Introduction

In his seminal book Role-playing an Identity, in which the connections are explored between the theatrical metaphor used to describe human reality, and the essence of theatre itself as a mirror of the processes involved in the creation of individual and social identity, the American philosopher Bruce Wilshire hopes for a new renaissance of dramatic art as ‘the rite of authorization and authentication that theatre suggests but does not provide: a ceremony in which people gather together at regular intervals in world-time and confirm each other as individuals through progressively articulating their mimetic fusions with others’ (Wilshire 1982: 295).