Abstract

While theater is often described as political, the depth of its connection to political philosophy has been largely unexplored. This dissertation examines how six key concepts of western political theory--representation and delegation, sovereignty and the social contract, despotism and revolution--shape the theater. While most contemporary theories of dramatic representation focus exclusively on descriptive or symbolic forms of representation, chapter 1 demonstrates that the work both of political philosophers and of western dramatists from Greek to postmodern reveals that theater also manifests another kind of representation which it shares with government: that of acting in lieu of, or on behalf of, another person. Chapter 2 shows how theatrical, like political, representation can be faulty or illegitimate due to incapacities or abuses on the part of the representatives or delegators, or the non-transferability of the activity to be delegated. Chapter 3 asserts that the various elements of theater unite in an association that can be seen as a social contract, and that the locus of sovereignty within that social contract is assigned differently in four prominent genres of contemporary western theater: theater of illusion, theater of cruelty, epic theater, and forum theater. Finally, chapter 4 examines how theatergoers throughout history have broken the theatrical contract by rebelling against the performance; this chapter maintains that because of the homologous structure of theater and government in western culture, Locke's and Rousseau's idea of a right to revolution can illuminate audience riots