Tag: Theater theory

Theater ontology revisited

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The lack of a recent blog post is the result of a problem that arose as I was working on an article about online roleplaying games, and the solution soon led to an idea for another article which now has my attention, since the theory I’m developing there has to be pretty well shaped before I can return to the article on online roleplaying.

But briefly, I found that that the ontology I developed previously isn’t wholly satisfactory.  It’s unclear what creates the ontological doubling and the “ontological shift,” and why this ontology works the way it does.  Also, my introduction of what I called “metadiscourse” as a quasi-ontological level was something of a hedge and I’m no longer convinced it’s justified.  On the other hand, while I tend to emphasize the character of theater as a model of social agency (e.g., in my case study in the forthcoming edition of Theater Histories), I don’t think I sufficiently attended to its functional nature as societal reflexivity.  My underlying assumption was that just as theater as an institution is emergent from general social relations, so too does theatrical performance emerge out of the theater institution, and for that reason it possesses the same structure-agency-discourse ontology that society has.  But that doesn’t necessarily follow.  These weaknesses are, I believe, connected.

If, however, one considers the fact that by and large, institutions and practices emerge from society in order to serve some purpose, then one should consider theater’s purpose and how that might be reflected in its ontology: basically, form follows function.  So if theater’s primary function is to conduct societal reflexivity, then it’s likely that the ontological doubling and shift arise from that.   (Because of the level of discussion about social reflexivity, I plan to submit this new article to the Journal of Critical Realism.)

For a while, then, my focus will be on reconceptualizing theater’s ontology, since my argument that roleplaying games are form of theater hangs, first and foremost, on the definition of theater.

 

Embodiment and Automation

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Does a puppet show count as theater?  My theory is that it does: the puppet constitutes a form of displaced embodiment.  This extends to online RP – the avatar is a type of displaced embodiment.  Because an agent is controlling these alternative bodies, the requirements for my definition of theater are met.

But what if the puppets are controlled by a machine?  Is this still theater?  Here things get squishy.  If the audience is unaware that the puppets are machine-controlled, then as far as it’s concerned, the performance is theater.  But if the spectator is told that the performance was mechanized, they almost inevitably reevaluate what they experienced.  They might feel a sense of dismay, they might be thrilled by the ingenuity of the mechanics, or something else, but it’s highly unlikely they wouldn’t reevaluate the performance in some manner.

In terms of my definition of theater, the mechanized puppetshow wouldn’t be theater because there’s no possibility of intersubjectivity or a reflexive social relationship.  Experientially, however, it’s not so clear.  Some people might still want to call it theater.

One possible solution is to say that any definition of a cultural practice is going to have some fuzziness around the edges.  Although we often would like definitions to be clear-cut, in reality they often aren’t.  Take biology for example.  From an evolutionary point of view, the answer to the “chicken and the egg” problem is straightforward: what came first was the egg because what laid it was, genetically speaking, not quite a chicken.  A few genes were slightly different.  That means there are some fuzzy borders around the genetic definition of chicken.  There’s no reason why something is extraordinarily complex as a cultural practice should have a definition with absolutely borders.

Still, we know what distinguishes the egg from the not-quite-chicken, and it would be nice if we could identify the areas of fuzziness in definition of theater.  It would seem from my comments above that whereas the ontology of theater is fairly strict, its phenomenology is not.

But Second Life raises further problems.  Avatars’ movements are all controlled by programmed animations.  One popular form of entertainment in SL is dance performance.  In this genre, avatars perform choreographed movements, but all the person behind the avatar has done is set the animations running (typically, by “sitting” on a disk or other object containing the animations).  I would wager that audiences generally respond to these performances much like they do to a live performance in RL.  But the dancing could be performed equally well by a bot; in fact, arguably, the person behind the avatar has simply turned their avatar into a bot.  There have been various performances that are quite explicitly by bots, in which the artist has left her computer on, running multiple instances of a program to keep the bots operating (I have in mind Jo Ellsmere’s work particularly; see for instance Mask, Biomechanical, and Obedience).  In any case, not only has embodiment been displaced, but we have a question of how much performer agency actually remains when most or all of the performance has been automated.

Ultimately, then, the concept of intersubjectivity is probably going to be reconfigured if artificial intelligence produces computer behavior that passes the Turing test, or – as in the movie Her – meets the criteria of reflexiveness and intentionality that we associate with human agency.

Two Senses of “Virtual”

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I’m coming to think that the conundrum in my previous post derives from not clearly distinguishing between two meanings of “virtual.”  When I first described fictional characters as “virtual agents,” I was thinking in terms of their semiotic construction, in parallel with the concept of the self as a sign (per Peirce), and also the more general sense of “virtual” as similar in appearance or effect.  According to Google’s Ngram Viewer, the term “virtual world” goes as far back as 1903, but really took off around 1987, and the sense of “virtual” as “electronically simulated” surely dates from then.  But the virtual agents of theater aren’t the same sort of entities as the virtual humans of VWs.  The latter should be considered a type of “displaced” or “surrogate” embodiment (in the sense one might likewise call a puppet a type of “displaced” or “surrogate” embodiment).  But to avoid confusion, I should refer to the virtual agents of drama through the more customary phrase “dramatic characters” (or just “characters”), except when I need to make the specific point about their function as iconic signs of agency.

This does raise the question of the ontology of fictional objects (fictional realism or non-realism).  I’ll have to poke around in that subject and decide whether it makes much difference to the overall ontology, since there’s no question that dramatic characters are semiotic constructs in either case.

Do I need to defend defining — or just define?

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The article I’m currently writing argues that online role-playing games are a form of theater.  That involves providing a definition of theater.  But does such an action need to be defended?  At least in the past, some people have claimed that the act of defining theater is overly limiting; defining is limiting, of course, because that’s what definitions do — but overly?  Should one not define at all, lest one inadvertently leave something out?  Is (as some people think) defining the limits of theater necessarily an act of power and therefore inherently objectionable?  But who does one really help by not defining one’s terms?

Perhaps these worries are unwarranted: the “theory wars” have supposedly ended.  But at the 2015 ASTR conference in Baltimore, there were plenary papers that used the term “performance” so broadly that in one, rocks “performed,” and another never so much as mentioned performance (let alone theater).  I suppose these were considered appropriate for plenaries because “performance” now covers absolutely everything — i.e., the term has been emptied of any real meaning.

In short, I’m troubled by the “state of the profession.”  But maybe that has more to do with the fact that I’ve been semi-disconnected with “the profession” (academia) for 20 years, mainly because I had to switch to another profession, librarianship.

Be that as it may, the issue I’m wrestling with is whether it’s necessary to defend my act of definition — or just do it, and let the chips fall where they may?