ABSTRACT
This chapter argues a theatre that is speculative – characterised and marked by the brokenness of its very own failures and contradictions. It shows that the theatres of modernism are constituted in a process of relating that entails constant negotiation of the breaking points of contradiction – what Rose calls 'diremption' – and of loss by the broken middle. The chapter considers one particularly distinctive example that allows us to view the speculative dimension of theatre through the reconfiguration of misrecognition as a mode of negativity: the Futurist Serate. Speculative theatre uses actuality to show the ways by which illusion necessarily emerges from productive activity that is none other but the appearance of the world as understood by the thinking subject. Theatre's speculative representation enters into the mainstream of life praxis, not simply by seeking to integrate art with life as we find with the historical avant-garde.
