Foreword

The impulse for this volume on Theatricality stemmed from an observation and a question. The notion of “theatricality” recurs in many different disciplines: theater, anthropology, sociology, psychology, business, economics, politics and psychoanalysis (to name but a few), where the term is used either metaphorically or actually resorted to as an operative concept. However, a closer examination reveals that it is often employed in a widely divergent and contradictory manner. Moreover, when used outside the field of theater, the notion of theatricality seems to refer to familiar characteristics, as if its meaning were somehow implicit for those who use them. To what exactly does this term refer, and to what kind of theater is it related? These are the preliminary questions I have attempted to pose at the outset of this special issue.