ABSTRACT

Where in the body is theatricality located? What is its place? Traditionally in western theater, the eyes and to some degree the ears are where theatricality is experienced. By etymology and by practice a theater is a “place of/for seeing.” Seeing requires distance; engenders focus or differentiation; encourages analysis or breaking apart into logical strings; privileges meaning, theme, narration. Modern science depends on instruments of observation, of ocularity: telescopes and microscopes. Theories derived from observations made by means of ocular instruments define the time-space continuum. From super-galactic strings on the one hand to molecular and subatomic wave particles on the other, we “know” the universe by “seeing” it. See = know; know = see; speed = space; distance = time; diachronicity = story.