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Introduction: Unwriting Theatre

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Humanism, Drama, and Performance

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Abstract

Defining the terms, literary humanism, dramatic humanism, and theatrical humanism, the introduction opens with Aristotle’s separation of writing from opsis, then engaging Horace, for whom dramatic and theatrical performance is at once the consequence and final cause of poetic composition. Seizing theatre as an instrument of writing occupies theatre and performance studies reflected here within two key perspectives: Oscar G. Brockett’s account of the relationship between dramatic maturity and the fashioning of a “true” theatrical ensemble, and Jonas Barish’s understanding of the relationship between theatre and liberal individualism. Responding throughout to Christopher B. Balme and Tracy C. Davis’s A Cultural History of Theatre, the chapter concludes by reflecting on the political stakes of theatrical assembly, which a humanist duality (aesthetics/politics) still renders largely inaccessible to disciplinary critique.

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    Hana Worthen

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Worthen, H. (2020). Introduction: Unwriting Theatre. In: Humanism, Drama, and Performance . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44066-4_1

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