In an interview titled "The Janus-Face of Politicized Art," Jacques Ranciere describes his methodology as follows: "I always try to think in terms of horizontal distributions, combinations between systems of possibilities, not in terms of surface and substratum. Where one searches for the hidden beneath the apparent, a position of…

Drama/theater education lives in the tension of being a discipline rooted in the fine arts and humanities that has been transplanted into the social science of education. This paper suggests that a more aesthetic and philosophical reflection on what drama/theater does and can do in educational settings frees us from the scientized and instrumental…

I argue in this paper that the ability of art to express a holistic experience of life challenges the abstractness and formulaic tendencies of some philosophical ethics. The paper examines the presentation of death in three poet-playwrights--Sophocles's "Oedipus Rex," Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and John Donne's "Meditation XVII." Sophocles's…

James Hamilton's "The Art of Theater" is an outstanding contribution to aesthetics that fills an important gap, since treatments of theater have been much less frequent than those of other art forms. Moreover, the book's appearance requires aestheticians of many stripes to engage with questions about theater because it raises issues of ontology,…

James Hamilton has written a book on the philosophy of theater that is admirable for its analytic clarity and for the wide knowledge of theatrical practice that it brings to bear on philosophical questions. The book's main thesis is that theatrical performances are not presentations or executions or completions of texts, but the meaning of this…

In this article, the author considers Hamilton's idea of "basic understanding" of a theatrical performance. The author finds it hard to grasp this conception. He worries, although perhaps only on the basis of misunderstanding, that Hamilton's conception of the basic understanding of theatrical performances will not do the work he wants it to do as…

James Hamilton's "The Art of Theater" is a careful and imaginative scrutiny of the art of theater done at the very highest level. In this article, the author comments on a number of issues raised by Hamilton's work. These include: the definition of theatrical enactment; the place of pretending and imagining in theatrical performance; the nature of…

In this essay, Hamilton responds to criticisms of his book "The Art of Theater" (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007). Acknowledging that he expected that the central proposals in "The Art of Theater" would seem a little strange to philosophers, he reiterates his belief that the three general facts of any theatrical performance are its presentation, its…

"Tragedy," both in what the author calls the strict and nuclear ancient Greek sense of the term (which does not imply that tragedy is clearly and distinctly defined, even in ancient Greece) and in the looser, derived sense of the word, has a long and compelling history. It is not only true that tragedy as practice and performance has a…

One among the many virtues of James Hamilton's book, "The Art of Theater," is that it challenges the hegemony of the classical paradigm in the performing arts by questioning its applicability to theatrical performances. He argues instead for an "ingredients model" of the relationship between a literary script and a theatrical work. According to…

In "The Art of Theater," the author proposes and explains a claim that many theater people hold true in some form but have defended in a manner that has had almost no success outside discussions among themselves. The claim proposed is that, in an unqualified way, theater is a form of art. By that the author means theatrical performances are "what…

There is a long history of debate over what opera is. Since it's more or less formal beginning in the sixteenth century as a reconstruction of ancient drama, opera as an art form has been controversial. The received understanding--emphasized by the genre's founders and in periodic efforts at reforming the standards of composition and…

For teachers of arts subjects, questions about justification can be tiresome in the same way that contemporary aestheticians may feel fatigue about defining art. Providing justification can feel more like an exercise in rhetoric than theoretical enquiry, induced more by political necessity than intellectual challenge. If the value of the arts is…

Author defines the nature of the crisis in language; relates this crisis to a similar one in the life of an earlier civilization; and advances suggestions how present difficulties can be faced. (CB)

It is widely assumed that the theatre, particularly theatre for children, can and should teach. It is also widely assumed that the theatre can and does do harm, real harm, especially to children. And it is universally assumed that even if the theatre does not teach, it should do no harm. This author believes that these assumptions are true: that…