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TZACHI ZAMIR, Reading Drama, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 70, Issue 2, May 2012, Pages 179–192, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-6245.2012.01510.x
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Recent work in the philosophy of theater has center‐staged actors and acting.1 Such work aims to rid us of the idea that theater is mostly an enactment of a literary work, urging us to avoid looking through performances into the literary dimensions of the play. The best performances are not merely tools whereby the rays of literary value shine through unimpeded. This article examines the implications of such a performance‐centered view of theater to an understanding of the literature that is written for the stage. If performances are watched because something important transpires between the audience and the performers (and not because the audience is interested in watching an enacted script), then such audience–performer dynamics may infuse the themes populating works that are explicitly written for the stage. This article's thesis is, then, that watching an actor releases several abstract concerns relating to subjective experience and its limitations, and such concerns may percolate into the written role that is being enacted. After presenting the argument in a general form, I provide shorter and more extended examples showing how tragedy and comedy repeatedly mobilize such connections between their themes and the act of acting.
