philosophy and theatre an introduction

6 Emotions I leave the performance of Uncle Vanya with a peculiar mixture of emotions. Undoubtedly, they are imprecise,fleeting ...

suggested, might represent a view of this kind. Alternatively, one might form a view that government policy should not have any ...

This description is hardly complete; perhaps some of it rings a bell, and perhaps not. But I hope it is not completely incompreh ...

structure them and direct their attention towards certain kinds of action. But a play text itself doesn’t do that. Similarly, th ...

For both Aristotle and Tolstoy, in rather different ways, the production of feeling must lie at the heart of theatre. However, i ...

general term‘applied theatre’ as a broad term to indicate the use of theatre for particular practical purposes.^7 Applied theatr ...

1 We are moved by the fate of the characters in the play. 2 We know that the characters in the play do not exist. 3 We are moved ...

First, the idea that a play that focuses on achieving a certain practical political outcome–fundraising, changing how people vot ...

care about Vanya’s particular concerns and also care about how not to waste my life. The one does not exclude the other. The que ...

contingent fact about the language he uses, which has now become obsolete. Furthermore, plenty of the Greek works that do speak ...

about Kendall Walton’s theory of make-believe in the context of the discussion ofmimesis. For Walton, once we view plays (and ot ...

of the ability of theatre to transmit an author’s beliefs. We saw, in Chapter 2, that deriving an author’s claims about the worl ...

fictional fear, depending on whether I believe in or make-believe in the existence of the threat. In both cases, I am experienci ...

A further thought, which might now count against the Platonic objection, relates to our conception of democracy. Plato expresses ...

terrifying scene that makes me laugh instead of making me afraid. In such cases, it is not clear how the make-believe plus quasi ...

then it is just a specific instance of the general statement, and what we have already said about political statements applies h ...

absorbed in plays relatively easily and it’s hard work to keep reminding ourselves that it’s not really happening.^16 We cannot ...

To take an example from the history of theatre: one historian has argued that the court plays performed in front of the absoluti ...

all there is to it. For example, the parallel with Vanya is not helpful. My pity for Vanya is not a general mood; I know exactly ...

avoidance ofstasis[civil strife or civil war]’at a time when tensions were high, following the assassination of a prominent demo ...