ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on three theoretical movements in order to explore questions of subjectivity and agency as the apply to the involved in making theatre. Freud has had many followers, but the one who has had the most impact on contemporary cultural theory is Jacques Lacan, a French psychoanalyst who wrote mainly in the second half of the twentieth century. Psychoanalysis so described is obviously a performative practice and has much in common with theatre and other kinds of performance. While Blau and Deleuze would agree that theatre is Oedipal, they would disagree profoundly on the possibility of escaping this condition and on the virtue in doing so. Another interesting aspect of the debates is the interplay between theatre and the academy, an interplay that Stanton B. Garner takes up in a discussion of teaching Oleanna in a university drama course. Theatre, however, has already long decentralized the playwright in favour of producer, director and actors.
