theatre with the ethics of everyday life.^15 Creating a definition with a
particular aesthetic or philosophical goal in mind is not a crime. But nor
should these definitions be conceived of as neutral descriptions of a cul-
tural practice. Debates about definitions of theatre are, often enough,
really debates about what matters and what ought to matter.
Theatre and other art forms
The focus on typical theatrical elements serves well to explain why certain
art forms do not count as theatre. Paintings, sculptures and architectural
constructions do not feature performers and spectators. The same typically
holds for novels and poems, when read silently.^16 Although many play-
wrights are counted as major literaryfigures, they have less creative con-
trol than their equivalents in other literary arts. Novels and poems do not
typically make use of staging, lighting, scenery and so on. They are not
collaborative in the same way. Nor do they require collaboration on the
part of a group of spectators. This reliance on others to complete the
artwork contributes to a further distinctive feature of theatre (in the broad
sense). Compared withfilms, novels and poems, theatrical performances
change and develop over time, both within a production (as ideas are
explored) and across different productions. The modern reader of an old
novel may not have exactly the same experience of that novel as a con-
temporary reader would have had (amongst other things, because of
cultural changes, lost references, historical ironies); but at least she knows
that she is making contact with more or less the same object that an
original reader would have consumed. The same is true for the modern-
day viewer of an oldfilm. The spectator at a modern Shakespeare perfor-
mance –even one that attempts to recreate renaissance practices –can
hardly say the equivalent: think of the different accents, performance rituals,
crowd behaviours and so on. This is not to deny that editions of novels or
cinematic projection techniques differ over time–but this is nothing like
the changing experience of the theatregoer. The changing nature of
theatrical performance over time means that particularly well-known
plays likeHamlethave a kind of life of their own: there are always new
ways to adapt or develop the play and it’s never going to be possible to
exhaust it; this contrasts it with the equivalentfilm or novel. Indeed, the
theatregoer knows that the performance she sees is, in an important sense,
a one-off. This is evident in the case of those improvised or immersive
performances that develop based on direct interaction with an audience;
but generally, no matter how much a performance has been rehearsed and
planned, it could go much better than the previous night, or much worse.
By way of making a contrast withfilm in particular, much has been
made of the‘liveness’of theatre, which we have already mentioned. A
What is theatre? 7