So far, all we’ve said is that, in addition to imitation-mimesis, theatre
involves some kind of imagining or play-acting. These terms could then
be used to describe two different things: what the audience is doing and
what the actors are doing. Plato, for example, seems to be concerned with
what actors do; for example, he is worried that the guardians of his ideal
city, in pretending to be evil or immoral people, would take on the
characteristics of those people.^42 Regardless of whether Plato’s concerns
are justified, we can see why he holds that actors in some sense pretend to
be or imagine that they are some particular character. But there’snodoubt
that the audience is also engaging in a kind ofmimesis. When we sit at
the theatre, the curtain goes up and a person walks out onto the stage, we
see that person not (or not merely) as some old British actor whom we
once saw on a TV show about people who spend too much money on
their pets, but asOedipus, by now a blind old man who has suffered at
the hands of fate. We do not see him as Oedipus because he looks like
Oedipus (imitation-mimesis). Nor do we see him as Oedipus because the
actor is himself pretending to be Oedipus. Indeed, no matter how much
the actor pretends to be Oedipus, no matter how much he behaves as
Oedipus would behave, we still won’t engage with him in the right way
unless we, too, are (in some sense) imagining that he is Oedipus.^43
The kind ofmimesisthat takes place on the part of the actor is different
from that which takes place on the part of the audience. First of all, actors
are encouraged in some sense to respond (physically) to what is going on.
Oedipus is old and blind, so the actress playing Antigone must guide
him and help him sit down. The audience pretend that they are seeing a
blind man aided by his daughter; but they aren’t supposed to help him
out, or physically respond in any obvious way. On the other hand, in a
typical performance, the actors are under relatively strict instructions to
respond with certain words, gestures and actions; these limits do not
apply to the audience members, who, within the confines of their seats, are
free to respond as they wish. It’s perfectly normal for audience members to
check their watches, for example–a freedom that does not extend to
actors. A second point about the difference between audience and actor
mimesisis obvious: actors need practice and training, whereas the audience
doesn’t.^44 At least part of the training of that actor, one might suppose, con-
sists in learning how to pretend, imagine and so on, in relation to different
parts (or types of parts). Finally, although human actors (I would suggest)
are engaged in pretending when they’re on stage, there are successful
performances in which the characters are played by machines or puppets.
In such cases, the audience is still required to play their part in themimesis,
but clearly the‘actors’are not in any reasonable sense‘pretending’or‘ima-
gining’. For this reason, I shall look more closely at audience-mimesisthan at
actor-mimesis; we have a chance to discuss actors in more detail in Chapter 5.
36 From the World to the Stage