ABSTRACT
Is it possible to think about theater without recourse to the sense of sight? The question would have sounded absurd to Greek ears if only because the word for theater, theatron, clearly identifies it as a “place of seeing”. And inhabitants of Greek city-states would have had firsthand knowledge of the spectacles that could be enjoyed in such places. Yet, the critical study of theater has treated the spectacular aspects of theater with ambivalence since its inception. Aristotle, the first to delineate theater as a separate object of inquiry, left its analysis uneasily suspended between reading drama and watching theater. Although he included “opsis” among the six essential components of tragedy (1450a9), he also insisted that all essential qualities of tragedy manifested themselves in the act of reading (1462a12). Opsis became a dispensable component of tragedy, at best providing supplemental pleasures (1462a16). Aristotle’s simultaneous recognition and critique of opsis still haunts theater studies today, in the recurring debates between textualists, who seem to accept what might be called the Aristotelian compromise, and anti-textualists, who are trying to overcome the marginal position of opsis by insisting on the primacy of spectacle. 1
