ABSTRACT
The psychoanalytic bias holds that “reality” is first constructed in the mind – the psyche – even though this is a somatic mind, and then “found” in the world. A model of a two-tiered reality views theater as a “repetition” of a former psychic “primal” reality. In staging the ontological duality of human identity, theater presents the dis-union which is Death, the dis-junction that (de)structures the I. Kantor’s theater is a confirmation, but, also, an elucidation via emotion, as well as a penetrating subtle refinement of the views presented here. His Theater of Death is an investigation into the very nature of theater, a search for theater’s identity which is, ipso facto, a search for human identity.
