This is an open question, for me. But I'm trying to start with its MOST BASIC responsibilities, not it's most advanced.
1) To Get People In The Room Together
I'd guess if it doesn't do that, it isn't theater.
2) To Entertain
I think this is one we forget.
3) To Give People Something to Talk About and Think About After The Fact
We share this with a lot of artistic mediums. Maybe that's our job as artists.
What else?
1 comment:
Certainly, I would agree that one essential element is having people (both performers and audience) together in the same room/space. Without this immediacy of time and place, it is not theater but some other art form.
As for your other two points, I am not sure that you could get theater artists, either past or present, to agree to both. Some would argue for one (art for art's sake, i.e. the need to please or entertain), some would argue for the other (art for change, i.e. the desire to have people not just talk about something but in some cases do something), and some might argue for both.
In thinking about the essentials, I am inclined to go in a different direction and say that theater must have a narrative, and I suggest this to distinguish it from the other performing arts. While music and dance may have progressions and developments in what they do, they do not essentially have story-telling as an element of the art itself. While opera also uses narrative in an essential way, it is sometimes difficult to separate distinct art forms.
Must this narrative involve words? I am inclined towards saying yes, in order once again to distinguish theater from some types of performance art and movement-based pieces, but maybe this is another articificial distinction. In the end, I think I have to say that word are not in themselves necessary for the story-telling to occur. Mime should certainly fall under the heading of theater, but note that there is definitely still narrative as an essential ingredient in this art form.
Call me Aristotelian, but I think I will also go one more step and say that the notion of character is essential to the art of theater. Stand-up comedy, a public book-reading, and and even a political speech could meet the first two criteria of having both performer and audience in the same time and place and in having a sense of narrative, but in none of these is the speaker playing a role or assuming an identity other than his or her own. (Insert cynical joke about politicians here.) Though perhaps the best of stand-up comedy might also be considered under the borad heading of theater when the performer does exactly what I am suggesting--for example, the character Charles Grodin assumes in his public appearances is some sort of alter ego, and it must be acknowledged that he is acting when he does these appearances.
At that point, I might be willing to stop. Thus, my three essential ingredients for theater are:
1. Same time and place for performer(s) and audience.
2. Narrative.
3. Character.
Of course, subject to discussion, change, dispute!
---John
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