HAMLET’S THREE KINDS OF THEATER

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action, with this
 special
observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature:
 for any thing so
o'erdone is from the purpose of playing, whose 
end, both at the first and
now, was and is, to hold as 'twere the 
mirror up to nature: to show virtue
her feature, scorn her own 
image, and the very age and body of the time
his form and
 pressure. (Hamlet 3, 2, 17–24)

As Hamlet once remarked, there exist three kinds of theater each of

which has a very different relationship to reality: as mirror, as criticism,
and as allegory.

(1) The first kind is realism, which attempts to “hold a mirror up to

nature” and to depict real characters in real situations. Thanks to training
programs in Meisner, Stanislavski and so on, this has become not only
the dominant approach in television and the movies, but also on stage.
The problem is that mirrors distort, and are an automatic reflection of
reality that lacks critical judgment and insight. Nonetheless, the pervasive
conventions of realism are adopted by television, most contemporary
theaters and by acting schools. These conventions are ultimately un-
natural—as any theatre must be—but because they imitate the surface of
nature, without even admitting their act of imitation, they do so ineptly.

(2) The second kind of theater does not pretend to be realistic, but is
engaged in critical comment and admits that it is a theatrical artifice. It
scorns the superficial appearance of Virtue and reveals the true features
of reality. This kind of theater employs different kinds of appearance---
puppetry for instance—in order to make a moral commentary. It is meta-
theatrical, and goes out of its way to remind the audience that the
performance is not reality, that the actors are performing objects and not
real people, and that the play-script is indeed a literary script created by
a playwright--not a dialogue emerging spontaneously from the
characters onstage. It does not use the proscenium arch theater to
pretend that it is presenting an illusory slice of life, but engages in
audience interaction, and reveal aspects of its own theatrical
construction. What it presents on-stage may claim to show Virtue her
own true feature---but its success is dependent on an ethical and critical
judgment that does not always exist beneath.

(3) Hamlet’s third kind of theater is also meta-theatrical, but it offers a

different kind of surface—an allegorical object. This does not claim to be
real. Rather than being created through critical commentary, or reflection,
it is created as a precise reproduction—analogous to a wax impression--
that captures not the surface but the underlying true form of the Age,
and the Time. An explicitly allegorical play presents a set of surface
meanings and provides links back to another set of meanings that cannot
be directly depicted. It is a way of communicating truths that may not be
stated directly for political or other reasons. For instance, a relationship
that appears innocuous between two characters may prove very different
when the underlying allegorical identities of those characters are
discerned. Thus the character of a woman having an abortion on stage
reveals very different meanings when that woman is shown to be an
allegory of the Virgin Mary. Unlike the mirror-theater or the critical-
theater, the depiction onstage is linked back to its allegorical meanings
through a chain of reasoning, which can be logically duplicated. That is
why it is the most accurate kind of theater--like a wax impression.

Whether critical or allegorical, meta-theater is concerned with creating an

intelligent, self-critical theater, that presents a surface of non realistic
performing objects. If a realistic surface is presented, it is opened up to
reveal something very different beneath. It is a theater that values
imagination and creativity, a theater of meaning and purpose,that
deconstructs itself on stage for the audience. In a post-modern age in
which the surfaces of things are increasingly proving to be untrustworthy
fictions, it is a theater whose time has come.