obviously have a‘place for viewing’, or even a dedicated or significant
‘place for listening’ (i.e. auditorium). Of course, some theatre theorists
might well discount it as a species of theatre on just those grounds.
A second feature is the actor–the person on stage performing a certain
role. In what I’m taking to be the typical performance, the actor is one
who impersonates, pretends to be or plays the role of someone or some-
thing she is not. Laurence Olivier plays Hamlet; Nina plays The World
Spirit. But one certainlyfinds actors–which is to say, people playing a
certain role in the performance– who aren’t exactly impersonating or
‘playing’ anyone or anything else. The actors might simply appear as
themselves, making claims to the audience that they take to be true;^1 or
it might be unclear whether or not they are playing a part; members of
the audience may be asked to take part in certain ways and, again, it may
be unclear if these are‘plants’or not. If stand-up comedy counts as a kind
of theatre–which for some theorists it clearly does^2 – then, depending
on the performer, it may or may not involve impersonation or pretence.^3
Finally, some kinds of theatre don’t seem to require human agents at
all. Balme describes ‘the scenographic theatre of G. N. Servandoni
(1695-1766) which consisted primarily of spectacular scene changes and
did without performers altogether.’^4 Puppet theatre uses human puppet-
eers, of course, but not human actors in a standard sense. Some recent
experiments with‘robot theatre’ have attempted to do away even with
this human element, leaving (say) computers to chat to each other, thus
forming a kind of live, evolving dialogue, which may be different at each
performance.^5 As with abandoning the spatial element, abandoning
human performance altogether does put pressure on what we count as
theatre; but there is no reason why robot or computer theatre couldn’t
become increasingly significant as the technology develops.
A third element is the audience. Typically, the theatre–the place for
viewing–has those who are viewed (actors) and those who view (spectators).
An audience needn’t be the quiet, reverential, rather passive audience of
conventional, contemporary theatre. Nor must spectators be cordoned
off from performers so that it’s always clear which are which. One diffi-
cult question, especially in the light of twentieth-century experiments
with theatre, is whether the spectator must be aware that she is watching
a performance. Some‘street theatre’ performers put on plays in public
places: an argument might be staged about some topical issue, the idea
being to raise awareness or encourage debate, without onlookers realising
that the argument is (initially) staged. Onlookers are either unwitting
spectators or, if they get caught up in the argument, they become
unwitting performers. It’s clear that even in this non-conventional setting,
there is an audience. Some forms of theatre attempt to do without the
audience altogether. ‘Closet dramas’ are plays that are written to be
What is theatre? 3