Philosophy of the Performing Arts

theater, dance, and literature 115
are artworks in their own rights” (J. Hamilton 2007, 32). But, as we have
already noted in discussing musical performance, one can grant that artis-
tic performances are artworks in their own right without thereby denying
that they are performances of performable works. Indeed, Carroll’s “recipe”
view of theatrical works and theatrical performances freely admits the artistic
standing of the performances. Thus we need to separate any arguments that
Hamilton offers for his second thesis from arguments for his first thesis. Given
this caveat, what reasons can be given for thinking that no theatrical perform-
ances fall under the classical paradigm, where the latter allows of interpreta-
tions in terms of truth to a performable work in either of our senses.
In a recent defense of his view, Hamilton claims that the direct argu-
ment for the general applicability of the ingredients model to theatrical
performance is just the history of theater since the mid nineteenth century
(see J. Hamilton 2009a, 5).^7 This, as it stands, is an odd claim to make. For
Hamilton’s attack on what he terms the “text-based” model of theatrical
performance is predicated on the assumption that, prior to the contempo-
rary developments initiated by figures like Artaud and Grotowski, theatri-
cal companies conceived of what they were doing in terms of the classical
paradigm. Theatrical performances were taken to be interpretations of the-
atrical works, as Wollheim and Carroll claim them to be. If the history of
theater is to provide us with an argument for the general applicability of the
ingredients model, then it seems we must take the self-understanding of
those engaged in traditional theater to be mistaken. The claim must be that,
properly understood, traditional theater, no less than contemporary avant-
garde theater, accords to literary texts or performable works no more than
an ingredient role in the generation of theatrical performances.
Hamilton does not provide the kind of extensive historical survey of actual
theatrical practice that might seem necessary to support such a compre-
hensive “error theory” of traditional theatrical self-understanding. Thus, it
seems, the burden must fall upon his more general claims about the ways in
which theatrical companies, traditional and modern, prepare for a perform-
ance. These claims deserve serious consideration because, as we have seen, it
is in terms of its ability to reflectively explain our critical and performative
practice that a given model of artistic performance is to be assessed. We must
ask whether, when pre-existing theatrical “works” play a part in the process
generative of traditional theatrical performances, this is better explained by
some version of the classical paradigm or by the ingredients model.
Hamilton relies upon a range of hypothetical theatrical productions,
reflecting the range of things one might have encountered in a theater in the
latter part of the twentieth century. In each case, we begin with a company
of performers who have a copy of the text of Hedda Gabler , and the resulting
performance issues out of a process of group rehearsal. In the first few cases,