Quantum Theatre – Potential Theatre: a New Paradigm?

Abstract

The ‘theatre of the world’, or Theatrum Mundi, offered a pervasive emblematic view of the relationship between God, as playwright and audience, and his terrestrial creation. Although this became peculiarly appropriate during the Renaissance period, views of the theatre as microcosmic of the larger world have persisted – whether in the consciously wrought imagery of modern sociology or the unconscious colloquial useage of theatrical terms to describe everyday behaviour. In the article which follows, David E. R. George suggests that the ‘view’ of the subatomic world presented by quantum theory makes for a paradigm which is no less compelling, according to which the sense of theatrical ‘potentiality’ which characterizen much contemporary experimental theatre is illuminated and paralleled by the refusal of scientific certainty that quantum theory confronts and accommodates. David George. whose ‘Letter to a Poor Actor’ appeared in NTQ 8 (1986), taught in the Universities of California at Berkeley, Gottingen, Malaysia, and Peking before taking up his present post at Murdoch University, Western Australia. His books include studies of Ibsen. German tragic theory, and Indian ritual dance–drama.

Science in contemporary British theatre: a conceptual approach

“…Simply because they are pronounced in a fictional context, terms such as 'chaos' in Stoppard's Arcadia or Charlotte Jones's Humble Boy are perceived by an audience first and foremost as familiar words with many possible meanings, rather than as scientific terminology with a restricted technical meaning -'unpredictable determinism' in the case of mathematical 'chaos'. 2 Moreover, part of the appeal of science for dramatists derives from the presence of theatrical metaphors within it, as is the case in quantum physics or neuropsychology (George 1989;Baars 1997).…”