood by learners. We identified quantum physics, and more precisely the principles of uncertainty and complementarity, as a rich topic suitable for such a discussion. Our training device consists in preparing and staging a new type of theater, the “scientific (...) experimental theater,” based both on the characteristics of Brecht’s theater and Kelly’ cyclic theory of learning. This device was implemented with a group of eight pre-service teachers. According to our observations, the approach favors their involvement and provides them with a frame for expressing their doubts and confronting their points of view. By analyzing their discussion, we identified several aspects of the nature of science that the pre-service teachers raised spontaneously: subjectivity, the social and cultural embeddedness of science, the construction and status of models, and the role of questioning in the development of science. The implemented device therefore appears as an interesting means for stimulating a rich discussion on the nature of science. This study opens new avenues for teachers’ and students’ training devices aimed at developing a critical and reflective stance on science. (shrink)

In this short essay the A. intends to analyze the scientific coordinates of social theater as a pedagogical-didactic device in an inclusive perspective for the development of the intellectual welfare of communities in the 21st century. The reference model is that of Inclusive Education, which represents, as Unesco has specified several times, a true guideline in the field of education, education and training; it develops through the guiding principles of equality, social justice, freedom, the right to citizenship, the right (...) to education and social equity, without any discrimination based on race, gender, language, or different cultures. This is possible through inclusive theater workshops at school. (shrink)

Theater is an art or theater is not an independent art. Each of these antithetical propositions has its supporters. It is usually the supporters of the second who come up with anything resembling intelligible argumentation. The first is usually accepted as fact, sanctified by universal acknowledgement, without criticism, without much reflection—it is just accepted: theater unquestionably gives satisfaction. What kind? Aesthetic! And so, theater is an art!

Theater production is a collaborative creative activity. Social creativity recognizes the relationships between creative groups and the contexts in which creativity emerges. It also suggests that the interactive processes between the collaborators and their work form a center, which in turn becomes a kind of creative entity itself. An evolving systems case study of production practices at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival illuminates this process and illustrates the differences between seeing an aggregate creative activity and the more holistic view, in (...) which the artwork functions like another person, a creature in dialogue with the personality of the creative system. (shrink)

Introduction -- Opening spaces -- Seeing what -- Pain between bodies -- Pots and plays -- Epilogue.

Had I been willing to run the risk of multiplying cuteness beyond necessity, this article would have worn the title “So you are one of those naṭs!.” The Hindi word naṭ, which helpfully sounds like the English nut, represents the way most of us in contemporary India pronounce the Sanskrit word naṭa. When we notice that a nut, in English, is someone crazy, pointing us toward the divine madness that a Dionysian performer might be expected to manifest — while on (...) the other hand no known classical Indian theory essentially associates the theater with madness — the contrast between conceptualizations of the theatrical in classical India and in classical Greece comes into view. Relative to what has come to.. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science by Ann BlairPeter DearAnn Blair. The Theater of Nature: Jean Bodin and Renaissance Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997. Pp. xiv + 382. Cloth, $45.00.Jean Bodin’s Universae naturae theatrum (1596) is the least celebrated of all the major publications by this outstanding figure of the French renaissance. It lacks the apparent political, historiographical, and philosophical relevance of (...) Bodin’s well-known earlier works (the Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem of 1566, Les six livres de la République of 1576, and De la démonomanie des sorciers of 1580, all receiving much more attention then as now). Ann Blair focuses our attention on the Theatrum, as a text whose significance for her book exists on at least three interrelated levels: there is its relation to Bodin’s views in the more famous texts; its advantage as a treatise on natural philosophy about whose author we know much more (intellectually) than those of most such works; and in connection with the last, there is above all its value as a distinguished representative of a genre of natural philosophical writings that was prominent in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.It is the third consideration that motivates Blair’s book most centrally. She declares her wish to enrich our view of the history of science with works, like the Theatrum, that were not made by subsequently regarded stars such as Galileo or Descartes; the very typicality of its genre makes the Theatrum, she argues, a valuable window on contemporary understandings of what natural knowledge was and should be about. Bodin’s enterprise possessed a religious core: natural philosophy was for him a tool to be used in shoring up broadly irenical positions (of the kind associated with the Colloquium heptaplomeres, usually attributed, as here, to Bodin). This kind of “natural theology” avant la lettre characterized a good number of different thinkers and writers on natural philosophy in this period, many of them German (besides their discussion here, Blair is considering such people, and their project of pia philosophia, more fully in her current work). It is a subject that, more than anything, stands at the heart of her study.Bodin, rather conventionally, tried to establish a close liaison between natural philosophy and religious knowledge—that is, between those things to be inferred from experience of the natural world and the central dogmas of faith. Less conventionally, he attempted to demonstrate on occasion truths that were far from orthodox. Regardless of whether Bodin was “really” a Catholic or a Protestant (and Blair observes the great interest in the Theatrum shown by German Calvinists in the first few decades after its original publication), his general religious stance was one of accommodation. Thus good philosophizing could demonstrate (in the weak, rhetorical sense of that term) such doctrines as the existence and providence of God; contentious issues, such as the correct interpretation of the Eucharist, were left aside. Nonetheless, Bodin also argued, at such length and with such vigor as to have the propositions condemned by the Catholic church, that human souls and angels (as well as, more usually, demons) were corporeal beings. The importance to Bodin of this position stemmed from its sociopolitical implications: in particular, if human souls were incorporeal, it became unclear how rewards and punishments—necessary sanctions for restoring the social order threatened by the Wars of Religion—could be meted out after death. Curiously, such a view seems to imply that pleasure and pain are inextricably connected to bodies alone. [End Page 363]Among the historiographical strands informing Blair’s approach is recent literature on the “history of the book,” best known through the work of Roger Chartier. Accordingly, Blair discusses the vicissitudes of production of Bodin’s book in its various editions and emissions, and carefully considers, along with the likely reading practices by the aid of which Bodin came to compose it, the various uses to which its first readers put it. Her major interpretive trope is that of the commonplace book. While acknowledging the lack of direct material evidence for Bodin’s use of such a technique as his chief means of... (shrink)

It was in the mid-twentieth century that the independent theatrical form based entirely on improvisation, known now as improvisational/improvised theatre, impro or improv, came into existence and took shape. Viola Spolin, the intellectual and the logician behind the improvisational movement, first used her improvised games as a WPA worker running theater classes for underprivileged youth in Chicago in 1939. But it was not until 1955 that her son, Paul Sills, together with a college theater group, the Compass Players, (...) used Spolin’s games on stage. In the 1970s Sills made the format famous with his other project, the Second City. Since the emergence of improv in the US coincides with the renaissance of improvisation in theater, in this paper, I will look back at what may have prepared and propelled the emergence of improvised theater in the United States. Hence, this article is an attempt to look at the use of improvisation in theater and performing arts in the United States in the second half of the 20th century in order to highlight the various roles and functions of improvisation in the experimental theater of the day by analyzing how some of the most influential experimental theaters used improvisation as a means of play development, a component of actor training and an important element of the rehearsal process. (shrink)

Though Rousseau is recognized to have treated the problem of self-knowledge with great sensitivity, very little is known about a centrally important aspect of that treatment—his understanding of self-deception. I reconstruct this conception, emphasizing the importance of purposive but sub-intentional processes that work to enhance agents' self-esteem. I go on to argue that Rousseau's fundamental concern about the theater is its capacity to manipulate these processes in ways that make spectators both complicit in their own falsification and vulnerable to (...) elite domination. This argument, with its focus on the pervasive and often subconscious character of self-deception, not only problematizes an influential reading of Rousseau which emphasizes the epistemic availability of the “true” or “sincere” self, but also highlights the ongoing civic and moral threat posed by self-deceptive mental states. (shrink)

What is unique and essential about theatre? What separates it from other arts? Do we need 'theatre' in some fundamental way? The art of theatre, as Paul Woodruff says in this elegant and unique book, is as necessary-and as powerful-as language itself. Defining theatre broadly, including sporting events and social rituals, he treats traditional theatre as only one possibility in an art that-at its most powerful-can change lives and bring a divine presence to earth. The Necessity of Theater analyzes (...) the unique power of theatre by separating it into the twin arts of watching and being watched, practiced together in harmony by watchers and the watched. Whereas performers practice the art of being watched-making their actions worth watching, and paying attention to action, choice, plot, character, mimesis, and the sacredness of performance space-audiences practice the art of watching: paying close attention. A good audience is emotionally engaged as spectators; their engagement takes a form of empathy that can lead to a special kind of human wisdom. As Plato implied, theatre cannot teach us transcendent truths, but it can teach us about ourselves. Characteristically thoughtful, probing, and original, Paul Woodruff makes the case for theatre as a unique form of expression connected to our most human insticts. The Necessity of Theater should appeal to anyone seriously interested or involved in theatre or performance more broadly. (shrink)

From the Federal Theater Projects of the Great Depression to the disruptive performances of the 1960s and 1970s, theater has played an important role in American radicalism. This special issue of_ _Theater_ reports on socially conscious, politically active theaters in the United States. Despite the evaporation of Cold War passions and the rise of conservatism in the 1980s and 1990s, such theater work remains a persistent and evolving presence on the political landscape. Since the first inauguration of (...) George W. Bush, new opportunities have arisen for political performance and for significant new challenges to these artists. T_heater and Social Change_ not only tracks the historical evolution of political theater but also explores the current state and future prospects of different modes, including agit-prop, demonstrations, solo performance, Augusto Boal’s Theater of the Oppressed, and community-based production. With such notable contributors as Anna Deavere Smith, Jonathan Kalb, Holly Hughes, and Tony Kushner, the issue offers a diverse assemblage of personal statements, conversations, photographs, interviews, and performance text. _Contributors include:_ Reverend Billy, Jan Cohen-Cruz, Arlene Goldbard, Sharon Green, Lani Guinier, Holly Hughes, Jonathan Kalb, Tony Kushner, Judith Malina, Robbie McCauley, John O'Neal, Claudia Orenstein, Bill Rauch, Julie Salverson, Anna Deavere Smith, Alisa Solomon, Roberta Uno. (shrink)

(1996). Transcultural theater: The viewer response to Draussen vor der Tuer. The European Legacy: Vol. 1, Fourth International Conference of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas, pp. 1219-1224.

Arthur Miller is one of the most important and enduring playwrights of the last fifty years. This new edition of The Theater Essays has been expanded by nearly fifty percent to include his most significant articles and interviews since the book's initial publication in 1978. Within these pages Miller discusses the roots of modern drama, the nature of tragedy, and the state of contemporary theater; offers illuminating observations on Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, O'Neill, and Williams; probes the different approaches (...) and attitudes toward theater in Russia, China, and at home; and, of course, provides valuable insights into his own vast dramatic corpus. For this edition the literary chronology and cast and production information have been updated, and an extensive new bibliography has been added. The Theater Essays confirms Arthur Miller's standing as a brilliant, eloquent commentator on drama and culture. No one interested in theater should be without this definitive collection. (shrink)

Good People, by Singaporean playwright Haresh Sharma, unmasks racial and religious tensions between Singapore’s increasingly diverse racial groups and the attendant ramifications on the healthcare ecosystem and the doctor-patient relationship. Drawing upon Michel Foucault’s notion of heterotopia, this paper argues that, in Good People, Sharma employs theater as a site of resistance by calling into question state and medical authority. First, state authority is challenged through the play’s scrutiny of the ideological principle of multiculturalism and its usefulness in fostering (...) meaningful cross-cultural exchanges and acceptance of different cultural and religious beliefs in the clinic. Second, the play destabilizes medical authority by surfacing the complex relationship between the doctor’s unconscious biases, racial and religious prejudice, and clinical judgment, thereby casting doubt on medicine’s claims of objectivity. In doing so, this paper argues, the play resists simplistic binary categorizations of the behaviors and motivations of the characters into good/bad or right/wrong, instead raising questions about power, knowledge, and contesting truths within the confines of the cultural space of a hospice. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a relationship between the structure of live theater and the question of whether human beings have free will, and that the practice of live theater and the pursuit of philosophical certitude regarding free will are both constructive human experiences coalesced around roughly the same set of sensations.

El artículo examina la concepción hegeliana del arte moderno a la luz de las consideraciones sobre el teatro en las Lecciones de estética. Dicha concepción se modifica respecto a la época clásica y la antigüedad con la irrupción del principio de la subjetividad en el arte. Se descubren así las dimensiones histórica, reflexiva y comprensiva del arte que anticipan una hermenéutica del arte bajo la consigna de un “arte para nosotros”: un arte que deja de estar anclado en las representaciones (...) del pasado para situarse más bien de cara a las exigencias del presente. (shrink)

Are there nonfiction genres of theater scripts, just as there are nonfiction genres of film, such as documentary, and of literature, such as biography and history? I propose that there are, and that Verbatim Theater qualifies as a nonfiction theater genre. What sets it apart is that it is supposed to instruct performers not merely to reenact, or represent, a series of events, but overall to present evidence or arguments for a thesis, or for the audience to (...) draw their own conclusions. For scripts to present evidence, audiences have to be able to filter out what is supposed to serve as evidence from what else occurs on stage. Unlike various other genres of theater that one might initially appear to be nonfiction—such as autobiographical dialogues, Documentary Theater, and ethnodrama—Verbatim Theater does this. (shrink)

For Hannah Arendt, creating a durable, civil public world was of utmost importance. Though many have discussed Arendt's relevance to the contemporary work of politics, Eric Gorham is the first to examine her ideas of the "space of appearance" in the context of the university classroom. In The Theater of Politics, Gorham examines in detail Arendt's dramaturgical theory of politics and her method of political criticism and maintains that politics can be observed in the classroom, in which students are (...) future political actors and spectators in training. Using Arendt as a theoretical platform, Gorham offers innovative ideas for politicizing the classroom and for reconceptualizing faculty and student community service: If professors and administrators can imagine their tasks in light of lessons learned from classical theater, then students will benefit from a renewed emphasis on teaching. Gorham moves to redraw the basis of political citizenship, criticizing arguments offered by civic republican and communitarian theorists and crafting a richer, more judicious concept of citizenship—one that can be learned and practiced in the political science classroom in particular and in the university in general. (shrink)

The study of conscious experience has seen remarkable strides in the last ten years, reflecting important technological breakthroughs and the enormous efforts of researchers in disciplines as varied as neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. Although still embroiled in debate, scientists are now beginning to find common ground in their understanding of consciousness, which may pave the way for a unified explanation of how and why we experience and understand the world around us. Written by eminent psychologist Bernard J. Baars, In (...) the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind brings us to the frontlines of this exciting discipline, offering the general reader a fascinating overview of how top scientists currently understand the processes underlying conscious experience. Combining psychology with brain science, Baars brilliantly brings his subject to life with a metaphor that has been used to understand consciousness since the time of Aristotle--the mind as theater. Here consciousness is seen as a "stage" on which our sensations, perceptions, thoughts, and feelings play to a vast, silent audience. Behind the scenes, silent context operators shape conscious experience; they include implicit expectations, self systems, and scene setters. Using this framework, Baars presents compelling evidence that human consciousness rides on top of biologically ancient mechanisms. In humans it manifests itself in inner speech, imagery, perception, and voluntary control of thought and action. Topics like hypnosis, absorbed states of mind, adaptation to trauma, and the human propensity to project expectations on uncertainty, all fit into the expanded theater metaphor. As Baars explores our present understanding of the mind, he takes us to the top laboratories around the world, where we witness some of the field's most exciting breakthroughs and discoveries. And throughout the book, Baars has sprinkled numerous and often highly amusing on-the-spot demonstrations that illuminate the ideas under discussion. Understanding consciousness is perhaps the most difficult puzzle facing the sciences today. In the Theater of Consciousness offers an invaluable introduction to the field, brilliantly weaving together the various theories that have emerged as scientists continue their quest to uncover the profound mysteries of the mind--and of human nature itself. (shrink)

_The Art of Theater_ argues for the recognition of theatrical performance as an art form independent of dramatic writing. Identifies the elements that make a performance a work of art Looks at the competing views of the text-performance relationships An important and original contribution to the aesthetics and philosophy of theater.

Damasio remarks, it "informs virtually all research on mind and brain, explicitly or implicitly." Indeed, serial information processing models generally run this risk (Kinsbourne, 1985). The commentaries provide a wealth of confirming instances of the seductive power of this idea. Our sternest critics Block, Farah, Libet, and Treisman) adopt fairly standard Cartesian positions; more interesting are those commentators who take themselves to be mainly in agreement with us, but who express reservations or offer support with arguments that betray a continuing (...) allegiance to one or another tenet of the view we sought to discredit. (shrink)