SHAKSPER 2000: Re: What is truth in theatre?

From: Hardy M. Cook (editor@ws.bowiestate.edu)
Date: 04/03/00 

The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0682  Monday, 3 April 2000.

[1]     From:   Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
        Date:   Friday, 31 Mar 2000 17:46:13 -0800
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0651 Re: What is truth in theatre?

[2]     From:   Karen Peterson-Kranz <tlb@kuentos.guam.net>
        Date:   Mon, 3 Apr 2000 10:18:20 +1000
        Subj:   Re: SHK 11.0651 Re: What is truth in theatre?


[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Sean Lawrence <seanlawrence@writeme.com>
Date:           Friday, 31 Mar 2000 17:46:13 -0800
Subject: 11.0651 Re: What is truth in theatre?
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0651 Re: What is truth in theatre?

Clifford Stetner writes:

> If it
> could be demonstrated that the particular staging of a particular play,
> regardless of any aesthetic or internal textual (if such a thing really
> exists) meaning, performs a specific function in the circulation of
> cultural poetics (Greenblatt) then we can determine not only what is
> being said, but why it is being said to these people at this time, and
> that, for me, is the significant truth of it, because it can then be
> used to illuminate analogous functions in our own culture to which our
> proximity might otherwise blind us.

Too bad the aesthetic keeps polluting the political.

Cheers,
Seán.

[2]-------------------------------------------------------------
From:           Karen Peterson-Kranz <tlb@kuentos.guam.net>
Date:           Mon, 3 Apr 2000 10:18:20 +1000
Subject: 11.0651 Re: What is truth in theatre?
Comment:        Re: SHK 11.0651 Re: What is truth in theatre?

Thank you, thank you, for saying what I have been longing to say about
this most irritating thread on SHAKSPER...and saying it eloquently.

Cheers,

Karen Peterson-Kranz
University of Guam

>I find questions like this a little annoying.  They are ostensibly
>posted to generate discussion, but more often than not, they generate
>frustration.  One wants to respond to a question that seems of great
>import, but, because the terms are left vague and general, one hesitates
>to offer a long discourse, only to be told: "oh, I really meant the
>Elizabethan theater," or "I meant truth in a metaphysical rather than
>aesthetic sense."
>
>Such questions require a Socratic dialogue which would begin by a
>discussion of the terms.  For instance, isn't 'truth in theatre'
>something of an oxymoron?  That being said, if compelled to answer an
>oxymoronic question, I would offer a platitude: truth in theater is
>found where one looks for it.  I look to the function that it performs
>in the culture that stages it.  Elizabethan theater for instance seems
>to have inherited the functions of a number of obsolete cultural
>institutions like the mystery cycles and the seasonal festivals that
>were disappearing largely in the face of Puritan(ist) reforms.  If it
>could be demonstrated that the particular staging of a particular play,
>regardless of any aesthetic or internal textual (if such a thing really
>exists) meaning, performs a specific function in the circulation of
>cultural poetics (Greenblatt) then we can determine not only what is
>being said, but why it is being said to these people at this time, and
>that, for me, is the significant truth of it, because it can then be
>used to illuminate analogous functions in our own culture to which our
>proximity might otherwise blind us.
>
>Clifford Stetner


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