The Text-Performance Relation in Theater

© 2009 The AuthorJournal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Philosophy Compass 4/4 (2009): 614–629, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00223.x

Blackwell Publishing LtdOxford, UKPHCOPhilosophy Compass1747-99911747-9991© 2009 The Author Journal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd22310.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00223.xApril 200900614???629???Aesthetics and Philosophy of ArtThe Text-Performance Relation in TheaterThe Text-Performance Relation in Theater

The Text-Performance Relation in Theater

James Hamilton*Kansas State University

AbstractThis essay is a survey of positions on the relation between texts and performancesin theater. It proposes a simple framework within which to compare and evaluatethese positions. The framework also allows us to see a pattern of thinking thatreflects the historical fact of the importance of the literary tradition in theater.The essay points out certain challenges facing the positions surveyed andconcludes with a brief sketch of the most recent views that have been put onoffer. The latest positions re-situate the literary theater as a species of the moregeneral phenomena of theatrical performance.

Even before the unprecedented flourishing of literary theater inWestern European culture that began in the middle of the 1800s,philosophical discussions of the nature of theatrical performance werenot typically about theater or theatrical performance itself. Instead, theywere grounded in the perception of theatrical performance as a practicewhose primary function is connected to other forms of art and dependentupon the products of those other forms, most especially on what isproduced by the arts of writing. Other functions, when recognized atall, were accorded secondary status, and dealt with as marginal cases.This attitude towards theater was only solidified by the successes of theliterary theater.

There is still older precedent for this attitude. At the beginning, inAristotle, the notion of ‘drama’ had ambiguous application: did it referto features of a form resembling dance and music or to features of itsown form of ‘making’? Moreover, Aristotle answered this questionambiguously, by holding that the defining characteristic of drama isdialogue. But does this mean a kind of speaking or a kind of writing?Most Medieval, Renaissance, and modern authors have taken Aristotle tohold that if any writing is in dialogue we have drama, otherwise we havesome other form of written poetry. So the relevantly contrasting classescame to be not theater and other forms of public performative presenta-tion, but drama as a form of writing in contrast with other forms ofwriting. The stage was set for views that were to become dominant oncethe literary theater came on the scene.

© 2009 The Author Philosophy Compass 4/4 (2009): 614–629, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2009.00223.xJournal Compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd

The Text-Performance Relation in Theater 615

An interesting fact is that, almost at the same time as the literary theaterbegan to flourish, a minority tradition that was also explicitly theatricalcame on the scene. As early as the late 1800s, some theater practitionersbegan to analyze theatrical performance independently of its linkages toliterature. In the later decades of the 1900s a few theater theorists beganto catch up to that earlier work (Blau; Schechner; Schmitt; Auslander).Yet, while many theater theorists have made efforts to escape it, theliterary orientation is still deeply embedded in their thinking, as evidencedby the question Julia Walker correctly presents as central to the separationbetween theater and performance theorists during the last decades of the20th century: ‘this debate posed the question of where meaning lay: didit reside in words alone, or in the bodies that gave them voice?’ (19).

Philosophers have been even slower to respond to the minority theatricaltradition than have theater theorists (Saltz, ‘Theater’; Hamilton, Art ofTheater 3–16). And, in their own ways, philosophers have also failed toescape the pattern of thinking in which performance is seen as stronglydependent on something different in kind from the theatrical event itself.1

Hermeneutic philosophers have continued to place writing and readingas central to their thinking; and when theater theorists have applied thosesystems to theater, theatrical performance has been regarded as a novel formof sign system, which has meant it is still something to be read (Ubersfeld;Fischer-Lichte). This is more overt in semiotic analyses of theater, but itis equally present in analyses drawing on phenomenology. The phenom-enological analysts have acknowledged the importance of the physicalityof performances. But they still see the problem of theater as one of pittingthe performance against the words, and it is still the fictional worldscreated with words that have logical priority (Garner 43; States).

With the exception of the most recent work by analytic philosophers, ithas almost uniformly been taken for granted among analytic philosophersthat if we can get the right ontology for musical works and performancesof them, the same position will hold for theatrical works and theirperformances. This has had two effects: first, they have held that performancesare dependent on something else and something different in kind fromperformances; and second, the actual relations between texts and performancesin the practices of the making and reception of theater have remainedalmost entirely outside the scope of philosophical theorizing.

In this essay I survey the key positions in this discussion and the reasonsfor holding them. My main goal is to offer a framework for comparingand evaluating the various options on offer. Along the way I point outsome challenges to which these positions must respond.

Getting Started

A literature class is studying a classic work of dramatic literature,Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The students are trying to figure out what all the

616 The Text-Performance Relation in Theater


fuss has been about concerning the ‘closet scene’ in which Hamlet confrontshis mother and accuses her of adultery. The scene precedes two others,one in which Hamlet observes Claudius as he watches the rovingplayers present The Murder of Gonzago. ‘Gonzago’ is a short play thatechoes Claudius’ own murder of Hamlet’s father and rapid marriageto the queen, Hamlet’s mother. Upon seeing the events in Gonzagounfold, Claudius blanches, calls for light, and leaves the room in haste.Hamlet has sprung his mousetrap and prepares to avenge his father’smurder. But in the next scene, Hamlet comes upon Claudius prayingand, famously, hesitates: for, he says, if he kills Claudius at prayer thenClaudius’s soul goes straight to heaven, and that is not the revenge thatHamlet seeks.

The students get all this and, further, see the irony in the fact thatClaudius thinks his prayers do not reach up to heaven because he can onlyform the words of prayer but not the thoughts that should accompanythem; he is, after all, a murderer, a fratricide, a regicide.

But then the closet scene immediately following is a puzzle. What isthe central point of it? Is it Hamlet’s madness? Is it his sanity? Is itGertrude’s guilt? Is she guilty of anything? Is it Hamlet’s murder ofPolonius? Why does the Ghost reappear in this scene and what is itsfunction? Then, how do the subsidiary points in the scene get made andhow do they relate to its central point? Finally, what is it about thecentral theme or point that makes it central? Is it its role in the plotstructure or in the development of character? How are those related, if atall, in this particular scene?

Our literature students have trouble with all these questions. To assistthem, their instructor has groups act out the scene utilizing different setsof props. The first group has a sword, a locket, a chair and something thatfunctions as a bed. The second group has a sword, two life-size portraits,and several chairs. The third group has several chairs and they areinstructed to create any further props they might need by means of theiractions. When they have made decisions and rehearsed it a bit, the groupscome back to show what they have done with the scene. The scenes aresubstantively different from each other. Some answers to the questions thatpuzzled them emerge from their presentations. Different performanceswork out different answers to such questions.

This way of teaching the literary work is influenced by what is called‘performance-centered criticism and pedagogy’ (Rocklin).2 So, to assisther students with their exercise, their instructor may also have asked thestudents to answer certain other performance questions: how does Hamletreact to killing Polonius (is he anguished, indifferent); how close, physically,are Gertrude and Hamlet throughout the scene; does the Ghost reallyappear; if not, who/what says his lines; whether the Ghost appears or not,how are the ‘three’ grouped on stage (that is, where is Hamlet’s attentionfocused, where is Gertrude’s, and where is the attention of the spectators



to be directed); when the Ghost bids Hamlet speak to Gertrude andHamlet does so, does he turn his attention to her or not (Gregory);3 ifthere is a sword, does Hamlet carry it throughout the scene after killingPolonius or does he discard it at some point (at what point), and, finally,will there be blood and if so where and how?

Some have argued there are serious limits to performance-centeredteaching of works of dramatic literature because the possibilities ofperformance, while often illuminating, do not exhaust what can be madeof a text. Moreover, it is argued, if what one wants is the richest, fullest,interaction with a text, one will have to think of possibilities of meaningand action that cannot be presented in any performance or that, even ifthey could, could not be grasped even by sophisticated spectators, evenupon multiple viewings (Berger).

But I do not offer this teaching exercise as a means of supportingperformance-centered teaching or criticism of works of dramatic litera-ture. Instead, I present it because it can serve to suggest six features oftheatrical performance that will be useful in rehearsing the various positionsthat have been taken on the text-performance issue.

(1) The exercise demonstrates that much that gets performed in scripted performancesoriginates in small and sometimes accidental features that have no direct specification inthe script. Are the pictures of Claudius and the elder Hamlet in a locket, sosmall that only the characters can see them, or are they on the wall for boththe characters and the spectators to see? (Saltz, ‘What a Theatrical PeformanceIs (Not)’) If the audience does not see the pictures, their judgment of the elderHamlet and of Claudius is entirely determined by what they make of thecharacters they do see and of the reliability of their assessments of the elderHamlet and Claudius. If the company lets the spectators see the pictures, theaudience seems to have independent judgment of those matters because theycan see the visages of each of the target characters for themselves. Thisillustrates why, even when performers might regard themselves as only ‘fillingin the text’, they always go well beyond what the text gives them when theyprepare a performance.(2) The exercise suggests why the particularity and the physicality of performers’ choicesshape and give markedly different weight to what is presented. It can make a significantdifference to spectator understanding of what is happening in the scene ifHamlet and Gertrude are constantly touching rather than always being at someremove from each other.(3) The exercise suggests that what Kendall Walton calls ‘silly questions’ can seemconsiderably less than silly when applied to some theatrical performances (Walton 178–83, 237–9). Does Hamlet stand six feet, five inches tall? Different performancestypically stress different features of performers, props, or settings, and to verydifferent effect.4 In the script and in many performances, Hamlet’s height isirrelevant; but in some performances it might carry important weight. And,by the way, what about a fat Hamlet?(4) The exercise can serve to remind us vividly of the fact that most spectators who seea production of any play – in contrast to the students in this class – will see only oneperformance and also will not read the script used in developing the performance.



(5) The exercise underscores the idea that many quite distinct performances may use thesame script.(6) The exercise can also remind us of the importance that texts – collections of sentencesand sentence fragments arranged in a specific order – often have for theater and certainlyhave had for theater in the Western European theatrical tradition.

Thus, the exercise helps us see why the relation of texts to performancescontinues to compel attention, why it is that, as Julia Walker puts it, ‘notopic has dominated contemporary scholarship in theater and performancestudies more than the text/performance split’ (19).

Texts and Performances

So, then, what is the relationship between performances and the textsemployed in the making of many theatrical performances?

The first group of positions we should consider places relatively greaterstress on the last two of the six facts just adduced – the importance ofdramatic texts written for performance in the literary tradition and themultiplicity of performances involving those texts. As we will see, thesepositions either ignore or are challenged to provide adequate accounts ofthe other four facts.

performances as illustrations of texts

A line of thought once favored in academic departments of literature anddrama is that theatrical performances are ‘illustrations’ of dramatic texts.On this view, ‘a staging may add to the attractiveness of a play but not toits essence’ (Carlson 6), since its essence is deliverable by the text alone.This view does not deny the existence or even the importance forperformance of the added details demonstrated in the foregoing teachingexercise. It just denies those details tell us or show us anything of importanceabout the text. The text is illustrated by means of such details, but it isnot illuminated by them.

This has come to be seen as an untenable position. It is argued thata precondition of thinking about theatrical performances in this way isthat the text is taken as ‘complete’ in the sense that all its meaningoptions are, in some way, contained within it. But there is no reasonto believe any text, and especially a script written for the theater, iscomplete in the sense of containing all of its ‘meaning possibilities’(Carlson). More significantly, since theatrical performance is a way ofacting and our responses to actions are different from our responses todescriptions of actions, the details added in performance cannot helpbut do something other than illustrate what is written in the text: asW. B. Worthen puts it, this picture even ‘misrepresents the work thatperformance does, not in the margins, but in, through, and to the writing’(80, emphasis added).



performances as interpretations of texts

Another way to conceive the text-performance relation is to think ofperformances as interpretations of anything written for theatrical performance.Typically, but only typically, will these be works of dramatic literature.Although Western European in origin, this way of thinking can reasonablybe extended to other theatrical traditions. And some versions of theinterpretation strategy, although originating in thinking about texts andperformances, also allow greater logical space for performances for whichthere are no prior, completed written texts, but only what Paul Thomcalls ‘materials for performance’ that are not ‘works for performance’(Thom, For an Audience).

The Strong View of Performance as InterpretationThe strongest view of performances as interpretations holds that additionaldetails are needed just when we do not understand the script and that anyadded details enabling us to understand it provide the correct interpreta-tion of the text. I call this the ‘strong view’ because it makes the greatestsemantic demands on performers’ choices. The thought, as David Novitzputs it, is this:

Since it is reasonable to assume that there is only one way in which the worldcan be at any one time (call this the singularity constraint), one normallyconcedes that one has not finally understood if one also recognizes that aphenomenon or state of affairs is amenable to two conflicting interpretations:interpretations that impute different and exclusive properties to the phenomenonin question. For, if there is only one way the world is at any one time . . . thissuggests that an adequate understanding has not been reached, that there iswork to be done, a convergence to be sought. (15–16)5

Like all versions of the interpretive understanding of the text-performancerelationship, this view holds it is in the nature of theatrical scripts thatthey are incomplete. What is distinctive about this view is that it construesthe incompleteness as constituted by an epistemic gap, a lacuna in whatcan be fully understood. The failure of understanding hypothesized hereis not a failure on the part of readers: work written for the stage cannotbe fully understood until performed. Consequently, this view would notpreclude ambiguity, vagueness, indeterminacy, or confusion in theatricalscripts. It only denies that, for example, ‘if [a script] is really vague at acertain time, then it cannot also have a precise and determinate meaning;if it is ambiguous at that time, it cannot have a single meaning at thattime’ (Novitz 16).

Finally, like all versions of the interpretive understanding of thetext-performance relationship, this view holds the added details are whatconstitute the interpretation. But a distinctive feature of this view is thatadded details are thought to complete the text by imputing exclusive



properties to it. That is, for example, where a text is ambiguous, anyperformance resolves that ambiguity to the exclusion of other senses of the text.Some performances will be – must be – misinterpretations of the text.

Three Weaker PositionsA slightly weaker view of performances as interpretations still construesthe added details of performance as fulfilling a semantic function. But thatfunction is that of ‘making sense’ of the text rather than one of making thetext univocally understandable (Thom, For an Audience; ‘Interpretation ofMusic in Performance’). Like other interpretation positions, this viewrecognizes that works for performance are, in their nature, incompletewithout the performance. On this view, the added details enforce certainways of making sense of the text. For example, having the ghost appearin the closet scene and having Hamlet look at him while Gertrude looksat Hamlet can enforce the idea that Hamlet is not deranged, even thoughother characters do not grasp the fact and will continue to look for othercauses of his ‘antic disposition’. However this view recognizes there maybe more than one way to make sense of this scene, and so, it is notcommitted to metaphysical realism about cultural properties.6

It is worth noting that the leading defender of this view, Paul Thom,argues that an interpretation of a text involves more than the mere, evenif intentional, addition of details: the details must not only be ‘projectedby the performers as part of their performance’, they must also be ‘integratedby the performers with other aspects of their presentation of the material’(‘Interpretation of Music in Performance’ 136–7). This view strengthensthe shared position among the versions of the interpretation theoryregarding the intentional addition of details. Consider a decision to haveGertrude and Hamlet always stand far apart from each other in the closetscene, with no indication this is intentional on the part of the characters.Were the hoped for result that of giving an impression of sexual tensionbetween mother and son, this decision would not be fully integrated intothe performance. So if, as Thom argues, a performance cannot count asan interpretation unless it at least aims at coherence (137), decisions thatare not integrated into the other details of the performance would besigns of interpretive failure.

A second slightly weaker view construing performances as interpreta-tions of texts holds that the additional details provided in the performanceprovide a translation of the text (Fischer-Lichte). On the translation story, Fischer-Lichte holds, a performance is a way of ‘constituting signs and text’ in a‘process of interpretation’ involving (as far as the actors go) ‘the role givenin the dramatic literary text, the actor’s physique, and the conventions ofacting dominant at the time, i.e., the valid code of acting’ (185). On thisview the dramatic text is incomplete, standing in need of interpretation.

It is relatively clear what a critical interpretation does: it explores themeaning conveyed in the written text. What, then does a performance



do? It is because a performance and its elements are construed linguistically,that we have a mesh of the ideas of interpretation and translation:

Books and typeface function as media which convey the drama’s literary textand have no impact on the constitution of meaning . . . By contrast, actor andstage space comprise media which always introduce certain signifying qualitiesinto the process of conveying meaning and thus cannot be used to conveymeaning without altering the meaning. (192)

On this view, the name of the character and the body of the actor areboth construed as linguistic objects and, since the character can be inter-preted critically, in written language, the character can also be interpretedcritically, in ‘the theatrical text’, i.e., the performance (196). Finally, sincethe choice of theatrical signs is in part determined by ‘the conventions ofacting dominant at the time’ of the performance, more than one interpretiveperformance is possible for any given dramatic work: indeed multipleinterpretations are inevitable.

What gets weakened in these two views has to do with what the detailsachieve. Short of claiming interpretations provide univocal understanding– with the realist underpinnings entailed by the strong view – these viewsexplicitly allow the imputation of properties that are not exclusive. So,these views allow for multiple and equally plausible interpretations of thesame object.

A still weaker interpretation view is possible, one in which the detailsadded in the performance are said to ‘supplement’ the written text in muchthe same way that a new dictionary might have supplements (Carlson).On this view, the performance ‘reveals an incompleteness hitherto notapparent’. Moreover, a performance also ‘suggests that further supplementsare now possible and probably inevitable’ (10). When reading a datedsupplement to a dictionary, we assume there could be other supplementsto follow. So, the performance reveals incompleteness not only in the textbut also about itself. What gets weakened in this view again has to dowith what the details provide us. But in this case, it is not only that wenow see that the text could be ambiguous but also that the presentperformance which adds those details to disambiguate the written text isitself subject to future amendment.

Common Elements in the Strong and Weaker PositionsWhat is at issue here is whether the interpretive model actually explainsthe relation of text to theatrical performance. Before turning to that issue,however, we should note there are three general features of all theories ofinterpretation able to countenance performances as interpretations.

* All these interpretation positions are weaker than the illustration viewin the sense that they acknowledge the written text is incomplete. Worksof dramatic literature are written to be staged, to be performed; andthis is taken to mean that, until performed, there is something missing.



* All these interpretation positions acknowledge the importance of thekinds of added details demonstrated in the foregoing teaching exercise.In the illustration position, the only matters that really count in theperformance are the features that are in the text itself. Those whichprompt ‘silly questions’, those whose particularity and physicality havesuch importance in a performance, those small features that catch theattention of spectators in the one performance they are likely to see –all are irrelevant. But on each of the interpretation positions, these areacknowledged to be of great importance. For the addition of suchdetails supplies whatever is missing in the written text.

* All these interpretation positions hold that performers must intentionallyselect the relevant added details. Accidentally occurring aspects of aperformance – even if consistent with some possible interpretation –are not usually thought of as part of a genuine interpretation. (But seeLevinson 75, for a partial exception.)

So we can see that the differences among these positions turn largely onthe specific cast each theory gives to each of these three general features.

Skepticism about Strong and Middle PositionsNot every intentional attempt to integrate details and yield one of theforegoing kinds of achievement – understanding, sense, or translation – isa performative interpretation or an interpretive performance. A lecturecan be a performance that is also an interpretation of Hamlet (Saltz, ‘Whata Theatrical Performance Is (Not)’ 300). One response to this objectionis to support the interpretation view by stressing the aspect notedabove that we have a interpretive performance just in case the details areprojected by performers and integrated along with other materials into atheatrical performance. However, even though initially attractive, this justmeans ‘the performance interprets the play by performing it in the way thatit does’; and it follows that ‘the proposal that ‘performances interpretplays’ cannot explain what constitutes the relationship between a play andits performances, since it presupposes that relationship’ (300, 301).

The next most obvious way to avoid the foregoing problem encountersdifficulties of its own. We might try claiming only that every performanceaims to be an interpretation in one of these senses. On that account, therelation between a text and a performance that did not achieve an inter-pretation would still be that of an attempted interpretation. The problemis that this claim itself appears to be false. Not every theatrical perform-ance that aims to be of Hamlet does, in fact, attempt to interpret Hamletin the sense of supplying details that help us understand, make sense of,or translate that play into a theatrical text. A performance might insteadbe staged not as an interpretation but as a challenge to whatever meaning(however partial) the text traditionally might be taken to have (Hamilton,‘Theatrical Performance and Interpretation’ 41–50).



Finally, a further consequence of the fact that performance choices areamong actions, gestures, intonations, lighting designs, set designs, andother physical elements (Worthen; Woodruff) is that the effects deliveredby a theatrical performance are essentially unscriptable. But, as DavidOsipovich remarks,

if every theatrical performance as a whole is unscriptable, there is no way thattheatrical performance in general [nor even performances that use texts] canbe construed as essentially an interpretation of a text. (464–5)

going beyond interpretation

A third position has attempted to move beyond interpretation models ofthe text-performance relationship to see texts as providing one sort,among others, of executable directives or recipes for performances, and tosee performances as largely the execution of the directives provided intexts. Going beyond the idea, just noted, that there are mere ‘materialsfor performance’ that are used to produce some performances, NoëlCarroll treats all texts as ‘performance plans’ (Carroll, Philosophy of MassArt; ‘Interpretation, Theatrical Performance, and Ontology’). This deliverswhat Carroll calls ‘the recipe model’.

The Recipe ModelThe recipe model could be thought of as the weakest conception ofinterpretation that might do the job of explaining the text-performancerelation because, even though it deploys the concept in a very differentmanner, it retains the notion of interpretation as central to its story. ButI think it is better to classify it as an alternative to interpretation modelsof the text-performance relationship. On the recipe view, the process ofmaking additions, undertaken by performers in rehearsals, is what constitutesthe act of interpreting the text. In contrast, performances are not themselvesinterpretations of the text, but are the results of interpretations. Moreover,the interpretive process need not be motivated by a critical interpretationof the written text. In other words, a performance is the result ofinterpreting a text in merely the narrowest sense of ‘filling it in’ (Carroll,‘Interpretation, Theatrical Performance, and Ontology’).

This view weakens the conception of interpretation as it is employed inmore standard text-centered positions in several ways. First, it dispenses withthe exclusively semantic focus on works of dramatic literature characteristicof the foregoing views and replaces it with a conception of the dramaticwork as a recipe for performance. As Noël Carroll puts the point,

My use of ‘interpretation’ is broader than that of determining the meaning ofa theatrical type; it refers to the filling out or fleshing out of a theatrical textor action plan with effects as well as implied meanings, whether or not theycorrespond to authorial intentions. Casting an actor, planning a lighting



scheme, designing a set, and adopting an ‘alienation technique’ are all parts ofcomposing an interpretation on my account and not merely . . . ‘choices consistentwith [an] interpretation’. (315)

Second, it dispenses with talk of performances as interpretations altogetherand replaces it with the idea that interpretation is the activity of makingchoices in the kinds of details with which we are familiar, from theteaching exercise described earlier, in order to produce a performance.Thus it allows for choices that have more to do with effects than withmeanings. Finally, although it does continue to require the choices be theresult of intentional mediation between text and performance, it does notinsist that the interpreting that goes on in the production of a performancebe informed by a critical interpretation. Thus, it pretty much allows anyintentionally added material to be the result of interpretation.7

This approach to the text-performance relationship has a lot of promise.We often do speak of scripts, productions, and performances in overlappingways. We know we can have an author’s play, a famous director’s productionof that play, and a performance of that production on a given evening.We may evaluate these independently of the others. We may evaluatethese in terms of their relations to the others. We sometimes read scriptsand sometimes go see productions that use them. We certainly evaluatescripts differently when considering them as works for reading versusconsidering them as working scripts for performance. These are importantfacts about a theatrical tradition dominant in Western Europe in the pastcouple of centuries. The recipe model seems to leave all the latitude wemight want for all these practices.

Challenges for the Recipe ModelA first problem is that the scope of the promised latitude on this accountis not as full as it seems. Not all of the effects listed above can be part ofexecuting a plan given in a theatrical text. It is not readily apparent, forexample, that adopting an ‘alienation technique’ – at least if that is aimedat countering the presumed meanings or effects prescribed in a theatricaltext – can be part either of filling in or fleshing out the recipe or part ofexecuting an action plan. The attempt to counter such presumed meaningsor effects is characteristic of Brecht’s practice when he was dealing withclassical scripts. Carroll seems to have in mind only those practices Brechtdesigned to assist performers in realizing his own scripts.

A second problem concerns how we are to explain what is to count asthe plan. This point can be brought home by reminding ourselves abouthow much we may tolerate being cut from a script when we still regardwhat is before us as a performance of the closet scene from Hamlet. Is itstill the closet scene if Hamlet does not accuse his mother of moving tooquickly into her marriage with Claudius? Probably it is not. But what ifPolonius never appears and, so, is not killed? Very likely it will be said to



be so, especially if it is a grade school production (Woodruff, Necessity ofTheater 49–50). But what then is the plan and how does the scene thatresults from the foregoing count as executing it? That is not a decisionphilosophers are particularly positioned to make. It gets made in particularcircumstances by performers, spectators, and critics, and then sometimesre-made in different circumstances. Critics and parents could easily andreasonably come to different conclusions about such matters.

A third problem concerns how we are to explain what is to count asthe execution of a plan. Consider a decision to present the closet scenewith the actor who plays Hamlet delivering Gertrude’s lines and vice versa,with the action portrayed by puppets, and with the entire sequence oflines delivered backwards from end to beginning. Can this count as aperformance that takes the text of Hamlet as its performance plan andexecutes that plan? All the lines are there but, as Worthen has argued,knowing a performance is faithful to a text tells us next to nothing aboutit. This point is related to another, namely, that many choices comprisingany performance are accidental and have no specification in the plan.

The crucial problem, however, is that the choice to use the written textas a plan is itself one of the basic decisions open to performers; and therecipe model of the text-performance relation forecloses it.

two performance-centered strategies

Although the last view we have considered seeks to move beyond inter-pretation and to hold a quite different view of the text-performancerelationship, it is still deeply enmeshed in a view of theater in whichscripted performances are paradigmatic. Each of the foregoing positionsapproaches the issue of the text-performance relation with the assumptionthat most theatrical performances actually use scripts. The residue of thatassumption is responsible for the fact even the recipe view forecloses ona fundamental choice that is an open question for theatrical performersand spectators.

The most recent attempts to deal with the text-performance relationhave sought to begin with a radically different approach, urging us tofocus first on the theatrical event itself and its various kinds before workingback to the more specific performance kinds that employ scripts, and totreat the latter as special cases of a more general type of human activity.There are two views of recent origin, developed in different ways andhaving different emphases. I conclude this essay with brief presentationsof each.

The ‘Ingredients’ ModelThe first, the ‘ingredients model’, stresses the uses to which performersput texts in actual practice. If we look back at the list of features suggestedby the teaching experiment at the beginning of the essay, we might say



that this position stresses the fourth feature – that spectators usually see aperformance only once – and then examines what performers do toprepare for performances in light of that fact.

The leading proponents of this view, James Hamilton and David Osipovich,hold that texts are used in theatrical performances as nothing more than, asHamilton puts it, ‘sources of words and other ideas for theatrical performances,alongside other ingredients that are available from a variety of other sources’(Art of Theater 31). The ingredients model does not prescribe any particularuse of any text – theatrical or otherwise – over any other, but it is intendedto be broad enough in scope to allow for any particular use.

Thus, the many choices of many small features that make up a perform-ance are accorded prima facie equal standing – as ingredients – with theingredients derivable from any text(s) that might be used. The weightthose features have in performance is acknowledged to be capable ofdecisive importance, and the relative absence of ‘silly questions’ abouttheatrical performances is seen to be fairly natural. But what does thisposition have to say about the multiplicity of performances using the samescript and the importance of texts in the Western European tradition?

The answer is that the position acknowledges a historical tradition ofusing scripts as performance plans, even as guiding many of the details ofperformances in such a way that some decisions are ruled out in thattradition before performers or spectators begin to think about the rangeavailable to them. Nevertheless, the ingredients model holds thatdeterminations of what is to count as using a script properly are stillalways made by people working within specific theatrical practices andtraditions, not by philosophical reflection. It does allow it is possible thatone of the views we have considered above captures the outlines of whatis going on in that tradition. So it allows for a new discussion of theforegoing philosophical positions, but re-construes them as competingexplanations of the actual theatrical practices in particular historicalsituations rather than as analyses of the text-performance relationship.

The ‘Trace’ ModelIn the second, that we might call the ‘trace model’, the key idea is that atheater piece is a repeatable event-type. How it gets remembered so thatit can be repeated is a practical matter that in some cultures at certaintimes is solved by using texts to trace, at least in part, certain event-typeswe prize and wish to repeat.

Like the ingredients model, the trace model emphasizes the firstfeatures in the list suggested by the teaching exercise described earlier.The choices made by performers in developing a performance and theparticularity and physicality of performers choices are central to moldingwhat will be watched in a performance. They are, then, central to the artof theater. In contrast, texts are produced by a different art, the art ofwriting. If what produces a script is the art of writing and what produces



performances is the art of theater, then a text (an object) and theperformance (an event) are clearly different sorts of things. What, however,is their relationship?

To answer this question, we can advert directly to a familiar sort ofmove in ontology. First we distinguish among three kinds of events orevent-types. A ‘theater piece’, Paul Woodruff claims, ‘is a product of theart of theater which may be repeated on many occasions, in many placesand in many different ways’. As such it functions as an event-type takingproductions or performances as tokens. A ‘production’ is also capable ofbeing repeated, ‘but usually with a fixed cast, fixed design, and so forth’.The third, a performance, ‘happens only once, and . . . may be an instanceof both [a theater piece and a production]’ (53). Armed with this distinction,we can now ask what it is that makes a theater piece what it is and, thereby,what makes any given performance a performance of a particular theaterpiece. Woodruff ’s solution is, at least for mimetic theater, as follows:

to find the essence of a piece of mimetic theater, identify the main character(or characters) and the principal conflict (or conflicts) that are resolved in theplot. By ‘plot’ I mean structured action that keeps our attention and measuresthe time for a theatrical performance. By ‘character’ I mean someone whoattracts our close attention. (55)

Clearly, as an identifiable event-type, a theater piece cannot be a text.Nor, Woodruff argues, can it be a type belonging to a tradition ofperformance; for there could be items that belong to that tradition thatwe would not regard as instances of the event-type. Imagine a productionthat involves Portia, who seduces Hamlet in the first scene, and who callsfor Claudius to give Hamlet an army with which to fight Fortinbras. Thismight belong to a Hamlet-tradition. But it is unclear whether spectatorswould regard it as a production of Hamlet. 8

What makes having the same character and plot in a mimetic theatricalperformance the features that enable us to identify a given theater piece?The answer is directly derivable from the normative purpose theater is toserve, namely the presentation of action worth watching. First, to be worthwatching, an action must spring from choice; and only characters – thatis, agents – make choices. Second, to be worth watching, an action mustbe of perspicuous duration; and only carefully plotted patterns of actioncan have that feature.

On this view, as on the ingredients model, spectators at the eventidentify a theater piece by recognizing its key characteristics. The textemployed is not part of the identification. Its role, when it has one, is toenable us to remember the key characteristics and, thereby, sometimesconstruct the event anew.

These positions, as I have said, are new. It remains to be seen if theyare compatible and form a single new alternative or if they pose two newalternatives for us to think about.



Short Biography

James Hamilton’s research is located in aesthetics and philosophy of art,focusing on issues about the performing arts, most especially theater. He hasauthored papers in the Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, The BritishJournal of Aesthetics, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, and in severalcollections of essays on theater, performance, or interpretation. His bookThe Art of Theater (Blackwell, 2007) argues that theatrical performance is aform of art independent of literature and, even more strikingly, that thecontents of theatrical performances cannot be delivered in any other modeof representation. Current research concerns accounts of what performersdo (contrasting conceptions of acting as pretense with conceptions ofacting as display behavior and quotation-behavior), the use of performersbodies in theatrical performances and the effect that has on the expressionof emotion in theater, and the marked contrast between the way narrativetechniques function to control spectator response in film and the way theywork in theater. He has taught in the Philosophy Department at KansasState University since 1971. He has held NEH and Big 12 Fellowships.He holds a B.A. in English from Pfeiffer College, an M.A. in philosophyfrom Emory University, an M.Div. from Union Theological Seminary inNew York City, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Notes

* Correspondence address: Department of Philosophy, Kansas State University, 201 DickensHall, Manhattan, Kansas, United States, 66506. Email: [email protected].

1 To say a performance is ‘strongly dependent’ on a work of art of some other kind is to saythat, if there are changes of properties in the latter, there must (or at least should, prima facie)be changes of properties in any performance.2 Rocklin’s example is the opening scene of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.3 The list of questions is so familiar that it crops up even in this undergraduate paper on the scene.4 For an illuminating discussion of Walton’s silly questions and theatrical performances, see Saltz,‘Infiction and Outfiction’.5 Novitz does not directly discuss performances. However, what I suggest here is a natural wayto extend his comments on critical interpretations.6 A view of some discourse is metaphysically realist about that discourse if it takes the predicatesinvolved in the discourse to refer to determinable properties existing mind-independently.7 If the view holds that interpretations, even in this weak sense, requires aiming at coherence,then there will be some further constraints on what counts as an activity of interpreting.8 This is Woodruff ’s example. Another useful and challenging case might be Heiner Müller’sHamletmachine. A good exercise might be to see how this piece should be handled onWoodruff ’s line of argument. Perhaps if we do not know the answer to this question, greatercredence should be given to the tradition-story than Woodruff suggests.

Works Cited

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Theatre Journal 37/1: ‘Theory’ (March 1985): 5–11.Carroll, Noël. ‘Interpretation, Theatrical Performance, and Ontology’. The Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism 59/3 (Summer 2001): 313–16.——. A Philosophy of Mass Art. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998.Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Semiotics of Theater. Trans. Jeremy Gaines and Doris L. Jones. Bloomington,

IN: Indiana UP, 1992.Garner, Stanton. Bodied Spaces: Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. Ithaca,

NY: Cornell UP, 1994.Gregory, Harrison, ‘The “Closet Scene” in Hamlet: Traditions of Stage and Screen’. Presented

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Hamilton, James R. The Art of Theater. London and New York, NY: Wiley-Blackwell Publi-cations, 2007.

——. ‘Theatrical Performance and Interpretation’. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 59/3 (Summer 2001): 307–12.

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Saltz, David Z. ‘Infiction and Outfiction: The Role of Fiction in Theatrical Performance’.Staging Philosophy: Theater, Performance, and Philosophy. Eds David Krasner and David Z. Saltz.Ann Arbor, MI: The U of Michigan P, 2006. 203–20.

——. ‘Theater’. The Encyclopedia of Aesthetics. Vol. 4. Ed. Michael Kelly. New York, NY andLondon: Oxford UP, 1998. 375–80.

——. ‘What Theatrical Performance Is (Not): The Interpretation Fallacy’. The Journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 59/3 (Summer 2001): 299–306.

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Schmitt, Natalie Crohn. Actors and Onlookers. Chicago, IL: Northwestern UP, 1990.States, Bert O. Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: on the Phenomenology of Theater. Berkeley, CA:

U of California P, 1985.Thom, Paul. For an Audience: A Philosophy of the Performing Arts. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP,

1993.——. ‘The Interpretation of Music in Performance’. British Journal of Aesthetics 43/2 (April

2003): 126–37.Ubersfeld, Anne. Reading Theater. Trans. Frank Collins. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1999.Walker, Julia A. ‘The Text/Performance Split across the Analytic/Continental Divide’. Staging

Philosophy: Theater, Performance, and Philosophy. Eds David Krasner and David Z. Saltz. AnnArbor, MI: The U of Michigan P, 2006. 19–40.

Woodruff, Paul. The Necessity of Theater: The Art of Watching and Being Watched. Oxford: OxfordUP, 2008.

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http://academics.vmi.edu/english/vmiursc/Student_Papers_2004%5CVMI_Gregory.pdf

Documents

The Text-Performance Relation in Theater