the other kinds of performance under consideration (but, then again, the
spoken word is often a feature of other kinds of artistic performance–and
plenty of plays do not have words). One way to back up this intuition is
to think about who tends to be identified as the‘artist’. In the case of
opera, for example, it is the composer whose name tends to be attached to
the artwork; in the case of dance, depending on the context, it may be the
company, composer or choreographer.^20 When we broaden this to televi-
sion andfilm–which obviously are not kinds of theatre, but which make
use of many of the same artistic techniques–wefind a similar disparity:
the name associated withfilm tends to be that of the director or actor,
with television perhaps the channel, production company or main actor.
So although I might go to a Tarantinofilm or watch a BBC costume
drama or see an early Wagner opera, I would be more likely to describe
myself as seeing an Ibsen play or the new play by Butterworth or
Churchill.^21 Similarly, theatre directors are often described as giving
‘interpretations’ of play texts, whereas it is rare to find film directors
described as doing so in relation tofilm scripts.^22 Indeed, scriptwriters for
film and television are frequently unknown to millions who see their
films, unless they happen to be directors or playwrights as well.
To be clear: there are plenty of exceptions in all of these cases; what’s
more, the fact that these cultural trends exist doesn’t show that they are
particularly deep or important; they might merely be convenient labels
for artworks that are clearly collaborative and for which no single‘artist’
could be found–and we’ve already seen that playwrights aren’t necessary
for theatre; the texts they write can be used in all sorts of ways and, as we
shall see, the relationship between a text and a performance is by no
means clear. In as much as the association between the playwright and
the performance does represent a tendency, it suggests a greater respect
for the artistry of the writer of the words than for equivalents in related
art forms likefilm, television and opera.
The philosophical discussions in this book explicitly relate to theatre in
the narrow sense, about which there is plenty to say. When I use the term
‘theatre’, that is what I have in mind unless otherwise stated. Often,
though not always, the issues raised could apply to theatre in the broad sense,
too. Furthermore, given the range of performances covered by the notion of
‘theatre’ (even in the narrow sense), some of the issues under discussion
simply will not arise for certain kinds of theatrical performance.^23
We should end the discussion of theatre in relation to other art forms by
noting that part of the interest in theatre comes not from its distinctiveness
as such, but from the way that it incorporates and interacts with the other
arts. It would not be unusual for a theatrical production to make use of
painting, sculpture, design, music, dance, fashion,film or poetry, while
architects have played their part in creating beautiful or unusual theatre
What is theatre? 9