stage; lighting and sound; an audience; actors; finally, the building
itself–the theatre. Yet theatrical performances are possible without many
of these common elements. The most prominent of these is, of course, the
play text, which is often held to be an important contributor to theatrical
performances, but is obviously not a feature, say, of (completely) impro-
vised theatre. Despite general agreement that plenty of theatrical perfor-
mances don’t use play texts at all, the relation between play texts and
theatrical performances has been the subject of some philosophical debate,
to which I return towards the end of the chapter. Plot and character
do not feature in any conventional sense in many kinds of avant-garde
theatre. Spoken words are absent, for example, from mime theatre. The
director–understood as a distinct and independent artistic role–is more
or less an invention of the twentieth century. Other elements, harder to
dismiss, deserve a closer look: these are the theatre, the actor and the
spectator.
Thefirst element is the place itself–the theatre. The word‘theatre’can
refer in general terms to the artistic institution, as an equivalent of‘clas-
sical music’,‘poetry’or‘dance’. That is how it is used in the title of this
book, for example. But a‘theatre’is also a location, often enough a pur-
pose-built construction like the Theatre of Dionysus or the Globe. As part
of the theatre, we normallyfind the place for the spectators and the place
for the actors to perform–the latter, of course being the stage with its set
and scenery. It’s clear, though, that theatrical performances frequently
take place without theatres in this sense. In the mediaeval period, there
simply were no purpose-built theatres as we understand them now; but
theatrical performances took place in churches, in town squares or in
processions along main streets. Modern companies use abandoned indus-
trial complexes, parks, streets and tunnels to stage performances. As for
the set and scenery, a play can take place without any of these; plenty do.
In short, a theatre isn’t required for theatre. In a more expanded sense, of
course, one might say that in all of these cases a theatre is created by the
company. The abandoned warehouse is not a purpose-built auditorium
with purpose-built stage, but the performance still makes it a theatre in a
sense. In all these cases, that is, the theatrical performance islocated
somewhere. The word‘theatre’comes from the Greek wordtheatron–a
‘place for viewing’. In all of these cases, there is a space carved out for the
viewers and a space carved out for the viewed. Understood broadly, it
isn’t always clear which space is which, and these spaces could shift
during the course of the performance, as with the medieval procession
play moving through the town. Here, wefind something much closer to
a requirement for a theatrical performance: a certain kind of viewing
space. Yet even so, it’s possible tofind putative examples of theatre that
don’t have that. The‘radio play’, if it counts as a kind of theatre, doesn’t
2 What is theatre?