Dentro do círculo: sobre teatro e literatura dramática

Abstract

A major trend in theatre studies divides theatre into two types: the literary and the non‑literary theatre. This essay demonstrates how such partition restricts the way we look at performances and read drama, but also how it influences the relationship between both arts, confining them to a narrative of tensions within an antithetic and dual scheme. For that reason, when we say that theatre is dif‑ ferent from literature, this assertion is necessarily accompanied by the presum‑ ably antithetic claim that theatre and literature are identical, as if one assertion could not be understood without the other. This essay seeks an alternative to the preponderance of these ideas in order to escape from their authority. By following a certain tradition of epistemology, one can find an ampler perspective, one that liberates theatre and literature from a correlationist logic sustained by a concept of knowledge that aims to achieve certainty and unanimity. Through the use of a different idea of knowledge and being, we will be better positioned to meet and acknowledge the invisibility of things (be it a performance, a play or a person).