Philosophy of the Performing Arts

114 performance and the classical paradigm
If, in such cases, there is no imperative to be true to a performable work
but a literary text is still drawn upon in certain ways, how should we conceive
the relationship between the theatrical performance and the text? Hamilton
proposes that we make sense of such theatrical practices in terms of what he
labels the “ingredients model”:
[T]he texts used in theatrical performances [are] just so many ingredients ,
sources of works and other ideas for theatrical performances, alongside other
ingredients that are available from a variety of other sources. Works of dra-
matic literature, in particular, are not regarded as especially or intrinsically
fitting ingredients for performances. As ingredients they are but one kind
among many possible resources of words for a theatrical performance.
(J. Hamilton 2007, 31)
Hamilton cites the program for Grotowski’s production of The Constant
Prince which relates the production to the eponymous text by Calderón de
la Barca in the following way: “The producer does not mean to play The
Constant Prince as it is ... He aims at giving his own vision of the play, and the
relation of his scenario to the original text is that of a musical variation to the
original musical theme” (J. Hamilton 2007, 8).
These reflections on twentieth-century theatrical productions might
suggest a pluralist view of theatrical performance. On such a view, while
many – perhaps most – performances fall in one way or another under the
classical paradigm, other productions and performances fit better with the
ingredients model. Indeed, pluralism is necessary to account for theatrical
performances that make no pretension to be of anything – for example, the
largely improvisational commedia delle’arte tradition in Europe in the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries, and the flourishing contemporary tradi-
tion of improvisational performance. But, it might seem, the developments
in theater that Hamilton describes must be understood as reactions against
a theatrical tradition whose self-understanding is given by the classical para-
digm. And this tradition is one that obtains not only in our own theatrical
practice but also in other cultures where theater has a place.
But Hamilton does not advocate such a pluralism. He makes the much
bolder claim that the ingredients model provides the best account of theatrical
performance as a whole. And, as we shall see, he is not alone in question-
ing whether the classical paradigm has any part to play in a philosophical
understanding of theater. He endorses and defends the following thesis:
“A [ theatrical] performance is ... never a performance of some other work
nor is it ever a performance of a text or of anything initiated in a text; so no
faithfulness standard – of any kind – is required for determining what work
a performance is of.” He also defends the thesis that “theatrical performances