Michael Y. Bennett

Patrick Bixby's Nietzsche and Irish Modernism is at once both a penetrating investigation into literary modernism and specific Irish writers (particularly, George Bernard Shaw, W. B. Yeats, and James Joyce), as well as an expansive cultural history of Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. Bixby does a brilliant job of weaving these two strands into a single coherent, and very persuasive, thesis: that Nietzsche "played a significant, even decisive, role in the emergence and evolution of a distinctly Irish brand of literary modernism" (pp. 2–3). While modernism, and even Irish modernism, have scores of books on the subject, and while the same can be said of Nietzsche and his philosophy, this seemingly odd pairing of... Read More.

To investigate theatre and its in-between spaces, Between the Lines: A Philosophy of Theatre introduces some basic ideas about coherence and correspondence and, much more prominently, conversations surrounding subsumption and distinctness to better describe theatre as an art form. Instead of limiting the concept and use of subsumption to suggest that constituent parts are subsumed within a distinct whole (as is done in philosophical semantics, from where subsumption comes), in this book, the concept is broadened to claim that many of the properties of a theatrical character and/or a theatrical world are subsumed within the text. Unlike how fiction has a narrator that generally describes the properties of literary characters, theatre (particularly for the theatregoer) is largely devoid of distinct properties attributed to theatrical characters. Outside of the fact that character x says “_______” and does _______, with its corresponding properties being, character x has the properties of being-the-speaker-of-“_______” and being-the-doer-of-_______, there are little-to-no specified properties regarding theatrical characters and/or theatrical worlds. In thinking about the conceptual empty spaces of theatre, this book investigates three main topics: (1) theatre as an art form, (2) the properties of theatrical characters and theatrical worlds (i.e., distinct properties, subsumed properties, and truthful properties), and (3) the difference between truth and truthfulness in the theatre. Ultimately, this book aims to offer the first (contemporary) systematic account of theatre—thinking about theatre metaphysically, epistemologically, and ethically (the last, only in terms of value).

Seymour Chatman’s well-known essay, “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (and Visa Versa),” compares two features in narrative—descriptive passages and point of view—to address his stated aim, which is to highlight “the peculiar powers of the two media,” referring to novels and film (1980: 123). Using Chatman’s essay as a jumping-off point, the aims of this essay are to explain how theatre compares and contrasts with fiction and film, and to investigate how narrative works in theatre. This essay is broken into three basic parts. The first two parts of the essay examine Chatman’s ideas around novels and film and then this chapter applies those ideas to theatre. In the third part, this chapter examines the role imagination plays in all three media, most especially in theatre. Specifically, this chapter claims that unlike in fiction and film where the point of view is determined by the narrator and director, respectively, in theatre point of view is left up to the audience, and that there is a much less prominent role for descriptive passages in theatre (than in fiction and film). Finally, while reading fiction operates in imagination, and film requires little imagination, this chapter claims that theatre requires the audience to synthesize imagination and the processing of concrete objects.

Bringing together the latest research and perspectives in the fields of analytic philosophy and theater studies, this collection of essays provides a reflection of how these two fields have emerged and intersected in the twenty-first century. With contributions from leading scholars in the field and emerging voices, Philosophy, Analytic Aesthetics, and Theater provides new insights into the field of philosophy and theater. Structured in three parts, Part I, "Epistemology," explores perspectives on theater as a knowledge-making system, the conventions of theater, and reflects on current practice that engages with aesthetics. Part II, "Politics and Ethics," draws on an evaluation of the ways in which theater and democracy interact, as well as the current conversations around ethical issues within the performance space. And finally, Part III, "Theater and Other Arts," takes a look at the ways in which philosophy has interacted with the art of dance, musical theater, and film, looking beyond the traditional confines of actors, stage, and audience. Edited by Michael Y. Bennett, these essays introduce the latest research in philosophy and theater in an accessible and engaging manner. The book is ideal for advanced undergraduate and postgraduate students, scholars of theater and performance studies, and philosophy students and scholars with an interest in theater.

As a version of creationism—which claims that fictional charac- ters are created by authors who write characters into existence by penning their names in their works—abstract creationism claims that fictional objects are abstract entities. However, I want to modify the conception of what constitutes a fictional object. In short, I am going to give a defense of abstract creationism that offers answers to the questions, as outlined by Stuart Brock, of ontology, identity, and plenitude by developing a claim that—except for rigidly referring proper names—fictional terms and nonfictional terms are all abstract objects.Working off the debates surrounding abstract creationism, and with a nod to D. M. Armstrong's...

In this unique study, Michael Y. Bennett re-reads four influential modern plays alongside their contemporary debates between rationalism and empiricism to show how these monumental achievements were thoroughly a product of their time, but also universal in their epistemological quest to understand the world through a rational and/or empirical model. Bennett contends that these plays directly engage in their contemporary epistemological debates rather than through the lens of a specific philosophy. Besides producing new, insightful readings of heavily-studied plays, the interdisciplinary (historical, philosophical, dramatic, theatrical, and literary) frame Bennett constructs allows him to investigate one of the most fundamental questions of the theatre - how does meaning get made? Bennett suggests that the key to unlocking theatrical meaning is exploring the tension between empirical and rational modes of understanding. The book concludes with an interview with performance artist Coco Fusco.

David Friedell has recently discussed the relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of art, specifically in music. Friedell claims that normative social rules dictate who can change the intrinsic or extrinsic properties of a piece of music. I claim that in text-based theater—as a particular art form—the dividing line between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of a play is sometimes tenuous. This tenuousness is due to a play's bifurcated existence as a dramatic text and as many theatrical performances.

The Problems of Viewing Performance challenges long-held assumptions by considering the ways in which knowledge is received by more than a single audience member, and breaks new ground by, counterintuitively, claiming that viewing performance is not a shared experience. Given that viewers come to each performance with differing amounts and types of knowledge, they each make different assumptions as to how the performance will unfold. Often modified by other viewers and often after the performance event, knowledge of performance is made more accurate by superimposing the experiences and justified beliefs of multiple viewers. These differences in the viewing experience make knowledge surrounding a performance intersubjective. Ultimately, this book explains the how and the why audience members have different viewing experiences. The Problems of Viewing Performance is important reading for theatre and performance students, scholars and practitioners, as it unpacks the dynamics of spectatorship and explores how audiences work.

Using William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and the play-within-the play, The Murder of Gonzago, as a case study, this essay argues that theatrical utterances constitute a special case of language usage not previously elucidated: the utterance of a statement with propositional content in theatre functions as an event. In short, the propositional content of a particular p (e.g. p1, p2, p3 …), whether or not it is true, is only understood—and understood to be true—if p1 is uttered in a particular time, place, and situation (i.e. during a theatrical event); otherwise, the propositional content in those theatrical utterances can either be false or contingently true.

The relationship between “character” and an “actor” appears to be quite straightforward: an actor acts as/plays character [x]. But let us be more specific and reword this formulation: actor [y] acts as/plays Hamlet. Or – for the time of the play – actor [y] is Hamlet. And it is this last statement that is paradoxically utterly true and utterly false. It is in the name of a theatrical character that the tension between actor and character arises. Asking, for example, who is Hamlet? yields an answer where both actor and character have legitimate exclusive rights to being “Hamlet.” In short, to whom/what does the name of a theatrical character refer? By first arguing that theatre works as a reverse-“beetle” language-game, whereby I posit that theatre allows for private rule-making, I am able to turn to the idea of reference. It is by examining the name of theatrical characters and what these names refer to that I suggest that – following Hegel – theatrical names refer dialectically. Understanding theatrical characters as such, interpretation hinges not only on the output of theatre (i.e., the meaning), but also the input (i.e., the truth value).

Theater—i.e., traditional text-based theater—is often considered the art form that most closely resembles lived life: real bodies in space play out a story through the passage of time. Because of this, theater (or theatre) has long been a laboratory of, and for, philosophical thought and reflection. The study of philosophy and theater has a history that dates back to, and flourished in, ancient Greece and Rome. While philosophers over the centuries have revisited the study of theater, the past four decades in particular have seen a noted and substantial increase of scholarship investigating this intersection between philosophy and theater. “Philosophy of theater” is, on one hand, a “field” that is just starting to take shape and is barely over a decade old; on another hand, it is a recognized subfield both of aesthetics and of theater and performance studies. And finally, it is also an amorphous concept, either not yet fleshed out, or intentionally amorphous and proudly organic. Philosophy of theater is also sometimes referred to—or is argued to be subsumed, more broadly, in—“performance philosophy,” which also refers to a network of academics and practitioners that publishes a book series and a journal of the same name. Regardless of what it is called or how it is classified, scholarship has coalesced around some fundamental preoccupations, which are not too dissimilar to questions that arise in other philosophies of. . . (e.g., art, film, dance, etc.). The debates in philosophy of theater mostly fall into three of the main branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, and aesthetics. The major metaphysical debates center on an ontological question: What is theater? Epistemological studies tend to focus on audience reception and/or how meaning is made and/or transmitted. Finally, studies in aesthetics focus on two main questions: (1) What is theater as an art form? (2) What is the relationship between dramatic text and theatrical performance? This article is intentionally narrow in its scope, focusing on philosophy and theater traditions that came out of Greek theater and philosophy, in order to ensure a sufficient amount of depth, not (merely) breadth.

Theatrical characters’ dual existence on stage and in text presents a unique, challenging case for the analytical philosopher. Analytic Philosophy and the World of the Play re-examines the ontological status of theatre and its fictional objects through the "possible worlds" thesis, arguing that theatre is not a mirror of our world, but a re-creation of it. Taking a fresh look at theatre’s key elements, including the hotly contested relationships between character and actor; onstage and offstage "worlds"; and the play-text and performance, Michael Y. Bennett presents a radical new way of understanding the world of the play.