Philosophy of the Performing Arts

166 performance as art
(2000, 2004). While I cannot hope to do justice to the richness of these
studies and of the examples of theatrical practice discussed, a summary of
the principal conclusions will, I think, allow us to consider their import for
the alternative models of theatrical performance examined so far.
One constant in the hypothetical scenarios sketched by Hamilton is a
company, possibly including a director, that uses a text in light of a shared con-
ception of the goals of their intended performance. Another constant is a proc-
ess of working towards the realization of those goals through group rehearsals
and ensemble revision. Neither of these elements is present in the preparations
for performances of sixteenth- to eighteenth-century English drama. One
does find increasingly the presence of persons who played some of the roles of
the modern director, however. These persons were the theater manager, most
famously personified by Garrick at Drury Lane in the late eighteenth cen-
tury, and the prompter, who possessed, and sometimes independently revised,
the only complete set of specifications for the performance. But producers or
directors in the modern sense appear only around the time that Hamilton’s
survey of the historical background begins, in the mid nineteenth century.^17
Second, the idea of ensemble revision, central to our modern sense of how
a play is prepared for presentation, has almost no application in sixteenth- to
eighteenth-century English theater. This is primarily because there was little if
any group rehearsal prior to performance, the latter seeming to be a necessary
condition for ensemble revision to take place. Nor did the preparatory process
begin with the sharing of a text to be used in some way. Preparation began and
generally continued with the distribution of “parts” to individual actors, such
parts containing only the actor’s own speeches and a short one- to four-word
cue (usually not specifically assigned to another character). Rehearsal was
almost entirely one-on-one, sometimes including coaching from the author,
the prompter, or the manager. Actors also found clues as to how their part was
to be played internal to the text they received. Transitions from prose to verse,
for example, indicated a change in emotion or demeanor.
The aim of individual rehearsal – known as “study” – was for the actor
to learn how to speak and act his or her part. But study provided the actor
with no insight into what else might be going on in the play. If there was a
group rehearsal prior to the first performance, the individual actors came to
it with their contributions already established. The principal purpose of such a
rehearsal was to try to coordinate the contributions of the individual actors.^18
This depended, in actual performance, on the activities of the prompter who,
being the only person with a record of the entire production, not only was
charged with prompting words and actions on the part of the actors, but also
directed blocking. The prompter therefore functioned very much like a musi-
cal conductor at an orchestral performance. Like a conductor, the prompter
was part of the overall spectacle to which the audience attended.