Faith in a practical epistemology: on collective creativity in theatre

Abstract

All plays are workshopped affairs. If concerted attempts have been made to distinguish an individually scripted play-text from one culled in a rehearsal room, this has been to reinforce a distinction between product of an auteur from that produced through a group. However, theatre necessitates collaboration if it is to achieve its destined fruition on stage. While insistence upon a play as product of a singular creator may serve to authenticate its textual authority, it cannot satisfactorily explain its affect and agency in-and-through processes of production and reception. As Loren Kruger points out in The National Stage: Theatre and Cultural Legitimation in England, France, and America, theatre as a hybrid form exposes the limits of (1992:22). This seeming weakness, Kruger argues, is also primary source of strength of theatre. Kruger's argument, however, extends beyond privative valorisation of singularly authored plays versus those that are collectively made. In attempting to problematise and render erroneous this distinction, Kruger challenges authority invested in textual object in which band of impure autonomy continues to mark and to mar legitimacy of theatre studies in shadow of monument of literary academy (Kruger 1992:187).