Time in the theater: Philosophical notions of dramatic art

Abstract

This paper provides an overview of the scientific notion of “time” and its relationship to the development of a theatrical creation and its corresponding staging, analyzing the perspectives established a priori by early Western theater theorists, as well as their intrinsic links with philosophy as a general and specific discipline. In this way, the concept of “subjective exchange” is introduced as a form of transmission and interpretive dialogue among the creative entities of a theatrical event: author, director, actors, set designers, lighting designers, makeup artists, costume designers, technicians, and audience. It is proposed as a possible “unit of measurement” for a time considered linear, linking the author’s creation with the aforementioned entities, and the conviviality and post-conviviality as closing guidelines. Likewise, the links between linear time and the cyclical form of theatrical temporality will be explored, considering the main perspectives from both physics and philosophy that allow us to view time in theater as a transcendental figure, exceeding the differentiated times of theatrical creation as well as our human conception of time.
The latter refers to intellectual constructions, mostly historicist, that only consider the tripartite vision of “past, present and future”, which only gives us a limited perspective of the temporality that a staging implies as a final result.