Independently, an Indian critic named Bharata came to a similar conclusion in a text called the Natyashastra.
It is our nature to imitate the actions of others—psychological studies confirm that imitation is a major part of our social development. Mimicry strengthens the bond between parent and child. Newborns copy the facial movements of their parents. Toddlers learn to speak by imitating and sifting through the sounds they hear.
When we observe an action, it has been shown that the neurons in our brain respond as if we were performing the same action. Our capacity for empathy is based on this hardwired ability. In acting classes, one of the most common exercises to get scene partners to connect emotionally is called mirroring. Actors are paired, facing each other, and one performs all of the physical movements of the other until they are told to switch leaders.
Duplicating actions is the fastest way to get two people to reach synchronicity. Our skill in patterning behavior is also one of the reasons that actors—and the theatre in general—have often been greeted with suspicion throughout history. Even though psychologists have established that children as young as twelve months can recognize the concept of pretense, there has always been a belief that viewing or participating in fictional worlds can warp our moral core, regardless of age.
In , two teenagers entered Columbine High School in Colorado and killed twelve students and a teacher before ending their own lives. Soon after, many tried to tie their violent behavior to the playing of video games. This type of role playing was seen as tantamount to being trained to point and shoot weapons. This leads us to how an imitation-based definition of theatre is lacking.
Simply to watch the actions of others would brand too much of everyday life as theatre. However, imitation in the sense of representing a fictional or real person creates a better dividing line between performance and an action that is performative. Theatre needs a pretense of self—a presentation of character.
This is a useful definition to limit the scope of your study, but as you will see, many avant-garde and postmodern performers have sought to challenge this idea by blurring the line between real life and fiction, audience and performer. Potentially, a great many people can participate in the creation of this pretense. Unlike other solitary forms of art, theatre is often highly collaborative. Although the actor is its only requirement, theatre has developed numerous artistic and support personnel such as directors, designers, and stage managers who may contribute to the final product.
This is one of the reasons that theatre studies are so valuable—they teach teamwork in the service of excellence. I decided to do a PhD and teach literature and drama and this is what I have been doing ever since. TNS: Have you consciously developed a style marked by clarity of ideas to reach all kinds of readers or is it something that is natural to you?
MP: I have tried it deliberately. I think clear writing may look simple but it is a hard thing to achieve. It has been a continual struggle and I still feel it is a work in progress. It is also true that in my dissertation I thought mostly about scholarly audience but later I became more and more interested in writing for the general reader. The experience that really helped me was writing introductions for and editing several anthologies such as Anthology of Drama and Anthology of World Literature that are directed at students.
Writing these introductions really forced me to be clear and to think more about the general reader or a reader who is not yet immersed in a discipline. One inspiration for me is Stephen Greenblatt, a colleague and a friend.
I think what I admire about his work is that he innovated scholarly methods with new historicism. In a similar vein, I admire Umberto Eco. Or you would avoid labelling it altogether? Maybe someone will come up with it. TNS: To what extent do you think contemporary literature is driven by topical happenings around the world?
It does not need to be horrible. The Cold War, for example, was surprisingly bloodless. But it is usually violence that provokes, and no we do not need it to write. I think it is good to create categories and think of epochs and I suppose wars and other acts and signature events are handy reference points.
But one should be careful and certainly writers do not need it. For example, the post WWI scenario produced a number of good writers, especially poets but this trend was less prominent in the case of WWII. A less depressing way to think about it is that in moments of real crisis people do need the arts to memorialise and to express emotions. Reacting to these events in purely political terms does not do justice to the experience and emotions.
TNS: What drives your definition of theatre -- your philosophy of life or social realities that somehow impacted upon your life? MP: I think as an art form, the most important definition of theatre perhaps is that it combines so many of the other art forms. It concentrates them, and makes them confront each other. In doing so, it adds its own features such as acting, audience dynamics, set design, and of course the architecture, and the configuration of theatrical space.
When I saw the show, no one screamed or fainted or vomited. Acted out to its logical conclusion, that fantasy was hideous, shameful, and self-defeating. Meanwhile, Trump supporters in the Shakespeare in the Park audience were faced with the spectacle of a man they admired being stabbed to brutal, bloody death. Intellectually, it was clearly fake, but it felt real. It felt intimate. It was upsetting. Trump supporters in the audience lashed out — and in response, so did thousands of Trump supporters who were never anywhere near the Shakespeare in the Park production.
In , the intimacy of the torture scenes is deliberately heightened by the destruction of the fourth wall. Toward the end of the sequence the lights come up, and Winston addresses the audience directly. It was at this moment when I saw the play that vague ideas about the Milgram experiment , which proved that humans are willing to torture each other if instructed to do so by an authority figure, floated through my head, and I wondered whether it was my moral duty to charge the stage, theater or no theater.
The immediacy of theater makes it more moving, but that same immediacy also makes it more vulnerable to disruption, from both sides of the fourth wall. Part of what makes live theater so electric and thrilling is that the audience knows that anything could all go terribly wrong at any moment, and that it might even go terribly wrong because of the audience. At the theater, actors and crewmembers are building a work of art right before our eyes, and if someone sneezes at the wrong moment, or a cellphone rings, everything could go to pieces or at least distract the audience.
If you yell at the TV in your living room, nothing happens. By looking at various theories and examining playscripts of different styles and periods, our ability to discern and evaluate aesthetic elements of the drama will become more acute. Theatre is a Performing Art: The Production. Acting, directing, design, construction, running crew musicians, singers, dancers. An amalgam of all the arts -- making it either the least pure or the most pure. Needs talent and skill to plan and execute, from all elements of the production.
We can increase aesthetic and technical appreciation for the individual arts going into make theatre and for the different styles and periods of theatre.
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