Fortier - Theory/theatre : an introduction

Theory/Theatre

Theory/Theatre provides a unique and engaging introduction to literary theory as it relates to theatre and performance. Mark Fortier lucidly examines current theoretical approaches, from semiotics, poststructuralism, through cultural materialism, postcolonial studies and feminist theories.

Drawing upon examples from Shakespeare through Aphra Behn, to Chekhov, Artaud, Cixous and Churchill, the author examines the specific realities of theatre in order to come to a richer understanding of the relations between performance and cultural theory.

Theory /Theatre is the only study of its kind and will be invaluable reading for beginning students and scholars of performance studies.

Mark Fortier is Associate Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. He has published on Shakespeare, contemporary theatre, cultural studies and theory.

First published 1997

by Routledge

Published 2014 by Routledge

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This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

1997 Mark Fortier

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 978-0-415-16164-0 (hbk)
ISBN 978-0-415-16165-7 (pbk)
ISBN 978-0-203-14105-2 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 978-0-203-21778-8 (Glassbook Format)

I owe a great deal to a completely gratuitous act of generosity on the part of Herbert Blau in the early stages of this project. Talia Rodgers at Routledge guided my work from its inception my title is a variation on one suggested by her. My basic understanding of theatre I learned from Skip Shand, who has given me years of encouragement. Linda Hutcheon showed much appreciated enthusiasm for an early draft of part of this book. The anonymous readers for Routledge have helped make my book much better than it would otherwise have been. Research was done mainly at the University of Toronto and at theatres in Toronto, Peterborough and Stratford, Ontario, and in New York and London. The University of Winnipeg kindly provided a discretionary grant to help pay the costs of the index, which was prepared by Elizabeth Hulse. I would like to thank my friends at Scarabeus Theatre, Daniela Essart and Sren Nielsen, for permission to use their photograph for the cover of this book. Faye Pickrem held my hand and gave me counsel through the long process. Finally, I dedicate this book to my parents, Charles and Gloria Fortier, whose unconditional love and support have helped me through lifes rough spots.

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

For questioning is the piety of thought.

WHY THIS BOOK?

We are fast approaching the end of a millennium, with suitably dire or utopian speculations on what the new age will be like: images of angels, cyberspace and global disaster weave their way through our cultural revery. What is less often remarked upon in such a momentous situation is that we are also fast approaching the end of a century, a century of great wars, technocracy and human mobility, among other things. What is even less frequently noted is that we are approaching the end of a half century or less of intense activity in the area of cultural theory.

Cultural theory, of course, began at least as far back as ancient Greece. Our own theoretical era, broadly conceived, began in the nineteenth century with G.W.F. Hegel, Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, continued into the early twentieth century with Sigmund Freud and Ferdinand de Saussure, and then into the middle of this century with, among others, Mikhail Bakhtin, Antonio Gramsci, Walter Benjamin and Simone de Beauvoir. But it is really since the 1960s that cultural theory, or just plain theory as we now call it, has become a ubiquitous and dominant force in academic and cultural environments. Deconstruction, feminism, post-colonialism, semiotics, queer theory, postmodernism, and so forth, have come to define for many the most fruitful and appropriate ways of looking at culture, politics and society. Somewhat like Latin in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, theory has become the lingua franca which allows people in many nations and in such widely disparate fields as literature, history, sociology, architecture and law to find a common ground and vocabulary for their discussions.

Theatre is another area in which theory has had a powerful influence. There are learned journals rife with theoretical studies of theatre and many books which apply deconstruction, semiotics, psychoanalysis or some other theoretical perspective to various theatrical works. There is not so far, however, a book which sets out to introduce the theatre student to a broad range of theory at a basic or intermediate level. In the simplest and most obvious sense, this book is intended to be such an introduction. The primary meaning of its title points in this direction: for the student who simply wants to know more about theorys possible relevance to theatre, this book is a systematic introduction of the application of theory to theatre.

All disciplines where theory has encroached have offered a degree of resistance: for some, theory is too abstruse, too jargon-ridden, too divorced from practicality. In theatre studies especially, theory has not had the open-armed acceptance that Latin had as the lingua franca of an earlier era. Theory has often seemed too contemplative an activity to be more help than hindrance in such a practical pursuit as theatre. Theatre is not made in the mind or on the page. Moreover, much of the theory discussed in this book is often referred to, at least in literature departments, as literary theory. Why should this be so? After all, this theory comes from a broad range of disciplines: philosophy, linguistics, psychoanalysis, political economy, history, anthropology and so forth. To call these theories literary theory is in large part a misrecognition. It is, however, a misrecognition which reveals something about a great deal of theory.

Much of the theory under discussion not all of it, certainly, but enough to indicate a degree of hegemony stresses the importance of language as the basis, even the fate, of human activity. For instance, Saussure, in proposing a general theory of signs, argues that linguistic signs will serve as the master-pattern for all others; Jacques Lacan, bringing this linguistic emphasis to psychoanalysis, argues that the unconscious is structured like a language and the subject is a chain of signifiers; Jacques Derrida, positing an arche-writing which underlies language, words and speech, proposes a grammatology or science of writing which would dominate even linguistics.

Theories which are profoundly caught up in questions of language and writing have been more easily, more systematically and more fully applied to literature and other forms of writing than to art forms and cultural practices which emphasize the non-verbal. It becomes easy to think that activities involving writing are somehow at the heart of being human. Theorists of literature have appropriated language-based theories from other disciplines to such an extent that for many working in theory and literature all theory has become in effect literary theory. So it is designated, for instance, in the recent encyclopedias of Irena Makaryk and Michael Groden and Martin Kreisworth.