Metatheatre and Consciousness

Abstract

In his 1963 book, Lionel Abel told us that we in the modern world are no longer capable of tragedy. Instead, said Abel, in an age so rife with self-consciousness that absolute powers and certain moral positions are passé, we have only ‘metatheatre’, through which we revel in our refusal to commit to anything. In the postmodern condition, the tropes of theatre about theatre free us from our vows, so that we need not — indeed, for Abel — regard the play as anything but a play, the actors as anything but actors, nor the stage’s methodologies and ideologies as anything but devices. We now are always in disbelief, stuck in a cage of awareness that prevents us from playing.