ABSTRACT
In the twentieth century, critical attempts to deal with the nature of theatre have been catching up with acting practice. The movement has been away from discussion of the play as literary artefact to the effect which the performance of that artefact makes on the stage. In this process the not unsurprising discovery has been made that it is in action, not just language, that theatre communicates with its audience. Actors have always known this, and Aristotle dropped fairly strong hints some time ago. Theorists accepted this concept, but have been unable to act upon it owing to the attempt to discuss action in terms of a literary form. The discovery that a language of performance is necessary to discuss performance, puts critics somewhat in the position of Molière’s Monsieur Jourdain who discovered late in life that he had been speaking prose all his life without having been aware of it.
