Time and Space on the Stage

Abstract

“Time and Space on the Stage” by Arnold Aronson looks at the way in which the creation of space on the stage also creates a perception and understanding of time. Much narrative and illusionistic theatre creates a situation in which the time depicted on the stage is different from that of the audience, and yet the performers and spectators share essentially the same space. This temporal disjuncture was so problematic for European Renaissance theoreticians that it led to the invention of the unities of time and place, but the problem can be seen as stemming from the physical organization of space on the stage as well as painting of the period. The essay looks the ways in the very different ways that time and space intersected in Ancient Greece and in the European medieval theatre. The essay then examines the contemporary phenomenon of video and projection on the stage and how even video projection of live action can disrupt time not only between the auditorium and stage but within the stage itself through a disruption of spatial parameters. In the process of examining the space-time nexus the author refers to Newton's diffentiation of absolute and relative time, Henri Bergson's observations on duration, and Aristotle's notion of space as a container.