Skip to main content

Theatre and Phenomenology

  • Living reference work entry
  • Latest version View entry history
  • First Online:
Encyclopedia of Phenomenology
  • 1 Accesses

Synonyms

Drama; Performance phenomenology; Performance studies; Theater studies

Definition

The study of theater and performance examines overlapping fields that can be summarized (somewhat reductively) as drama (as literature and form), theater (as training, rehearsal, and staging, including dance), and performance (including broader behaviors and processes from everyday life, rituals, cultural enactments, and special marked or “framed” events). Particularly since the 1980s, there has been a growing interest in the connection between theater and phenomenology in response to the dominant semiotic lens for performance criticism and reception. Rather than understand theater primarily as a sign system (as a semiotician might), a phenomenological approach might describe and analyze the embodied experience of the theatrical event (Sauter 1997). More recently, “performance philosophy” has developed a philosophical analysis of performance and articulated the performative nature of philosophy...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Artaud, Antonin. 1988. Selected writings. Ed. Susan Sontag. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bleeke, Maaike, Jon Foley Sherman, and Eirini Nedelkopoulou. 2015. Performance phenomenology: Traditions and transformations. New York/Abingdon: Routledge.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Brecht, Bertolt. 1964. Brecht on theatre: The development of an aesthetic. Ed. John Willett. London: Methuen.

    Google Scholar 

  • Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender trouble: Feminism and the subversion of identity. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carlson, Marvin. 1993. Theories of the theatre: A historical and critical survey from the Greeks to the present. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Cull Ó Maoilearca, Laura, and Alice Lagaay, eds. 2020. The Routledge companion to performance philosophy. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and difference. Trans. Alan Bass. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fortier, Mark. 1997. Theory/theatre: An introduction. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. 1987. Dance and the lived body: A descriptive aesthetics. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Garner, Stanton. 1994. Bodied spaces: Phenomenology and performance in contemporary drama. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2018. Kinesthetic spectatorship in theatre: Phenomenology, cognition, movement. Cham: Palgrave.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Grant, Stuart, Jodie McNeilly-Renaudie, and Matthew Wagner, eds. 2019. Performance phenomenology: To the thing itself. Cham: Palgrave.

    Google Scholar 

  • Johnston, Daniel. 2017. Theatre and phenomenology: Manual philosophy. London: Palgrave.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2021. Phenomenology for actors: Theatre-making and the question of being. Bristol: Intellect.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kalb, Jonathan. 1991. Beckett in performance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kozel, Susan. 2007. Closer: Performance, technologies, phenomenology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Maude, Ulrike, and Matthew Feldman, eds. 2009. Beckett and phenomenology. London/New York: Continuum.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reinelt, Janelle, and Joseph Roach, eds. 1992. Critical theory and performance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sachon, Susan. 2019. Shakespeare, objects and phenomenology: The daggers of the mind. Cham: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sauter, Wilmar. 1997. Approaching the theatrical event: The influence of semiotics and hermeneutics on European theatre studies. Theatre Research International 22 (1, supplement): 4–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheets-Johnstone, Maxine. 1966. The phenomenology of dance. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Bruce. 2010. Phenomenal Shakespeare. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Stanislavski, Konstantin. 2008. An actor’s work: A student’s diary. Trans. Jean Benedetti. London/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • States, Bert. 1985. Great reckonings in little rooms: On the phenomenology of theater. Berkeley/London: University of California Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Tsushima, Michiko. 2004. The Space of Vacillation: The Experience of Language in Beckett, Blanchot, and Heidegger. New York: Peter Lang.

    Google Scholar 

  • Turner, Victor. 1990. Are there universals of performance in myths, ritual and drama. In By means of performance: Intercultural studies of theatre and ritual, ed. Richard Schechner and Willa Appel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilshire, Bruce. 1982. Role playing and identity: The limits of theatre as metaphor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Zarrilli, Phillip, ed. 1995. Acting (re)considered: Theories and practices. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 2020. (Toward) a phenomenology of acting. Abingdon/New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Daniel Johnston .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2024 Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this entry

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this entry

Johnston, D. (2024). Theatre and Phenomenology. In: de Warren, N., Toadvine, T. (eds) Encyclopedia of Phenomenology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47253-5_433-2

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47253-5_433-2

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-47253-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-47253-5

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Theatre and Phenomenology
    Published:
    05 April 2024

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47253-5_433-2

  2. Original

    Theater, Influence on and by Phenomenology
    Published:
    29 July 2023

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47253-5_433-1