Theatre as a Literary Lens of Life Occurrences: A Close of View the Alan Read’s Theatre and Everyday Life

This article examines theatre as a literary lens for viewing life events. The discussion is anchored on a close reading of Alan Read’s Theatre and Everyday Life. Drawing from Alan Read, the article also underscores some key considerations in a theatrical production of Bertolt Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle and Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House as the theatre of everyday life. It is observed that Alan Read defines theatre as the actual production of the play on the stage. This requires a stage, actors, background, costumes, lighting, sound effects, and most importantly an audience. In fact, a space to perform, actors, and the audience are three of the most basic requirements of theatre. Theatre is a collective effort of the playwright, director, actors, technicians, and many other people. Here, there is no direct interaction between the audience and the playwright. Theatre can present another interpretation of the play. In Theatre and Everyday Life, Alan Read does not conform to the conventional theatre as echoed by the Brechtian and Ibsen theatrical experience. Further, Alan Read asserts that there is no split between the practice and theory of theatre, but a divide between the written and the unwritten. In this revealing book, he sets out to retrieve the theatre of spontaneity and tactics, which grows out of the experience of everyday life. It is a theatre that defines itself in terms of people and places rather than the idealised empty space of Avant-garde performance. Read’s Theatre and Everyday Life is a theatre that reflects on people’s daily engagements. Therefore, it examines the relationship between an ethics of performance, a politics of place, and a poetics of the urban environment. His theoretical approach is a persuasive demand for a critical theory of theatre, which is as mentally supple as theatre is physically versatile. In Alan Read’s view, the key difference between drama and theatre is that drama refers to a printed text of a play while theatre refers to the onstage production of the play. He further distinguishes theatre and drama in relation to the interpretation of the play. As explained above, the interpretation of the play presented by the onstage production might be different from the interpretation obtained by reading the drama. In a drama, there is a direct interaction between the audience and the creator. However, in theatre, directors, actors and designers play as intermediaries. In addition, Alan Read says that the theatre being is a physical entity, whereas the drama being drama is an abstract entity. Since theatre does not exist in a vacuum, it requires space for its performance. Both Brecht and Ibsen require theatre for them to undergo a transformation from drama to theatre. As they are in their form, Caucasian Chalk Circle and A Doll’s House can be termed as scripts until they are performed. Therefore, theatre provides an avenue for the scripts to be transformed into drama hence reflecting life, views which lay the basis of Alan Read’s Theatre and Everyday Life