Review Article Theatre and Philosophy

Is there anything philosophical to say about theatre? Even within the philosophy of art, there is little material that is devoted to theatre, compared to music, films and novels. One can always take problems in the philosophy of art and apply them to theatre; but that hardly constitutes an independent area of study. And the one or two philosophical problems which have theatrical labels are frequently, and not unjustifiably, taken to be wider problems in the philosophy of art. The problem of tragic pleasure, for example, has been applied to novels, sculptures, documentary films and rollercoaster rides. Catharsis—if there is a meaningful philosophical conception, independent of the curious but basically unsolvable exegetical riddle—is taken by most writers, probably including Aristotle, to be a feature of more than just theatre. Still, the absence of material is puzzling. Theatre in various forms continues to be popular, inventive, moving, controversial, financially viable and a number of other things which at least some people want from art. What’s more, many philosophers have written directly about theatre (Plato, Aristotle, Hume and Nietzsche are some of them) and several were also notable playwrights (Seneca, Machiavelli, Lessing, Rousseau, Schiller and Sartre, for example, of whom at least three belong to the first group too). Finally, many of the traditional concerns of philosophy—truth, reality and representation, action and its consequences, living the right kind of life—are explored in a variety of theatrical bs_bs_banne