The Art of Theater by James Hamilton

In The Art of Theater the author (James Hamilton) proposes and explains the claim that, in an
unqualified (limitless) way, theater is a form of art. By that it means that theatrical
performances are what are created in the practice of theatre and that theatrical performances
are works of art.
The book is divided into three parts. In Part I, he presents the evidence that suggests the
claim is true and an initial response to that evidence. The direct argumentation he offers for
the claim is historical. We can see the truth of the claim in the actual historical practices of
theater, I maintain, even in its most self-consciously text-oriented periods.
But the enormous success of the conjunction of literature and theater in late European culture
means that we must explain the relation between a performance and a literary text. A number
of models of the text-performance relationship have been put on order and I survey three of
the main ones – the “literary” model, the “two-text” model, and the “type/token” model. This
latter is an ontologically oriented model, comprising a family of familiar views, that has been
popular in analytic aesthetics and that attempts to piggyback an account of theatrical works,
texts, and theatrical performances on the well-developed ontology of musical works, scores,
and musical performance. But the history of theater in the past 150 years teaches us that
performers choose how to use texts, when they do, and that this choice itself is a fact about a
performance that may play a role in the assessment of the performance by spectators with
suitable background. Against the larger backdrop of other theatrical traditions and the most
recent history of the text based tradition that tradition appears to be only one way among
many others that performers can answer the basic questions shaping any theatrical
performance, whether or not it involves a text. Grasping this fact amounts to recognizing the
truth of what I call the “ingredients” model of the text-performance relation.

He presents a number of idealized cases of theatrical performance to give us some sense of

the range an adequate account of theatrical performance must encompass. He also explains
three factors that should constrain (severe strict the scope, limit) any adequate account of
theatrical performance.
1. First, theatre is a social practice and, unlike music and dance, there are no non-
audience practices of theater.
2. Second, performers and spectators are naturally disposed to interact with each other,
and the physicality of that interaction is an important element in any theatrical
performance.
3. Third, theatrical performances occur in time, and most of what any spectator gets of
the content in the performance she gets during the time of that performance.
He concludes Part I by articulating a central idea of what a theatrical performance is.
The author grounds his account of theatrical performance in the observation that theatrical
enactment (to act in a paly, story) – the relation between spectators and performers – is a
social practice in which spectators attend to the physical and verbal expressions, the sounds

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and the movements of performers who, by means of those expressions, sounds, movements,
and so on, occasion audience responses to whatever the performers have arranged for them to
observe about human life.
When spectators attend to actors in a narrative performance, they hope to learn the story the
actors are presenting and to be able to tell that story to themselves and to others.
‫ یک عمل اجتماعی‬- ‫ رابطه بین تماشاگران و هنرمندان‬- ‫من حساب خود را از عملکرد تئاتر در نظر گرفتم که تصویب تئاتر‬
،‫ صداها‬،‫ صداها و حرکات بازیگران که با استفاده از این اصطالحات‬،‫است که تماشاگران به بیان عبارات فیزیکی و کالمی‬
.‫ پاسخ های مخاطبان به هر آنچه که هنرمندان انجام می دهند برای مشاهده آنها در مورد زندگی انسانی‬،‫حرکات و غیره‬
‫ امیدوار هستند داستان داستان بازیگران را ارائه دهند و بتوانند‬،‫وقتی تماشاگران به بازیگران در اجرای روایت شرکت می کنند‬
.‫این داستان را بگویند خود و دیگران‬

Part II of the book is devoted to developing that explanation and defending its component
parts, the propositions that have to be true if spectators are able to do what they appear to do.
(What is the spectator responsibility/ part, what they must carry out?)
The first proposition is that even naïve spectators can gain at least the basic elements of the
content delivered in a theatrical performance simply by attending to performers during the
time of the performance itself. He calls this level of comprehension “basic theatrical
understanding.” In one sense, the content grasped (Understanding, grab) by someone who
has only basic understanding may be pretty thin.
A spectator may demonstrate her grasp merely by recounting (telling) the outlines of the story
presented and some sense of the characters in the story. In another sense, however, even basic
understanding is fairly robust.
If telling a story and talking about some characters is to be evidence of understanding a
narrative performance, it must be the story the individual spectator recounts and it must be
those characters she discusses.
The author of ‘The Art of Theory’ concludes that spectators do what they appear to do: they
pick out events independently of any texts they may use. But are they works of art?
Part III of the book is designed to defend the claim that theatrical performances are, indeed,
works of art.
Some spectators do exceed the merely basic understanding sufficient for picking out
performances for reflection and go on to engage in that reflection. I mark that fact by saying
that they have “deeper theatrical understanding.” Actually, there are two forms of deeper
understanding, either of traditions of content or of practices of performance. Each is
necessary for gaining a sense of the achievement in a performance but I argue that neither is
sufficient for that task nor are they jointly sufficient.