Theater History and Practice: An Alternative View of Drama

Abstract

My intention here is not to carry out an exhaustive study of the drama of a particular place or historical moment. Rather, by referring to certain concrete aspects of theater practice, I hope to trace the general lines of a methodology which should not only provide new insights into the nature and function of theater, but also reintegrate theater and dramatic literature into the social context from which they have been so unnecessarily removed. I would like to slhow how the theater and theatrical process can be viewed as systems of signification which form a rhetoric that describes the social configuration in which the theater of a given epoch develops. Attempts to separate the theater from its social matrix for the sake of aesthetic analysis or to simplify the practical training of actors have led to adumbrated and misleading conceptions of theatrical art. At best, the separation of the aesthetic, social and practical elements of the theatrical event has produced valuable bits of information about one or the other of these areas without ever