A Need for an Old Theater

By Robert W. Bethune
ART TIMES July/ August 2010

Ever since about 500 years before Christ, the most frequent form of drama in the world has been something in the general ballpark of what Aristotle described—a reasonably well defined story involving reasonably apparent relationships of cause and effect with a definite beginning, middle and end, in which fictional people take part in a definite action—not just any old event, but an event that takes place because the various parties involved do things to, for, by and with each other. From the tragedies and comedies of Greece to the theater of China and Japan to the poetry of the Sanskrit drama to the puppets and dancers of Southeast Asia, most plays have a recognizable relationship to that model.