arguably more significant. It also has some historical support: certainly, in
medieval texts, the Latin termludi is found to refer both to plays and
sports, which might suggest the lack of a distinction that we now seem to
find significant.^14
Nonetheless, this book looks at theatre as a form of art that sits along-
side others, like film, painting or poetry. It is true that non-artistic,
public events such as football matches and political rallies may be
described as ‘theatrical’ and that they involve performance; but that
doesn’t mean that they are instances of theatre. In fact, the term‘thea-
trical’is often used pejoratively in such cases, to mean insubstantial, just
for show, pre-planned in a way that such a thing ought not to be, and so
on. And in sport, for example, there’s clearly a difference between the
effectiveness of the spectacle and the demands of the game: it is frequent
enough to hear a commentator at a football match remark, of the winning
team, that, although the game wasn’t that good to watch,‘they had a job
to do and they did it’.It’s not clear that the same could be said of a
company performingHamlet. When we speak of a theatrical performance,
I take it we typically mean something much narrower: an artistic event
that takes place in a particular location, with mutually aware performers
and spectators engaged in some kind of play. But notice that this is not
intended to be a watertight definition–just something to work with for
the purposes of this discussion.
Afinal word on definitions. Philosophers, now and in the past, have
taken very different views about what a definition is and what it’s useful
for. Defining something can be two different kinds of activity: a back-
wards-looking one, describing what it is; a forwards-looking one, saying
what it ought to be (‘define X as...’). Definitions often combine these
elements, including enough common sense to account for the descriptive
element, but enough normative grip to get at what the definer wants.
Approaching something as historically complex as theatre– a multi-
faceted and relatively continuous, but ever-changing tradition stretching
back at least to the Greeks–one is unlikely to come up with a satisfac-
tory descriptive definition that captures just exactly what it is that makes
something‘theatre’. Looking at the varied activities that might count as
theatre even in this brief discussion, we can already see why that would
be. So those who offer a definition of theatre often aren’t really trying to
include everything that could be counted as theatre; often, they have a
particular aesthetic or philosophical goal in mind–a certain view of what
theatre ought to be, rather than a descriptive account of what it is. Thus,
for example, Brook’s set of sufficient conditions, in the context of his
book, is the launch platform for an aesthetic manifesto; Eric Bentley is
offering an imagined prehistory of theatre, in order to emphasise certain
elements of performance; Woodruff has a broader project, to connect
6 What is theatre?