design of the stage; objects and materials that seem to be that which they
are not; Houdini-type tricks, which make you think that actions have
taken place, when in fact they have not;finally, actors whose qualities
are sometimes employed and sometimes cleverly concealed for the sake of the
performance. To say that not a single one of these is a necessary condition for
theatre is to miss the point. When you go to the theatre, any or all of
them may well be in play. To say that you can’t believe your eyes is not to
say that your eyes are always deceiving you; it’s to say that they aren’t reliable.
Under the spell
Although we have enumerated a number of different illusions that may
be in play at a performance, it is notable that when philosophers (and
dramaturges) write about theatre and illusion they often appear to have
something else in mind–something that I want to characterise as being
‘under the spell’of the theatre. This is the kind of trance-like or dream-
like state that occurs as the spectator is absorbed in the action taking
place on stage. Indeed, it seems to be the comparison with the dream that
comes up most often. The spectator under the spell is watching intently,
engrossed in the performance; the spectator not under the spell is think-
ing about what she will do once the performance is over, and checking
her watch to see when that will be.
In each of the previous examples of illusion, I’ve suggested that they
can be, perhaps often are, a feature of a typical theatrical performance.
But being‘under the spell’seems to be a much more central feature of
theatre. Indeed, it is a perfectly common and intelligible complaint about
a performance that, for whatever reason (be it the poor acting, the mis-
erable script, the nearby spectator talking on her phone) one simply could
not get lost in the play or the spell kept on being broken–what Coler-
idge nicely calls being‘disentranced’.^48 We have seen why speaking of
theatre in terms of‘necessary conditions’is a hard task, but a performance
that does not in any way demand or produce the need to go‘under the
spell’is at least a non-typical kind of theatre.^49 This accounts for the
number of writers who are interested in techniques for maintaining thea-
trical illusion (in this sense) as well as those who are keen to warn against
certain pitfalls. Needless to say, there has been plenty of disagreement:
the discussions about the‘unities’of time and place (especially in France, but
also elsewhere) were often associated with a concern for shattering the illusion:
would an audience simply be unable to engage with a play that depicted
the passing of several months within just a few hours? Is the use of
advanced rhetorical technique, word-plays and poetic skill an impediment
to illusion?^50 Are the rules for maintaining the spell different in comedy
and tragedy?^51 And the debates between symbolist and naturalist theatre
Truth and illusion 63