The Art of Theater [Hardcover]

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• Identifies the elements that make a performance a work of art
  
• Looks at the competing views of the text-performance relationships
  
• An important and original contribution to the aesthetics and philosophy of theater

Part I: The Basics:.

1. The Emergence of the Art of Theater: Background and History.

1.1 The Backstory: 1850s to 1950s.

1.2 The Decisive Influences: Brecht, Artaud, Grotowski.

1.3 The Decisive Years: 1961 to 1985.

1.4 The Final Threads: Absorption of New Practices into the Profession and the Academy.

2. Theatrical Performance is an Independent Form of Art.

2.1 Theatrical Performance as Radically Independent of Literature.

2.2 Theatrical Performance as a Form of Art.

3. Methods and Constraints.

3.1 Idealized Cases that Help Focus on Features Needing Analysis.

3.2 Three General Facts about Theatrical Performances and the Constraints they Impose on any Successful Account of Theatrical Performances.

4. Theatrical Enactment: The Guiding Intuitions.

4.1 Enactment: Something Spectators and Performers do.

4.2 The Crucial Concept: “Attending to Another”.

4.3 What it is to “Occasion” Responses.

4.4 Audience Responses: Willing Suspension of Disbelief, Acquired Beliefs, or Acquired Abilities?.

4.5 Relativizing the Account by Narrowing its Scope to Narrative PelӋ