This book examines the appropriation of theatre and theatrical performance by ideologies of humanism, in terms that continue to echo across the related disciplines of literary, drama, theatre, and performance history and studies today. From Aristotle onward, theatre has been regulated by three strains of critical poiesis: the literary, segregating theatre and the practices of the spectacular from the humanizing work attributed to the book and to the internality of reading; the dramatic, approving the address of theatrical performance only to the extent that it instrumentalizes literary value; and the theatrical, assimilating performance to the conjunction of literary and liberal values. These values have been used to figure not only the work of theatre, but also the propriety of the audience as a figure for its socializing work, along a privileged dualism from the aestheticized ensemble-harmonizing actor, character, and spectator to the essentialized drama-to the politicized assembly, theatre understood as an agonistic gathering.

Hana Worthen is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University, USA, and an Associate Director of Barnard's Center for Translation Studies. She writes from the intersections of theatre/performance humanism and critical posthumanism, human/animal rights and interspecies ethics, and transmedia and multiplatform performance.