## 1. Philosophy of Theater, Historical Diversity of Theatrical Traditions, and the "Anti-Theatrical Prejudice"


### 1.1 The Historical Diversity of Theatrical Traditions



Although some of the following contrasts have more to do with the
means of theater than with its ends, the point is that, historically,
theater never has had just one form.



Theater might be thought of as singular and unified. One reason for
believing this has to do with the phenomenon known as "the
anti-theatrical prejudice", an animus towards theater that has
been expressed by philosophers and theologians as well as theater
theorists and practitioners (and that is more fully described in
 SS1.3).
 While it has been alleged by some that distrust of theater practices
is present in every culture, Jonas Barish, who coined the phrase
"the anti-theatrical prejudice", does not claim this kind
of ubiquity. The idea that it is ubiquitous may be mere speculation
and not based on any historical evidence. If it is not a universal, it
represents a preoccupation arising in only one of the four regions of
the globe in which theater originated as a distinct set of social
practices aimed at portraying aspects of human life.



Other traditions appear to have originated in ways that are
distinguishable from European theater (which originated in Athens).
The African (Yoruba) tradition of theater emerged initially from
masquerades celebrating ancestors (Adedeji 1969, 1972). Yet some
traditions seem to have arrived fully formed: the Sanskrit
*Treatise on Theatre* (*Natya Shastra*, Ghosh (trans)
1951) offers, at a very early time (somewhere between 200 BCE and 200
CE), a reasonably complete list of topics any treatise on theater that
is focused on dramatics should include (acting, dance, music, dramatic
construction, architecture, costuming, make-up, props, the
organization of theater companies, the nature of audiences, theater
competitions, and so on) (Schwartz 2004). Unlike Athenian theater, and
its legend about the first actor, Thespis, human actors were not
always the first evidence of theater. The early form of theater in the
Han Dynasty in China consisted largely of shadow-puppet theater. The
much later Tang Dynasty (618-907) is most famous for developing
a form of theater that would be recognizable to Europeans *as
theater*, were it not for the fact it was largely musical.



The diversity of theatrical forms is also revealed by the study of
theatrical performances and their literatures that arose at different
times within Japan. The oldest form is Noh theater (originating around
1300 and continuing to the present), which can be characterized not
only by having different aims than its, possibly Chinese, predecessor
form, but also by being largely dependent on its performers being
proficient in either pantomime or vocal acrobatics or both. Bunraku,
in contrast (originating around the mid-1500s and still being
performed), is a form of theater that consists of large puppets with
visible puppeteers dressed in black to imply *in*visibility,
with the dialogue spoken by a single person who uses extensive vocal
technique and range to present the language and expression of the
different characters. Kabuki theater (beginning at the end of the
1500s) is also distinguishable from Noh theater, if not in subject
matter (most of its subject matter comes from Noh or Bunraku theater),
then in form because it employs dance, singing, pantomime, as well as
physical acrobatics. Even more distinctive--and as distant from
these predecessors as one can imagine--is Butoh (originating
after World War II) that includes dance, performance, and abstract
movement, in the service of challenges to public authority by means of
presenting grotesque imagery, "forbidden" topics, as well
as absurd environments and situations. Butoh is performed in white
make-up and may be purely conceptual, having no movement at all.


### 1.2 Philosophical Underpinnings in Theater Studies and Performance Theory



Diversity in the histories and forms of theater has made it difficult
for theorists within any theater tradition to arrive at a sound
analysis that also has the promise of being extensionally adequate.
This situation is exacerbated by the difficulty in drawing a
distinction between philosophy of theater on the one hand, and theater
studies or performance theory on the other. There are two ways in
which this distinction may been drawn.



First, the discussion of theater in so-called "Analytic
Philosophy" has rarely focused on the social or moral effects of
theater (with Cavell 1987 as one exception). Those discussions have
been mostly in the form of determining the epistemological and
metaphysical status of the art form (Beardsley 1958; Danto 1981;
Levinson 1996; D. Davies 2004; S. Davies 2006). But, in theater
studies, performance theory, and so-called "Continental
Philosophy" (Bergson 1889 [1910]; Deleuze 1968 [1994]; Heidegger
1950 [2008]; Badiou 1990 [2013]) theater frequently has been addressed
in the form of criticisms or defenses of the practices of theater in
terms of the moral or social effects those practices have had;
although in most of those cases, ethical considerations have rested on
metaphysical views.



Second, philosophy of theater might be distinguished from theater
studies or performance theory by the following facts: most
philosophical theories have emphasized *descriptive issues*,
whereas most theater studies or performance theories have emphasized
*normative issues*. Discussions of theater concerned with
*descriptive* issues typically ask what acting and spectating
are, what the relation is between theatrical practices and practices
in other art forms, what theatrical criticism is, and so on. The
contrasting *normative* theorizing can be illustrated by what
theater theorist Philip Zarrilli has called "acting
theories", where we find particular ideologically inflected
theories--e.g., by or based on Konstantin Stanislavski, Bertolt
Brecht, and so on--specifying ways in which to act
*successfully* in theater (Zarrilli 2002b: 3; Zarrilli 2007: 636).



One route to providing a sound analysis that has been taken in theater
studies and performance theory, since at least the 1960s, has been to
appeal to some broader understanding of the human condition found in
philosophical reflections. This was possibly the expression of a hope
that in philosophy one might find something more universal than
theater itself; and if that led to fruitful explorations of theater
practices, that would be a relevant form of *imprimatur*.
However, as Marvin Carlson makes clear, theater *artists* are
not different from artists of other kinds in reacting
*primarily* to the thoughts and practices of their immediate
*artistic* predecessors. So, although this route was taken by
theorists, this is not the route taken in theater or performance
practice. Moreover, any plausible way of making out what a theater or
performance *theory* is--as for example, taking
"theory" to refer to "statements of general
principles regarding the methods, aims, functions, and
characteristics" of theater--is unlikely to enable us to
maintain a bright line between philosophy of theater and theater
theory (Carlson 1984 [1993: 9]). Nevertheless, in an entry on the
Philosophy of Theater, it is important to note this prominent
theoretical strategy.



The most influential attempt of this kind rested on a popular set of
theories about language owing much of their provenance to the work of
linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1977]) and to certain literary
theories that Saussurean linguistics informed as well. This attempt
was made in the form of semiotic theories of theater (Ubersfeld 1976
[1999]; Eco 1977; Elam 1980; Pavis 1982; Fischer-Lichte 1983 [1992]).
These theater or performance theories involved applications from
language, conceived as a sign-system, to the theatrical event, which
was conceived of as either a single complicated sign-system or as a
complicated conjunction of various sign-systems. And these theories
continue to be influential in reflections on theater. But it soon
became evident that the materiality of the actor's body marked a
limit of what can be analyzed in terms of semiotics, in terms of signs
and meanings. For in some performances bodies seem not to mean
something but to *be* something, namely, themselves (States
1985; Sofer 2003). Treating material things, such as props, as
"signs" not only makes it difficult to say what is and
what is not a material object, it also renders inexplicable the
pleasure that spectators find in props and theater sets *qua*
material objects. However, the materiality of the performer's
body and of props, while challenging to semiotic analysis, is not, at
least according to some, a fact that presents an insuperable barrier
to a more sophisticated semiotic theory. A standard (although partial)
argument here is that, since anything can function as a prop for
anything else in a theatrical performance, then anything just does act
as a "sign" when it appears in a performance (Elam
1980).



In contrast, phenomenological theories of theater, resting on the
philosophical phenomenology of either Edmund Husserl (1913 [1981]),
Martin Heidegger (1950 [2008]), Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1945 [2012]),
or Bruce Wilshire (1982), gave rise to phenomenological theories of
theater (Carlson 1984 [1993], States 1985, Rayner 1994, Garner 1994).
The motive for phenomenological theorizing about theater, in large
part, had to do with retrieving for theater studies and performance
theory the spectator's appreciation of the materiality of what
has been performed. The single most important achievements of this
movement were a) putting the spectator's position foremost and
b) regarding the spectator as someone who engaged in processes of
understanding on the basis of both cognitive and affective responses.
Merleau-Ponty, for example, was famous for making the observer's
*perception* of the world paramount. This could have translated
into spectator-centered theories of theater and theater cognition.
Unfortunately, most phenomenological research of theatrical
productions focuses on either the plays themselves, as works of
dramatic literature, or on the techniques of staging, principally the
*actor's* techniques. This orientation towards the means
of producing performances, rather than the conditions of their
reception, is fairly common among theater studies and performance
theory. As a result, the writings of many phenomenologically oriented
theater or performance theorists *only begin* with descriptions
of a spectator's experience and the cognitive challenges
spectators face. This often has had the effect of estranging their
views from attempts to answer the classical questions of aesthetics
and philosophy of art, which are often drawn from the point of view of
the amateur spectator or audience (Kristeller 1951:
517-521).



Material offered by speech act theories in philosophy--by J. L.
Austin (1962) and John Searle (1969)--have given rise to
"speech act" theater studies and performance theories.
This is perhaps because the idea of thinking of a word "not as
[an expression of an] idea but as action, as gesture" was
already a familiar albeit contested idea among such theorists (Carlson
1984 [1993: 398]). These philosophical theories about the nature of
language utterance hold that there are more ways in which to
communicate some attitude about a content than by asserting it first
and only then expressing an attitude (see SS3 of the entry on
 speech acts
 as well as SS5.2 and SS6.1 of the entry on
 assertion
 in this Encyclopedia). A performative utterance is one that aims at
achieving some state of affairs in the world rather than reporting
whether the state of affairs obtains, and such an utterance could fail
due to certain "infelicities" of circumstance of speaker,
listener, or environment. Interestingly both Austin and Searle thought
that the utterances of actors, because actors were merely pretending
to do things (see
 SS2.2),
 were not genuinely performative utterances. However, these ideas
about performative utterances gave rise to views like Judith
Butler's--who used them in an argument, specifically with
respect to gender, that we should "take the social agent as
an *object* rather than the subject of [a] constitutive [speech]
act" and that we should 



> 
> 
> understand constituting acts not only as constituting the identity of
> the actor, but as constituting that identity as a compelling illusion,
> an object of *belief*. (Butler 1988: 520) 
> 
> 
> 



More to the point of this entry, the ideas of Austin and Searle also
gave rise to the thinking of theorists focused mainly on what
performance or theater could be or do (Saltz 1991a; Rozik 1993).



In contrast to the four fairly separate disciplines that are involved
here--philosophy, philosophy of theater, performance theory and
theater studies, together with performance and theater
practices--a recent view suggests there is but one overarching
discipline, namely "performance philosophy", wherein
performance is its own kind of thinking which is, itself, a kind of
philosophizing. This recent view is not, at least currently, widely
credited either by philosophers of theater or very many theater or
performance theorists (Puchner 2013). But it is now the basis of a new
discipline with its own professional association and its own journal.
Like many theater or performance theories, it takes its inspirations
from philosophers, notably Gilles Deleuze (1968 [1994]) and Francois
Laruelle (1996 [2013]).



To see how this goes, first suppose one argues that thinking about
theater can be teased apart into three distinct practices: the
*philosophy of theater* which is concerned with 



> 
> 
> clarifying and/or defining the central concepts that organize the
> practices of theater..., scrutinizing what those concepts
> entail..., and identifying and addressing the disjunctions,
> anomalies, contradictions, and paradoxes that combining concepts
> sometimes entails; 
> 
> 
> 



*theater theory* which yields empirical results about the
actual practices of theater, "isolating the component parts of
theatre and explaining how they operate", whether as a kind of
"reverse engineering" characteristic of the
"scholarly theatre theorist" or as a "search for
general empirical principles or methods that will bring about coveted
results" as is characteristic of the "practical theatre
theorist;" and *criticism* which is also empirical but
"preoccupied with saying what is special about the [particular]
works in question" (Carroll and Banes 2001: 158, 159, 160). Then
second, if one thinks this might not be a *mistaken* view of
the nature of philosophical reflection so much as a
"*narrow* view" of what philosophical reflection
might amount to, one might instead conceive of "performance as a
site for immanent thought" and seek to avoid the implication
that the only thing theatrical performance can do is illustrate a
theory or a bit of philosophical reflection (Cull 2013; Cull O
Maoilearca 2018).


### 1.3 The "Anti-Theatrical Prejudice"



The so-called "anti-theatrical prejudice" has been a
feature of Western European theater since the very beginnings of both
theater and philosophy. It is, moreover, an issue that theater studies
and performance theory have focused a fair amount of attention upon.
Jonas Barish identified its roots in the dispute, referred to in the
Introduction to this entry, between Plato and Aristotle over the
notion of *mimesis* and the value of theatrical practices
within the good city (Barish 1966, 1981). Two later periods of
philosophical reflection on human practices stand out as concerned
nearly exclusively with the morality of theatrical practices
themselves: during the period of the early Latin Church fathers, and
during the eighteenth century (Tertullian and Jean Jacques Rousseau
are good examples). The degree to which the distrust of theater in
these periods was grounded in the earlier differences between the ways
Plato and Aristotle had understood *mimesis* is still much
debated (Puchner 2013). The interest in and estimations of the social
and moral effects of theatrical practices, on which the alleged
"prejudice" has been grounded, staged a resurgence in the
literary and artistic period known as Romanticism (Friedrich Nietzsche
and John S. Mill are good examples). And this worry about, or even a
distrust of, theatricality has continued into the present, but
interestingly enough, now among theater practitioners and theorists
themselves (Schechner 1992, and both Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett
provide good examples, see also Puchner 2001).



However, this viewpoint is often grounded in metaphysical and
epistemic questions about what a theatrical performance is and how a
spectator understands a theatrical performance of some kind (for
example, as a literary performance or one that is actual and
physical). This viewpoint is also often motivated by moral and social
views, not just about performances but also about performers. But it
is often not clear what relationship this viewpoint has to the actual
practices of the art form (Puchner 2013: 548). So even if the
motivations for the view can and should be criticized, the viewpoint
often seems to be less "a prejudice" than a considered
judgment resting on prior argued-for epistemic, metaphysical, or moral
positions. And this leads one to wonder if there is anything special,
or especially troubling, about the general social or moral problems
associated with theater in these periods at all. In short, it is
difficult to determine whether and when this animus is actually
aberrant--and genuinely *prejudicial*--or if it is of
a piece with standard examinations of social and moral effects of
theatrical practices. That said, it is worth noting that suspicion of
theatrical practices seems to be a persistently recurring and
characteristic attitude within Western European philosophical, social,
and political traditions.


## 2. Describing an Instance of Theater


### 2.1 Ontological Questions



What is a work of art? Are all works of art alike? How so, or how not?
When asked to determine what sentences are about, philosophers often
will want to know what objects, properties, or relationships the
objects of a certain bit of human discourse are and what the referents
of its nominal and pronominal phrases are. The answers to these
questions might well be taken to be the basic ontology of that
discourse. In this sense, the word "ontology" is playing
the same role it plays in, for example, computer science: and it
answers the question, "What is there?" The most common
practice in doing ontology of art is to use a roughly Quinean approach
(Quine 1948) since it seems a fairly pragmatic way to undertake the
initial task in the ontology of art (see Pettersson 2009 for a detailed discussion).
Dissenters from this common practice have often pursued mereological
accounts (in terms of parts and wholes) of how certain ostensible
"multiple instances" of works of art are related to the
works themselves (Cook 2011; Hackett 2017).



But some cast doubt on the utility of terms like "works of
art" and "artworks" altogether, arguing that, at
least with respect to literary and musical communication, the choices
open to us seem to be language-dependent in a way that makes it
dubious to construe them as elements in "the basic furniture of
the world", so to speak, even if there is nothing intrinsically
problematic within our ordinary descriptions of art using these terms
(Rudner 1950; Cameron 2008; Pettersson 2009; but for arguments for the
indispensability of works-talk see S. Davies 2003). And others raise
the equally serious question about whether all events and objects that
we describe as art can be distinguished cleanly into single-instance
and multiple-instance objects or events (Currie 1988; Hazlett 2012),
largely on the grounds that *any* work of art can be repeatable
and that the alleged distinction turns out to be an artifact of our
current technological capabilities rather than an enduring feature of
some kinds of art.



That said, many philosophers who have accepted the terms "works
of art" or "artworks" have also accepted some
distinction between multiple-instance and single-instance works of
art. Allan Hazlett begins an essay on repeatable artworks, ones that
have multiple instances, this way:



> 
> 
> There seem to be repeatable artworks. Plays and musical works, like
> Shakespeare's *Hamlet* or Mussorgsky's
> "Pictures at an Exhibition", can be performed again and
> again; installations, like Sol LeWitt's *Wall Drawing
> #260* (1975), can be installed over and over; dishes of food, like
> Jean-George Vongerichten's tuna tartare, can be prepared many
> times (Hazlett 2012: 161).
> 
> 
> 



In light of this distinction, determining the kind of entities works
of art are depends upon explaining and defending one of the following
proposals: 


1. the view using C. S. Peirce's (1906)
"type/token" distinction, wherein some works are
themselves both tokens and types and others are types that take
multiple instances as their tokens;
2. the view that all works of art are extended individuals and what
appear to be mere instances are, in fact, parts of the larger whole work;
3. the view that works of art are instances of "norm
kinds", wherein they function as types (or kinds) *and*
also have a normative dimension that enables us to determine if
instances of the kind are properly or improperly formed; and
4. the view that works of music, dance, and theater are
"stages" of "perduring" objects and events



(see SS4 of the entry on
 *the history of the ontology of art*
 and Rohrbach's article (2012) in the *Routledge Encyclopedia
of Aesthetics*, third edition, for in-depth surveys of these
views; and also see work by Peirce 1906: 505ff.; Wolterstorff 1980; Predelli
2001, S. Davies 2003; D. Davies 2004, Thomasson 2005; Dodd 2012; and
Moruzzi 2018.



One striking feature of the disputes about these proposals is that
each of these proposals makes sense of one class of them but has
difficulty explaining--or explaining away--certain others of
them. This may be due in part to the wide diversity among artistic
events and objects. But, whatever the cause, one result is that
"increasingly, the very rules of engagements are as much the
topic of philosophical dispute as the ontological proposals
themselves" (Rohrbaugh 2012).



When it comes to narrowing down to the ontology of theater there are
more specific questions that make any approach to the ontology of
theater more difficult. The first question concerns how we determine
what one must say there is within the discourse of theater. On the
common view outlined above, the most basic ontological question is
"What do we (have to) say there is?" with respect to some
domain of discourse (Quine 1948). On the Quinean view one should first
determine what the best empirical theory is in some field of inquiry,
second regiment that theory in terms of some system of formal logic,
and then, thirdly, ask what objects satisfy the existentially
quantified variables within that regimented discourse. That will be
the ontology of that field of inquiry. But before we can ask what one
must say there is with respect to theater, one first must ask what the
discourse *is* that generates the descriptive facts over which
the variables of quantification are supposed to range. That is, to
what discourse is this method for determining the ontology of theater
to be applied? Any answer we can currently give to this question will
be the devastating observation that what exactly the descriptive facts
are that are discussed in the relevant discourse, and thus what the
actual discourse is, are themselves questions that are not actually
settled.



The second, and perhaps the more practically pressing of the two more
specific questions that must be asked regarding theater, is
"What exactly are instances of theater: performances,
productions, or illustrations of dramatic literature?" It is
commonly assumed by theater or performance theorists that the correct
answer is "performances". But this is both far from clear
and under-argued (see Hamilton 2007: 3-16 for a discussion of
this point). One way to address this question is to ask a more
fundamental question about theater, as Paul Woodruff does (2008): what is it to make something
worth watching? Another is to ask, as David Saltz, James Hamilton,
Noel Carroll do (2001): what it is that people are interpreting and
evaluating when they discuss theatrical performances and what is an
interpretation? Yet another is to ask, as David Osipovich does
(2006): what is a theatrical performance actually like in the
experience of those who present it and those who attend it at the time
of the performance itself? And a further is to ask, as W. B. Worthen
(2007) and Hamilton (2009a) have: what is the relation between
performances/productions and texts--i.e., specifically in
relation to works of dramatic literature? Once again, "the rules
of engagement", as Rohrbaugh calls them, are as much disputed as
the proposals themselves.



Notably, the methods for responding to this question seem to be
epistemic rather than ontological--that is, they seek to defend
an answer to the question based on the role each of the possible
answers would play in our reasoning about theatrical performances. And
they seem to yield no distinctive proposals regarding the ontology of
theater. Moreover, to the extent they do yield such proposals, they
often seem to offer empirical, rather than *a priori*, evidence
to support the answer their view entails (Fine 2012). Thus, the
standard answers to the second question--which certainly
*appears* to be ontological--point in a different
direction, namely to epistemic concerns about how we know what it is
we know about theatrical performances and less about what we must say
there is. And this is despite the fact that, in Carroll's case
at least, the answer is derived from a general ontological view,
namely, his widely discussed view about the ontology of mass art.


### 2.2 Theater and Performance



So far, this entry has treated theatrical performance and performance
art as fundamentally the same. But that is regarded as a contentious
standpoint by some theater and performance theorists. And the
distinction between theater and performance, even if only alleged, has
been a growing concern in theater studies and performance theories
since at least the beginnings of the twentieth century, when Spingarn
and Matthews debated whether one should emphasize either the
"theatricality" of theater or the adherence of a
performance to a written script (Matthews 1910; Spingarn 1911 [1931]).
Their debate concerned text-based theater, and they each thought of
"performance" in terms of *theatrical* performances
of texts. But the wrinkle is that if there *is* a profound
difference *between performance as an art* and *theater as
an art*, then before one can describe an instance of theater, one
has to know it *is* one and not an instance of performance art
instead.



Despite the differences in the background thinking used in developing
their theories, some theater studies and performance theorists have
nevertheless held one view in common, namely, that there is a distinct
difference between acting and performance. Roughly that difference has
been explained this way: when acting one is not being oneself, but one
is being oneself when performing. This has turned out to be a troubled
explanation. For what then are we to say about the actor in a
play--the real, flesh and blood actor (Auslander 1986
 [2002])?[1]



A leading approach to this problem in theater studies and performance
theory relies on anthropological investigations into ritual, turning
them into a theory of performance that distinguishes between the
*role of performer* and the *role of actor* as
exhibiting different kinds of human behavior (Turner 1982; Schechner
1988). This way of distinguishing between the practice of theater and
the practice of performance has been persuasive to some theater and
performance theorists because of a feature of the *avant garde*
theater practices in the traditions of Antonin Artaud and Jerzy
Grotowski (Artaud 1938 [1958]; Grotowski 1968 [2002]). It is alleged
that in those practices the actor seeks to be, or at least to appear
to be, metaphysically *present* to the
spectator--appearing to speak spontaneously even when scripted,
appearing to have authority in the theater about the direction of the
plot, again even when scripted, and appearing to deliver words that
are *meant*, perhaps unambiguously, and could be taken as
though spontaneously delivered. In the latter case especially, actors
re-enforced what theorists following Derrida called
"logocentrism". In contrast, some theorists held the
performer (the non-actor) is free to be, as it were,
"absent" (Fuchs 1986).



Responding to the challenge posed by these proposals, and noting both
the absence of any definition of performance and any attention to the
historical facts about the ways the relevant practices actually
developed (see
 SS3.1
 below), it has been argued that the most plausible way to
characterize "performance" has its roots in standard
ethnological and ethological theories, and characterizes
"performance" as a kind of "display behavior"
that is exhibited by members of various species, including our own
(Hamilton 2013). In this account, however, performance is not an
alternative to acting but more like acting's "genus"
to which it corresponds as a "species".



If right, this would dissolve the issues raised among performance and
theater theorists. For rather than being different kinds of human
behavior, they would be modeled as the same kind, but with different
scope. However this proposal confronts a robust history of thought to
the contrary, conflicts with a sizable amount of the common discourses
among theater and performance artists themselves, and challenges the
leading theory of acting among those philosophers and cognitive
scientists who study the phenomena of pretense and imagination, and
who either might or do think of acting as pretending rather than as
display behavior (Searle 1975; Lewis 1978; Harris et al. 1993;
Kavanaugh and Harris 1999; Nicholls and Stitch 2000; Goldstein and
Bloom 2011; Brown 2017).


## 3. Understanding a Theatrical Performance


### 3.1 Recognizing an Instance



If, as historically has been claimed, there is nothing more to
theatrical performances than illustrations of a text (Spingarn 1911
[1931]), then there might be a quick way to answer the question,
"How does a spectator recognize an instance of theater?":
to encounter an instance of theater is nothing more than to encounter
a dramatic text. But, even so, you must still figure out precisely
what *sort* of illustration of a text a live performance is
(Worthen 2007). If one takes the view that one should think of a
theatrical performance as something to be described, interpreted, and
evaluated on its own terms, there is much more to do (Hamilton
2007).



This may seem obvious: one encounters an instance of theatrical
performance by means of the senses and by their typical operation,
leading to a recognition of the social form, assuming there is a
social form of sufficient familiarity. But, even when everything in a
spectator's *repertoire* of sensory apparati and social
*nous* is functioning normally, there is a problem with any
spectator's ability to discern genuinely theatrical behavior
from the non-theatrical.



One source of this problem is the phenomenon sometimes called
"the theatricality of everyday life". Suppose human beings
present themselves in everyday life *and* that they do so in
the same ways that actors do. How then could anyone tell if/when
someone else is acting or not (Goffman 1959)? The easy answer to this
has to do with framing effects. A person is acting only if they are
performing for an audience on stage (Thom 1992). That is, they act
only if they are within a socially agreed upon frame. And, indeed this
is the answer that Erving Goffman gives to his own question.



This problem also arises from considering the differences between
artistic performance and performance art (see
 SS2.2
 above). Noel Carroll has argued there is no definition of
"performance" in terms of necessary and sufficient
conditions, but only coincidental histories. In the 1960s, theater
performers became dissatisfied with the forms and institutions of
theater and found they could express those dissatisfactions more
readily in the context of gallery spaces in which they were allowed
the freedom to carry out theatrical experimentation. At the same time,
artists became dissatisfied with the forms and institutions of the
"artworld"--museums and galleries--and found
they could express those dissatisfactions in the form of performances
that--*coincidentally*--looked a lot like theatrical
performance (Carroll 1986a). But if this is the case, how can anyone
tell whether one has encountered a case of what Carroll called
"artistic performance" or of what he and many others have
called "performance art"? The natural answer is historical
and empirical: either it does not, nor should not, matter which one it
is or, if it does matter, then probably one can have an answer if one
can detect which institution is being challenged.



The most natural way to respond to the problem with a
spectator's ability to discern a theatrical performance is by
appeal to some sort of institution or framing device. But such an
answer to this problem has the following challenge to consider: in
Augusto Boal's so-called "invisible theater",
audiences are usually unaware that some of the people around them are
actors, acting out a prepared script or scenario, getting a
conversation going, and being prepared to leave their audience to
continue to discuss the issues raised by the actors, usually about
class distinctions and exploitation (Boal 1974 [1979: 143-147]).
The challenge is that actors in "invisible theater" have
eliminated the very institutions or frames that are assumed to be
available to spectators.



Boal calls this kind of activity "theater" because it
involves actors, scripts or scenarios, and audiences. One might argue
that in these circumstances there is not, in fact, an
*audience*, for they certainly do not recognize themselves as
such. If an audience member's self-recognition of her social
role, *qua* audience, is necessary for an event's
counting as theater--and not merely her presence in that
role--then Boal is simply mistaken in calling it theater,
although it might be "theatrical" in some tenuous
sense.



A substantial literature has developed concerning the question whether
the presence of an audience is necessary for a theatrical event. Paul
Woodruff defines theatrical performances as events in which someone
makes something "*worth watching*" (Woodruff 2008:
18). He also claims that nothing is a theatrical event--although
it may be a performance--unless there actually is someone
watching. However, one *could* define theater as the making of
something worth watching even if no one is watching it; and something
should tie these two thoughts together. Paul Thom (1992) does supply a
connection--because he, like some theater theorists, thinks of
theater in terms of speech acts and holds that theater addresses its
audience by uttering an imperative addressed to a particular subject
ordering them to attend to the one making the utterance. This seems,
at least, to require there be an *addressee* (but see D. Davies
2011: 173, for a contrary view). David Osipovich (2006) has held a
similar view to Thom's but for a different kind of reason.
Osipovich's view is based on the demonstrable fact that
performers respond to their audiences. They do this, for example, when
feeling the "heat" or the "chill" of an
audience and sometimes adjust their performance to fit the audience
they have at a given performance. It follows from this that any
performance will be different in some respects from any other
performance. A different view from these holds that a theatrical
performance is still a theatrical performance even if there is no
audience. This is because, although the performance may be
*prepared* with an audience in mind, the presence of the
audience is not required for the display of the routine that
constitutes the performance. It just happens not to be displayed
*to* anyone (Hamilton 2007; D. Davies 2011).



To respond adequately to Boal's challenge, views like
Thom's, Osipovich's, and possibly Woodruff's need to
answer a further question--whether an audience must not only be
present as an audience but also be aware of their role *qua*
audience. Yet, on the views of Hamilton and Davies, one need not ask
this question because audiences do not even need to be present in
order for there to be a performance. But, assuming we can credit
Boal's case of "invisible theatre" as a case of
theater, it suggests there are two classes of theatrical performances,
one in which spectators do not know that there is a performance at all
and one in which spectators *can* determine, either by explicit
appeal to or an implicit reliance upon an institution or a set of
framing social practices, that they are watching, hearing, smelling
(and perhaps tasting or touching) a theatrical performance that
engages them. And the latter is by far the larger of the two
classes.


### 3.2 Perception and Grasping a Performance



Moreover Boal's "invisible theatre" also suggests
two further things: one an observation; the other a question. The
observation is that the pull of Boal's case is felt because the
interaction between spectators and performers can be explained as
consisting only of the ordinary uses of one's sensory apparatus.
Second, Boal's "invisible theatre" prompts the
non-skeptical question, namely, how do spectators grasp and understand
the content of theatrical performances in either of the two
classes?



A straightforward answer to the question is given in terms of the
observation, namely, "by means of the senses". This answer
invokes an idea of human perception and attention that is
naturalistic, requiring us to appeal to nothing more than the basic
features of perception and attention that are studied empirically by
psychologists and neuropsychologists. This leaves room for
philosophers of theater--and other philosophers of art--to
discuss what the *objects* of attention and perception are in
theatrical performances and other forms of art. For example, one
suggestion that might be made with regard to theater and performances
is that the objects attended to in them are the gestures, sounds, and
speeches presented by performers and the props, sets, and so on,
displayed in the performance (Melinger and Levelt 2004; Novack and
Goldin-Meadow 2017); and the mechanism by which this happens is
deliverable by standard empirical psychology (Rutherford and Kuhlmeier
2013). Moreover, it will be useful to philosophers of art and
aesthetics to note that most perception is, as our colleagues in
neuroscience and neuroaesthetics say, "cross-modal",
involving information delivered by more than one sense modality
(Driver and Spence 2004; Kastner 2004; Nanay 2012; Seeley 2013). But,
assuming this is on the right track, what does a spectator then
*do* with her perceptions of gestures, sounds, and speeches, in
order to understand the content of the performance she has
witnessed?



One framework, or model, for understanding what is done when a
spectator grasps or understands a performance might be supplied by
using signaling theory, much as that theory has been developed as a
model for understanding social relations and social norms (Skyrms
2010; Wagner 2015, and see the entry on
 social norms).
 The rough idea is that a sender, in this case a performer, signals a
content to a receiver, the spectator, a content which the spectator
cannot see at the moment (e.g., how the performance will go, what to
expect next, what kind of thing to expect). And then the receiver
performs some action--and indeed that action can be as minimal as
theatrical spectators' actions often are--which indicates
to the performer whether or not they have understood the signal.
Perhaps unlike standard signaling games, the relevant actions in this
case are *reasoned to* by the spectators from the data they are
given in the performance. Accordingly, this enhanced model would
require spectators to update their expectations upon being presented
with new signals, or new data (Perfors et al. 2011). And because the
same data can be used to increase one's credence in an
expectation *and* to help one determine the right category in
which to place one's expectations, this model would also allow
for prior knowledge to play the kind of role in the understanding of a
performance that seems appropriate (Tenenbaum et al. 2011). It would
allow for both "bottom up" and "top down"
guidance of perception and reception that comports well with *a
priori* as well as empirical reasoning about theatrical and other
kinds of perception and reception. This would include
event-segmentation in narrative understanding and scene gist
detection, as two fairly low-level examples (Zacks et al. 2007; Larson
and Loschky 2009). It would also include such higher levels examples
as recognition of styles and genres in performance (Walton 1970; Saltz
2006; Liao and Protasi 2013).



None of the details in this view are settled, nor is there agreement
that it is even on the right track as a way to account for what it is
that spectators understand in watching a theatrical performance.
Jerrold Levinson has suggested an account for *musical*
understanding and Noel Carroll has put forth another for
understanding the *movies* created in the Hollywood system
(Levinson 1997; Carroll 1986a, 2008). Yet no alternative to the
account just sketched has been set forth with respect precisely to
*theatrical* performances.



Levinson's is a "concatenationist" account of what
it is to understand and enjoy music. In its boldest form, Levinson
writes, concatenationism is a conjunction of four propositions.



> 
> 1. Musical understanding centrally involves neither aural grasp of a
> large span of music as a whole, nor intellectual grasp of large-scale
> connections between parts; understanding music is centrally a matter
> of apprehending individual bits of music and immediate progression
> from bit to bit.
> 2. Musical enjoyment is had only in the successive parts of a piece
> of music, and not in the whole as such, or in relationships of parts
> widely separated in time.
> 3. Musical form is centrally a matter of cogency of succession,
> moment to moment and part to part.
> 4. Musical value rests wholly on the impressiveness of individual
> parts and the cogency of the successions between them, and not on
> features of large-scale form per se; the worthwhileness of experience
> of music relates directly only to the former. (Levinson 1997:
> 13-14)
> 
> 
> 



Levinson's account is developed and refined in considerable
detail over the course of his book. And there are two features of this
account that bear special mention here. One is the fact that each
listener must update her expectations about what is going to happen in
the music at each moment of listening. The other is that no
large-scale musical structures are invoked in this story--and in
this latter regard it is, perhaps, best described as a *bottom-up
only* tale of musical perception.



Carroll's view is an "erotetic" (or
question-and-answer) theory of movie comprehension. The shape of this
view is as follows: the data a movie-goer encounters generate the
questions which the movie-goer consciously or unconsciously asks, the
movie-goer waits for new data that supplies answers to those
questions, and then the movie-goer updates and comprehends. What makes
the view distinctive--and what has generated some controversy
about it--is what the view depends on: the creation of so-called
"Hollywood style" film conventions. By means of those
conventions the problem of attention focus is resolved. For the
conventions themselves (for example, variable framing) are the very
devices in which specatorial attention is directed (Carroll 1985:
188). This set of effects has resulted in what is rightly called the
"tyranny of movies" with respect to visual attention
(Loschky et al. 2015) and is clearly a *top-down* theory.



However, the problem of focusing spectator attention looms large as a
problem in theatrical performances and is one of the crucial questions
that a theater company faces in developing a performance (Chaikin
1972). The data are presented by the performance, but the data are
*whatever* the spectator experiences. They may be data about
events that are transpiring outside of and prior to the performance.
They may be about the *kind* of events transpiring in or
outside of the performance. Rather than asking questions and waiting
for the performance to deliver data to supply answers to those
questions, spectators are engaged in updating their expectations from
the onset of the data. Crucial to this process is that a spectator
must determine where to focus her attention. Spectators enter a venue
of presentation with at least some expectations already in place.
Spectators who are experienced may have quite a few expectations about
the performance but, if they are not experienced theater-goers, they
will have very few of such expectations. What is needed is a model
that is consistent with at the least the first observation about the
"concatenationist" theory of musical comprehension that
Levinson presented--the need to update in the moment. It should
also be consistent with much of Carroll's "erotetic"
theory of the comprehension of Hollywood Style movies, but it needs to
be wider in its application than Carroll's view, which seems
tailored to movies where the attention focal point is much easier to
manage than it is in the theater. And, it should offer an explanation
of how a spectator determines the *kind* of performance with
which she is confronted.


## 4. Evaluating a Theatrical Performance



Against the background in
 SS2.2
 and
 SS3,
 it seems clear that to evaluate an instance of theater demands a
decision on the part of the evaluator: to evaluate either the text (as
an instance of dramatic literature), the performance or production (as
an instance of a public event), or both of them in relation to each
other. If both, the evaluator is able to consider the intersection
between performance or production and text, to assess the performance
or production in relation to the text *and* to assess the text
against the performance of it. Despite their disagreements on the
ontology of the art form and the pattern such an ontology should take,
criticism of both text and performance is what Carroll, Saltz, and
Hamilton all appear to have in mind (Saltz, Hamilton, and Carroll
2001). Moreover, this appears to be congruent with the practices of
critics as well.



Before discussing how this is to be done, however, there are two major
issues about criticism, or "evaluation", of any works of
art that should be described. For both of them will affect how to
understand the evaluation of theatrical performances.


### 4.1 Theoretical or Practical Criticism



The first major question concerning artistic evaluations is whether
they are to be understood as a process of theoretical or of practical
reasoning. The majority view among analytic philosophers of art now
favors the former, and their view is that the conclusion of any act of
reason-giving is, perhaps must be, a proposition, something to which
one might give some degree of credence (or assent to believing) if the
reasoning is good. But recent work has revived an earlier view, due to
Arnold Isenberg (1949), that descriptions plus interpretations
("characterizations") guide us to evaluations understood
as "perceptions". The objection to this view is that 



> 
> 
> if critics simply guide us in perception, then what they do
> *not* do is give us a reason which supports an ascription of
> overall value to an artwork. Instead, they simply tell us something
> about how *they* see the work, and try--by whatever means
> necessary--to get us to see it in the same way. This, many have
> argued, fails to qualify as *reasoning*. (Cross 2017: 302)
> 
> 
> 



Robert Hopkins has responded to this objection by recognizing that
*perception* is a more complex affair in the case of
"perceiving works of art" than are those perceptions we
ordinarily have occasion to experience. The important thing is that
perceptions of works of art have a kind of conceptual content that
requires justification--of the sort that critics can supply by
appeal to premises about the work (Hopkins 2007). Another attempt to
respond to the objection is to argue that criticism provides us with
reasons--premises--aimed at getting us *to act*
toward works of art in ways that might best be construed
"particular *acts* of looking, contemplating, listening,
reflecting, or otherwise engaging with the artwork" (Cross 2017:
304, emphasis added).



But suppose there is a difference between assessments of the value of
works of art and assessments of whatever it is we might *do*
with respect to works of art. Could it not be that either of those, as
*aims* of reasoning, might be legitimate? Those who reject the
"practical vs. theoretical reasoning" distinction on the
grounds that all reasoning is means/ends, and who thus hold that
whether a bit of reasoning is good or bad cannot be determined without
first determining what the reasoner's end is, will find
*both* Isenberg's (or the "Isenbergean") view
and the objection to it considerably less interesting. Applied to
evaluations of theatrical performances, *qua* performances, we
also have no reason to choose between these various forms of
reasoning.


### 4.2 Aesthetic and Artistic Evaluations



The second major question about evaluation concerns whether there are
any non-aesthetic artistic values. Behaviorally there is a clear
difference between aesthetic and non-aesthetic artistic values,
indicated by the fact that appeals to aesthetic responses do not
explain many individual's interest in works of art (Carroll
1986b; Stecker 2006). There is disciplinary support for a distinction
here: the study of the felt quality of perceptions of the senses is
conducted by cognitive scientists and neuroscientists, while the study
of the historical practices of art making are studied by
anthropologists and art-historians. But this behavioral way of
remarking the distinction still needs an explanation. We might explain
this distinction by appeal to a metaphysical difference between
aesthetic properties and artistic properties. Robert Stecker's
epistemic way of explaining the distinction is by means of proposing a
"test"--as he calls it--for whether an
evaluative verdict regarding a work of art appeals to an aesthetic or
an artistic value:



> 
> 
> artistic value derives from what artists successfully intend to do
> *in* their works as mediated by functions of the art forms and
> genres to which the works belong. [So] does one need to understand the
> work to appreciate its being valuable in that way? If so, it is an
> artistic value. If not, it is not. (Stecker 2012: 357)
> 
> 
> 



This position has had its detractors (Lopes 2011; Dodd 2013), but
something quite like it has also had defenders who have argued, for
example, against the view of "appreciation as liking" and
in favor of "appreciation as sizing up" (Carroll 2016).
Each of these notions of appreciation appeals to David Hume's
claim that "good sense" is necessary for avoiding
prejudice and for being able to discern the relevant features of a
work. But, as Hume saw, good sense is not essential to what Carroll
calls "appreciation as liking". Whereas, Carroll notes, it
is both essential and crucial to "appreciation as sizing
up".



The crucial thing to notice about this distinction between aesthetic
and artistic value is that it moves us away from thinking of the value
of a work of art as residing in the experience it might provide us (a
view that David Davies has called "aesthetic empiricism")
and suggests, at the very least, that we do not look only to
experience for the source of values in a work of art. One place to
look is suggested by the position of Stecker himself, who requires
what he calls "understanding" a work of art by means of
examining 



> 
> 
> what artists successfully intend to do *in* their works as
> mediated by functions of the art forms and genres to which the works
> belong. (Stecker 2012: 357) 
> 
> 
> 



Or we might look at what Noel Carroll has called "an
appreciative heuristic applied to art" which requires one to




> 
> 
> 1) identify [a work of art's] intended purpose or purposes and
> 2) determine the adequacy or appropriateness of its form--its
> formal choices--to the realization or articulation of its
> intended purpose (or purposes). (Carroll 2016: 4-5) 
> 
> 
> 



Each of these suggestions hold that *artistic* evaluations are
assessments of the *artistic achievements* that the work has
made. And we might propose that *aesthetic* evaluations of the
very same works (and much else in the world as well) could turn out to
be, as Paul Ziff has argued, the registration of *preferences for
the experiences* provided by the work (or other object) (Ziff 1979
[1984]). This analysis already seems to be adopted by Stecker (2006)
in what he calls the "broad" analysis of aesthetic
pleasure, which he endorses.



If we follow Ziff's suggestion about aesthetic verdicts, then
just about anything could be grounds for *aesthetic*
evaluations of a theatrical performance. But Ziff's suggestion
may not be the right idea about aesthetic verdicts. According to
Jerrold Levinson, Hume appealed to what he called "ideal
judges" to resolve the puzzling conflict between the fact that
there are demonstrably better and worse artworks and the fact that our
tastes--what we prefer--differ with respect to works of art
(Hume 1757). Levinson, who refines and defends Hume's solution
to this conflict, notes that if we have good reason to appeal to
"ideal critics", who possess good taste and who can
discern which objects are worthy of aesthetic attention, both of the
fact claims that appear to be in conflict could turn out to be true.
And there are real advantages in Hume's solution: it seems to
square with the fact we are able to learn from others, others whose
judgment we trust, and so whose good taste should lead us to choose
the right works of art; and it also squares with the fact we do seem
to acquire "taste" from following the judgments of others
whom we trust.



The "ideal critics" solution has its problems, however.
Briefly they concern three things. First, does the artistic
appreciation of a work of art depend on first-hand acquaintance with
that work of art? Whether there is independent empirical evidence that
this appeal--to the need for first person experience in order to
support any verdictive judgment--is a vexed problem. Second, how
does the ideal critic come to her/his views in the first place? It is
either by a process of learning from others whom *they* regard
as ideal critics or it is by a process independent of the existence of
ideal critics. If the latter, then we don't need the
"ideal critics;" all we have to do is undergo that
independent process ourselves. If the former, then we have a either a
"vicious infinite regress" with no rational starting place
in the chain or we rely on the testimony of others (which in this area
is also vexed). And, third, what is the case for the claim that there
*are* "ideal judges" in the first place (Ross
2008)? Is there any reason to believe there are any?



The attractiveness of Ziff's point of view is that it allows for
a quite different form of solution to the puzzle created by our two
facts, one that gives each fact a different kind of explanation. The
first claim--that there are demonstrably better and worse
artworks--asserts the *artistic* merits of a work of art
by reference to the *achievements* made or not made in the
particular work of art. Whether such achievements are or are not made
in the work is an objective question of fact, and so could be made on
behalf of everyone. The second claim--that our tastes differ with
respect to works of art--asserts the *aesthetic* value of
a particular work of art to some individual or group on the basis of
the aesthetic qualities that that individual or group
*prefers*. Since preferences are usually subjective or
sometimes inter-subjective, these assessments are made only on behalf
of particular individuals or groups.



One advantage of this solution is that it squares with our standard
ways of dealing with the lack of *artistic* value of forgeries.
For, despite the fact forgeries may provide *more*
"appreciative experiences worth having" than even the
originals may, they may still be objectively less valuable, in the
same way that a piece of property may be less valuable, from a
realtor's point of view, than some potential homeowners think it
is because they feel a preference to own it (Carroll 2016). Another
advantage is that it also squares with everyday kinds of remark about
the aesthetic value of some works of art being "merely
opinions", because those comments are explicitly about what we
like, and are not really about what is better or worse. Claims that
are genuinely about what is better or worse in a work of art rest on
considerations of the achievements in them, not on our varying
preferences for or against them. Moreover, this solution is better
positioned to explain why some works of art do not even aim to provide
high-quality aesthetic experiences. And, finally, it results in no
contradiction between either finding that a work is good but not to
one's liking or finding that a work is bad but is something one
really likes, for example a so-called "guilty pleasure"
(Carroll 2016).



Applied to theatrical performances the distinction between aesthetics
and artistry seems solid enough even if we have no final determination
of how to explain the distinction. Yet, no matter how we work that
out, it seems that spectators and critics will need to provide and
explain a rather complicated set of things; for now it appears they
must provide *both* aesthetic and artistic evaluations. This is
made more complicated in those cases in which the artistic
achievements a work makes *do* consist in provision of
preferred experiences. Moreover, focusing just on the artistic
appreciation of theatrical performances and accepting the achievement
story about what the artistic value of a work of art is, there are
still two further tasks. If theatrical texts and performances are
works belonging to different forms of art, then artistic evaluations
of theater will still come in two kinds, namely, the achievements of
dramatic texts, and the achievements of performances.


### 4.3 Achievements in Theater



A given piece of literary writing "for the stage" may be
either a work of dramatic literature or a script, either a writing to
be read for certain literary features and values or a writing to be
used in a quite different way. That a bit of writing functions as a
work of *dramatic* literature does not alter the fact that the
relevant effects, features, and values to be analyzed and examined are
exactly those that are analyzed and examined with respect to any other
narrative literary work. Crucially, a work of dramatic literature does
not require theatrical performance for the realization of those
effects, features, or values (Worthen 2007, Hamilton 2009b).



This way of construing writing "for the stage" does not
preclude what may be called a "literary theater". If we
think of scripts as "scores for action" (Saltz 1991b), we
may also think of them as providing particular orderings of the
information an audience will encounter (Stoppard 1999). Some scripts
do this to excellent effect; in theater parlance, they "have
legs". Like some gymnastic or jazz routines, they are frequently
repeated and approximated because they yield performances that mark
great achievements. Writing may contribute to this achievement for
theater because it allows greater control over the flow and order of
information than do complex scenarios crafted for improvisational
sequences or even than do scenarios and language passed down from
performer to performer over generations. Whatever the case may be with
respect to the value of scripted performances over performances
generated in other ways, however, a script driven theater is likely to
be a literary theater simply because it will produce some written
scripts that can--indeed will--also be taken to function as
works of literature.



Literary analyses of a work of dramatic literature that happens to get
used as a script may or may not be useful for performers. The content
of a theatrical performance is not fully governed, deliverable, nor
retrievable by a written text. Texts--which are relatively
"thin"--are underdetermined by performances (Ball
1983; Worthen 2007, but see Goodman 1968: 210-211 for a contrary
view). If this is right, a quite different set of standards for
measuring the achievements of performances, *per se*, is
required.



As of this date, very little progress has been made in philosophy on
what those particular standards might be. And perhaps that debate is
best left to practicing critics, performers, and performance or
theater theorists. But some philosophical headway can be made by
considering what is required for assessing the achievements of
performances.



To ask what achievements are possible in theatrical performances
requires that we understand what an achievement is in the first place.
One source of thinking about this will certainly come from empirical
work on achievements in education--correlating them with other
factors, but not specifying what achievement, *per se*,
consists in (for example, Burke and Sass 2013). Another source will
undoubtedly come from those concerned with 
 virtue epistemology,
 virtue ethics, or perhaps perfectionist
 accounts of value. Gwen Bradford has examined the basic idea of
"achievements" in several publications (Bradford 2013,
2015, 2016). Bradford describes achievements as requiring two
things:



> 
> 
> First, achievements are characterized by a process-product structure:
> all achievements have a *process*, which culminates in a
> *product*. Second, the process of an achievement is
> *difficult*. Something must be difficult to some sufficient
> degree in order to be an achievement; after all, if running a marathon
> and writing a novel were easy, we wouldn't be inclined to call
> them achievements. ...[and] for now we will suppose that an
> activity is difficult just in case it requires effort from the agent
> engaging in the activity. (Bradford 2013: 205)
> 
> 
> 



She ultimately denies that it might make a difference if the product
is independently valuable, on the grounds that at least as a matter of
codifying our everyday assessments of achievement we do count
things--running a marathon, scoring well on an
examination--as achievements even though they have less
independent value than, say, saving thirty lives from otherwise
certain death by fire, or finding a cure for polio (Bradford 2016:
797). Accordingly, if one is to mark achievements in theatrical
performance, one must state clearly what the process of preparing a
performance involves, why the tasks undertaken in that process are not
easy, and how these achievements are to be noticed and assessed.



In preparing and performing a routine, performers make choices
about what *to utter* and what *to do*. Performers also
choose *how* to utter what is uttered and *how* to do
whatever it is they do. And, performers determine what to do and how
to do it *for every moment* of the performance. These
decisions, so far, concern what each performer utters and does
independently of other performers, but performers usually do not make
even these decisions in isolation from each other. Another aspect of
these decisions requires concerted, perhaps collective, effort. Any
company needs to decide where they wish to direct attention at each
moment and how they will do that. Some of those decisions involve
thinking about such things as how performers are situated relative to
each other and to the audience in the performance space. Many
decisions that determine how attention gets directed involve deciding
the manner and timing of each performer's utterances in relation to
the content, manner, and timing of the utterances of other performers.
Similarly, to regulate the attention of audiences, companies think
about how what each performer is doing relates to what the other
performers are
 doing.[2]
 Clearly, none of these tasks, especially the ones demanding
coordination among the performers, is particularly easy.



Beyond this, spectators must be able to determine the style in which a
performance occurs in order to be guided to relevantly correct
expectations. Consequently, performers must make stylistic choices as
well. For it is actually sequences of features (resulting from
sequences of choices) that give shape to a performance over time and
guide spectators' expectations. This will be so if the sequence
is a convention governed by some overall goal the performers have. And
again, none of these tasks, especially since stylistic choices demand
coordination among the performers, is particularly easy to succeed
 at.[3]



This leads to a set of ideas about how spectators measure success and,
in particular, what they are able to say about performers, sets, and
overall *mise-en-scene*, when they detect
*failures.* If a spectator is unaware of a convention--a
sequence of choices governed by some overall goal--as a
convention, and if the presence of that convention is responsible for
the aspects of the work that are present to be appreciated, then that
spectator simply cannot appreciate that work, at least not for those
aspects. This is partly because appreciation depends on having some
level of understanding of what one is experiencing. Understanding
requires spectators to offer hypotheses regarding what performers are
up to in a performance, to test those hypotheses against the actual
details of the performance, usually as it unfolds, and to assess the
achievement the performance manifests given its aims and its context.
Only spectators who understand performances and their features are
able to offer the relevant kinds of hypotheses.



Such spectators are able to detect and explain failures of skill. A
suitably backgrounded spectator who thereby understands the
conventions and styles in play will know what to watch for. A
performer will fail who does not exhibit the relevant features in
voice, speech, mood, movement, or action. Such a failure may be a
result of lack of skill. A spectator who understands performances and
their features will not only notice this but will also be able to
explain this failure due to lack of skill to other spectators.



At the level of style, failures in performance can occur in at least
three ways. They can occur if some of the features grouped together
into conventions do not clearly and coherently induce the
effects--the goals--at which they appear to be aimed. Or they may
occur if the performers do not understand what effects the conventions
they have adopted actually induce and, so, have made choices quite at
odds with their own self-conscious aims. They may also occur if the
aims of the performers are unclear and they have selected a mix of
conventions that is confusing to an audience. If a spectator is
tracking the adequacy of hypothesis about what performers are doing
and she understands performances and their features, she will notice
these failures and be able to explain them to others as well.



These are the basic achievements a theatrical performance aims at; and
these are the kinds of successes and failures that some audience members detect.
Artistic evaluations of theatrical performances *qua*
performances are determinations that achievements of these sorts are
made or not made.