Interrogating Theatrical Practice

Abstract

Critics, reviewers, scholars – and even theatre practitioners – tend to analyse, review, discuss and compare scripts and productions as though they were the ahistorical products of the determinable intentions of playwrights and directors. Plays both on the page and in production are treated as though they emerged from a cultural and material vacuum, and “contain” inherent meanings that are accurately and objectively inter-pretable by any audience or reader, anywhere. Something similar can be said of the material conditions in and through which theatre is produced by practitioners and reproduced by audiences and critics – such things as theatre training, architecture, budgets, publicity, organizational and funding structures, and the processes and practices of directors, designers, administrators, actors, and technicians. These structures and practices are treated as the neutral and value-free “tools” of the trade, applicable with equal ease and appropriateness to any kind of theatre, and adaptable to any message or meaning, regardless of the time, place, or cultural context within which they are applied. But as many of the contributors to this issue demonstrate, such is not the case.