Theatricality from the Performative Perspective

…These our actors, as I foretold you, were all spirits, and are melted into air, into thin air, and like the baseless fabric of this vision,… the great globe itself… shall dissolve, and like this insubstantial pageant faded, leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff as dreams are made on; and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

– The Tempest, IV, 1.

Theatricality versus Reality

For a number of theater critics and scholars, the term “theatrical” still bears the imprint of Diderot’s Paradox. ¹ Consequently, criticism and research grounded in the French philosopher’s conception of theater contribute to further widen the chasm between theory and practice, for Diderot’s view implies disregarding the process-oriented nature of performance while emphasizing the duality between concepts such as the real and the fictitious, spontaneity and structure, the concrete and the abstract. Such a view is based on the premise that there is an unbridgeable division between body and mind, instinct and intellect, emotion and reason, and it therefore necessarily excludes the performer’s perspective, which reconciles in practice what seems paradoxical in theory.