Modernism and Anti-theatricality: An Afterword

Abstract

Two views of anti-theatricalism emerge from Jonas Barish's Antitheatrical Prejudice (1981). According to the predominant one, anti-theatricalism is a prejudice that is inextricably woven into the very fabric of Western thought, from its Greek origins to the nineteenth- and twentieth-century thinkers of modernity. Plato and Friedrich Nietzsche, St. Augustine and Theodor Adorno, Pagan Rome and the Puritans — the most disparate philosophers apparently share one troubling flaw: their hatred of the theatre. When faced with such stubborn opposition, such a repetitive history of a prejudice seemingly untouched by the most revolutionary social, philosophical, and artistic upheavals, it is not surprising that Theatre Studies would go into a defensive mode, that exposing this prejudice would be seen as a first and necessary step to bring about its demise.

Mínimos, múltiplos, incomuns

“…É assim que, ao longo de todo o miolo do texto, a pregnância teatral da cena é desoperada em chave antiteatral (PUCHNER, 2002). A circunscrição do espaço dramático, a consistência da aparência ilusionística e a integridade perceptiva do tempoespaço em que se decanta a ficção são constantemente desestabilizadas.…”

Understanding Anti-performance: The performative division of experience and the standpoint of the non-performer

“…Martin Puchner has written on how anti-theatrical attitudes not only exist outside theatrical circles, but have also become a constitutive element of modernist theater (Puchner 2002;; see also Ackerman 2013, 281). But I'd like to take this insight a bit farther.…”