The Question of Theater: Realist Social Theory and the Definition of Theater

Introduction

The introduction has four main sections. The first presents two major challengers to “ordinary” theater: postdramatic theater and online roleplaying. I provide a glimpse of the latter to orient readers unacquainted with it. Importantly, I will not discuss online roleplaying as or in relation to games—it occurs in both game venues and non-game venues, and gaming is not part of roleplaying itself. (I write “roleplaying” rather than “role-playing” to distinguish the entertainment activity from the social and psychotherapeutic meaning, as many roleplayers do.) I examine Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theater (not postdramatic theater performances) because it raises other questions about the definition of the theater. The second section describes the goal of creating an explanatory definition, and places that goal in the context of previous theories of theater, critiquing aesthetic and anthropological approaches. In the next section I introduce my own theoretical approach. I aim to analyze theater’s social ontology, that is, its fundamental social components and structure, based on critical realist social theory but also applying concepts from Peirce and Deleuze. I conclude with an overview of the book’s argument and chapters.

Chapter 1: Roleplaying

Although online roleplaying is widely associated with games, it is also pursued in numerous non-game venues, and this book concerns online roleplaying wherever it is performed (again, without concern for game aspects). This chapter provides a description and history of roleplaying, including its major genres, norms, and practices. It also introduces some concepts that will figure later. The chapter then reviews the basic similarities and differences between online roleplaying and theater.

Chapter 2: Problems of Presence and Embodiment

This chapter compares the concepts of presence and embodiment in theater studies to those in digital virtual environment studies. One notable taxonomy of major theories on presence in theater proposes three basic types. Both the theories emphasizing the actor’s “aura” or charisma and those that focus on sheer physicality and the “real” strive to expunge fiction. Concepts of presence developed in digital virtual environment research have their shortcomings as well, but in contrast to the theater/performance theory’s frequent use of anecdotal and impressionistic evidence, they have the advantage of support from empirical psychological and communication research. They prove able to integrate issues of presence, spatiality and embodiment within digital virtual environments into a single concept: embodied social co-presence (with avatars being indexical forms of embodiment). The chapter then shows how embodied social co-presence is essential to both online roleplaying and theater, partly because it is more basic than the types of presence emphasized in most theater theory.

Chapter 3: Virtual Worlds

Online roleplaying occurs in digital “virtual worlds.” But what is virtuality? Today there are three major understandings of it: as computer mediation, as illusory fakes, and as potentiality. I address these in turn. Empirical studies of digital virtual environments have identified several experiential dimensions, most importantly immersion, engagement, and presence. On the surface, their specific forms in online roleplaying markedly distinguish roleplaying from familiar types of theater, but there are also significant counterparts in theater. However, empirical researchers often take illusionism as virtuality’s central meaning and highest value. The critique of the virtual as the fake similarly views it a maximal illusion. The issue leads to consideration of mimesis as illusionism and its shortcomings in conceptualizing fictionality in theater. The concept of virtuality developed by Pierre Lévy and Marie-Laure Ryan, founded on ideas from Gilles Deleuze, has no such commitment to virtuality as illusion. They view virtuality in terms of potentiality, and this meaning of virtuality is highly relevant for understanding relational powers and processes. Virtual worlds are far older than computers and don’t need to be visual—novels and biographies, for instance, create virtual worlds. Theater involves virtuality in this non-digital sense.

Chapter 4: The Two Homologies

The book now begins to define theater’s social ontology, rooted in the larger social ontology consisting of social structures, agents, and cultural discourses. Theatrical performance possesses two homologies (i.e., causally based similarities) with society’s ontology, one in its constitution as an organized activity, which is a homology with society’s ontology that all organized activities have, but another in the activity itself, consisting of the performance event (the concrete theater context), the performed event (typically but not necessarily drama), and the performance score (script, scenario, intentions, etc.). This unusual double homology makes theater a model of social agency. It entails a fiction/actuality distinction (for reasons to be seen), but not a segregation between performers and spectators. Online roleplaying is then shown to meet the definition of theater developed so far. The chapter ends by asking how to explain the social structure that this theory describes: if there were a mode of reflexivity conducted by a group and somehow through their bodies, what would it look like?

Chapter 5: The Question of Reflexivity

Answering that question is this chapter’s task. It begins by laying out the critical realist concept of reflexivity as the everyday act of asking oneself questions about what actions one should undertake in the world, from the mundane such as choosing a shirt, to sophisticated problems like persuasion. Embodied collective reflexivity can be seen in activities such as religious rituals and political demonstrations—but theater, it turns out, does not fit this model. However, in addition to ordinary reflexivity, there is also metareflexivity, in which we ask questions about ourselves and our actions. To explain how embodied collective metareflexivity might be structured ontologically, I turn to Charles S. Peirce, whose recursive methodology underlies his semiotics, a methodology I use to identify the structure of embodied collective metareflexivity. Theater fits this structure. Thus embodied collective metareflexivity is an explanatory definition of theater’s ontology, including the need for a specific type of virtuality, fiction. This analysis enables me to return to the question of the actor’s presence. The actor’s double state as simultaneously actual and fictional arises from the process of metareflexivity—asking questions—through the body itself.

Chapter 6: Edgy Performances

Postdramatic theater and “extreme” physical-world roleplaying potentially challenge the concept of theater developed here. Since the focus of The Question of Theater is the definition of theater, I examine Lehmann’s theory of postdramatic theater (not the performances that have been placed under its rubric). His theory is riven by two conflicting models of postdramatic theater: one, permitting at least some degree of fiction, is compatible with my definition of theater; the other, eschewing fiction altogether, more accurately describes certain types of performance art (which is performatively reflexive rather than metareflexive). The fact that Lehmann himself conceded to the development of postdramatic plays, which create a form of the fictive cosmoses he thought could be eliminated, demonstrates the near impossibility of sustaining theater without fiction. Indeed, some of the most prominent creators of postdramatic theater returned to theater’s dominant paradigm. Extreme roleplaying retains the importance of fiction but strives to thin it as much as possible to increase the emotional and experiential impact of roleplaying. But the purpose is not the uncertainty and confusion that Lehmann desires, but rather an intense experience—revealing that the body itself is one conduit between the fictional and actual worlds. The chapter concludes with further issues of breaking the fiction/actuality boundary.

Chapter 7: A World of Questions

Reflexivity, theater’s ontology, and fiction all depend on questions; in fact, questions play such a pivotal role in this book that they suggested its title. Questions posit possible worlds, a concept that has been explored extensively in philosophy and applied in some literary and theater theory, and underlies arguments that fictionality involves the creation of virtual worlds (in the non-digital sense). One implication is that neither the notion of a willing suspension of disbelief nor the theory of theater as mimesis provides accurate understandings of performance; the concept of world construction is superior to both. To clarify the relationship between possible and virtual worlds I turn to Deleuze, who along with theorizing virtuality discussed the philosophical importance of questions. The issue leads to the relationship between questions and problems, and the role of practical “problem fields” in play production. I also consider the sense in which statements in fiction can be true and fictional characters real, and the relationship of reflexive versus metareflexive questions to distinctions between performance genres.

Chapter 8: Modes of Performing Agency

Agency and collectivity are central issues in social theory. However, they have varying forms, which have consequences for performance. This chapter examines two types of diversity. First, the difference between the collective We and the interpersonal We contributes to the definition of theater and provides a basis for distinguishing it from children’s play, psychodrama, and similar forms. Second, the definition of theater developed here allows us to assess theater’s ontological relationship with other live performance genres and with recorded forms such as film and television.

Conclusion

I end by summarizing the argument defining theater as embodied collective metareflexivity, and the value of using social theory, particularly given theater’s deeply historical (and hence political) nature. Roleplaying and customary theater have contrasting aesthetic regimes, but roleplaying also radically democratizes the creation of theater. Fiction is not an embarrassing ghost to be exorcised: it is a power to be wielded. In the end, the book’s title, The Question of Theater, is double-sided. The book’s fundamental question is, “What is theater?” And its answer is, “Theater is an embodied collective question.”