6 Axioms for Environmental Theatre

The theatrical event includes audience, performers, text (in most cases), sensory stimuli, architectural enclosure (or lack of it), production equipment, technicians, and house personnel (when used). It ranges from nonmatrixed performance to highly formalized traditional theatre: from chance events and intermedia to “the production of plays.” A continuum of theatrical events blends one form into the next: It is because I wish to include this entire range in my definition of theatre that traditional distinctions between art and life no longer function at the root of aesthetics. All along the continuum there are overlaps; and within it—say between a traditional production of Hamlet and the March on the Pentagon or Allan Kaprow's Self-Service —there are contradictions.