How Does Theatre Do Theory?  --

Methodologies of Performance Philosophy

Featuring: Laura Cull (University of Surrey), Kélina Gotman (King’s College) & Tony Fisher (Royal Central School of Speech and Drama); Chair: Broderick Chow (Brunel University). 

 In celebration of the new Palgrave Macmillan series 'Performance Philosophy.'  

Brunel Performance Research Seminar Series: Symposium

16:oo   GMT

The contribution of philosophy to theatre and performance studies has been considerable. Theatre and performance scholars draw on the works of philosophers (especially those in the continental tradition) in order to ‘read’ a specific example, and often, simply to provide critical ballast for our arguments. However, this relationship between philosophy and theatre often seems to be entirely one-way; theatre scholars apply theory, rather than doing theory. In his Handbook of Inaesthetics, philosopher Alain Badiou begins from the axiom that the event of theatre is ‘an event of thought’, and furthermore, that theatre itself thinks. But how does theatre think? In this roundtable discussion we therefore ask how the methods of theatre and performance practice might be seen as philosophical methods. How can acting, directing, dramaturgy, composition, scenography, or improvisation philosophize? Can taxonomies of theatre and performance such as comedy, tragedy, or farce provide new methods of doing philosophy? And if theatre and performance itself thinks, what are the implications for hierarchies of knowledge in the academy and beyond?

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