The Case for Theatricality
Mary Frith, or Moll Cutpurse
In 1611, something extraordinary happened at The Fortune Theater in London. Mary Frith (or “Moll Cutpurse,” as she was widely known)—a cross-dressing pickpocket, performer, and notorious London identity—appeared on stage during a performance of Dekker and Middleton’s The Roaring Girl alongside the boy actor performing as her.
In London, the real Moll Cutpurse occupied a pseudo-mythic status. Stories of horse-stealing, pirating, bawdy-singing, and pimping—all while dressed as a man—fueled her rise as a London celebrity. The Roaring Girl entertains Moll’s fabled public identity while also putting her at the center of a marriage plot, as she is tasked with playing the roles of cutpurse and matchmaker. At the theater, we get to see Moll do the things we’ve only ever heard about. Her actions become real insomuch as we see them happening before our eyes, and the plots that were based in rumor, hearsay, and conspiracy become actualized through the actor’s performance. Though the character promises to “play my part as well as I can,” having Moll Cutpurse herself in the same room as her theatrical representation captures what Jonas Barish calls the “ontological malaise” faced by early theatergoing. This “ontological malaise” refers to the permanent condition of the “theatrical”: if you aren’t able to tell the difference between what is real and what is a performance, then how can you know either yourself or those around you?
Early modern theater was, frankly, obsessed with this kind of metatheater. Plays like Middleton’s Women Beware Women, Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, or Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (to name only a few) build the codes of performance into its very plots. Antitheatrical thinkers, though, did not think this kind of metatheater was powerful enough to excuse the falsities and illusions theater reveled in. Antitheatricalists (such as John Northbrook, Philip Stubbes, Stephen Gosson, and William Prynne) built on Plato’s famous critique of artistic representation to argue that theatrical representation spoiled the true identity given to one by God. They were also disturbed by the profound pleasure people took in both representing what they weren’t and seeing the spectacle of representation.
Early modern antitheatricalism is often discussed in retrospect as something irrational and foolish. However, it’s important to note that antitheatrical concerns are borne out of a serious moral debate. From the ongoing Protestant Reformation, to England’s immigration boost, to political uncertainties facing the nation and the monarchy, people were often left unsure as to who they were individually and collectively. Early modern communities faced a collective identity crisis in which their very beings seemed constantly at-risk and in-flux. Antitheatricalists believed theater made these problems worse by turning them into a spectacle.
Early modern advocates of the theater, however, disagreed. It seems that theatre practitioners of the period experimented with how acting and performance could offer, to borrow the performance-studies scholar Daniel Johnston’s words, “ways of facing ontological uncertainty in this world.” For example, the poet and playwright Thomas Heywood writes in his Apology for Actors (1612), the only surviving defense of English performance from the time, that an actor “offers to [audiences] in his heart all prosperous performance, as if the personator were the man personated: so bewitching a thing is lively and well spirited action, that it hath power to new mold the hearts of the spectators and fashion them to shape of any noble and notable attempt.” Here, Heywood reimagines what mimesis can do and argues that there are benefits to actors and audiences imitating certain characters. He agrees with antitheatricalists that an actor can become literally entwined with the part he’s enacting, though he uses this as a defense for theater and not a detraction against it. Heywood imagines performance as a kind of gift: an actor, through his character, is giving something of his real self to the audience. For Heywood and other theater apologists, theater allows us to see both who we are and the world we live in, suggesting that holding “the mirror up to nature” (as Hamlet says to the players at Elsinore) is one of the reasons why we are compelled to go to the theater in the first place.
Early modern theatricality is defined by excessive dramatic action and the ways that performance calls attention to itself. It is also defined by the imaginative possibilities a spectator creates. Theatricality is achieved when a spectator can work their “imaginary forces” and “piece out imperfections” with their thoughts, as the Chorus asks the audience to do in Henry V. However, the participation of the audience’s imagination isn’t as necessary when the performance medium becomes more realistic. Because our modern interactions with performance are experienced mostly through the lens of a camera, we don’t need to do the work of imagining battlefields or bedchambers, because they’re exactly represented before our eyes. A camera’s unique capacity to depict reality means that many tend to favor realistic, subtle, and “believable” performances as opposed to the truly histrionic.
As a result, modern theatricality is defined by how convincingly a performance can depict reality. For example, just last year, Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver’s performances in Marriage Story were praised for how they depicted the “rhythms of everyday behavior” in ways that never suggested “melodrama” or “stagecraft.” In the last decade alone, seven Best Actor Oscars were awarded to actors depicting real, once-living men like Freddie Mercury and Abraham Lincoln. Entire cinematic movements like Italian Neorealism developed out of a nation’s deep desire to show real people trying to make sense of the catastrophes of World War II. However, undetectable realism is also the catalyst for contemporary antitheatricalist sentiments. Performances that are particularly explicit, violent, or sexual are often rejected because the performance feels indistinguishable from the reality of these experiences. The danger, then, isn’t in imagining what’s possible but actually witnessing what’s possible.
That being said, there’s still a place for theatricality even in all this reality. We see this no more clearly than in Comedy Central’s brilliant Nathan For You, a reality show whose host uses unorthodox solutions to save failing businesses. Nathan Fielder’s presence in the show is often unnerving. He’s awkward, eccentric, and not easily readable. The degree to which Nathan and his guests are scripted or unscripted is left entirely unclear, which leaves viewers guessing. When you Google Nathan For You, one of the top questions that comes from this search is “Is Nathan For You a real show?” This extends to the host himself—various Reddit threads are obsessed with knowing if Nathan Fielder the host is the same as Nathan Fielder the man: “Has Anyone here met Nathan irl?”, “Are there any videos of Nathan not in character?”, and “So I met Nathan Fielder Today.” He, like Moll Cutpurse, occupies a pseudo-mythic status to those who follow him. With both Moll and Nathan, the boundaries between public and private are blurred to the point where everything they do can contribute to both their celebrity and their real-personhood. However, unlike early moderners, we are so much more comfortable making distinctions between character and actor. But what if that is a false distinction to make?
Nathan For You episode “Smokers Allowed”
Nathan asks this same question in an episode titled “Smokers Allowed.” Nathan is tasked with helping The 1881 Club, a dive bar in Pasadena, California, which lost profits and clientele due to smoking restrictions put on indoor public spaces. Nathan finds a loophole in the law, which claims that smoking is prohibited unless in “Theatrical productions, if smoking is an integral part of the story.” He proceeds to reconfigure the bar so it can resemble both a practical and a theatrical space. He puts a small audience section in the corner of the bar, complete with theater-seats and a red curtain. He proclaims that every patron in the bar will be classified as an actor and puts up a sign that states, “By entering the bar, you are agreeing to act in a theatrical production called ‘Smoker’s Allowed.’” The roles of character, actor, and spectator completely collapse in this space, as everyone shares all three identities. This is Heywood’s conception of “prosperous performance” followed to its logical end. Every single person in this bar is simultaneously a “personator” and “the man personated.” We’re left asking—who are they? Who are we?
“Smoker’s Allowed” is completely unwritten and unrehearsed, and its two audience members deem it both “so nothing” and “profound.” The head of Glendale Community College’s Theater Department calls the play “a slice of life,” even comparing it to the work of Pulitzer Prize playwright John Patrick Shanley. This feedback inspires Nathan to transcribe the original performance, hiring actors to play each part, and holding hours of rehearsal in order to create a decidedly “theatrical” performance. What was once invisible theater becomes “real” theater through the use of theatrical technique and professionals.
Unsurprisingly, this “real” theater performance looks eerily similar to the invisible one. However, the audience feedback is less generous and more baffled, inviting responses like, “I can’t understand this play anymore.” Regardless, Nathan relies on an inherent antitheatrical bias in his audience’s feedback in order to make his larger point. He manages to reveal both a general appreciation for the “realistic” performance as well as the sincere discomfort and boredom people feel when performance becomes “too real.” In “Smokers Allowed,” authenticity seems just as malleable as artificiality, and it leaves audiences wondering what, exactly, the profundity of watching this kind of theater actually is.
There are cynical responses to this question, but perhaps it’s simpler than all that. Maybe the profundity lies in the characters, in the people Nathan chooses to depict. They are not the English kings or Greek heroes that Heywood talks about imitating, but instead ordinary people having an ordinary evening. They are people being and becoming versions of themselves simply through the act of existing. There’s something quite beautiful in deciding to imitate those actions. If imitating certain characters can benefit actors and audiences, as Heywood suggests, then what is the benefit of imitating this ordinary bar crowd? What do we learn about these characters, these people, and ourselves in the process? What gift does this “prosperous performance” give us?
The theater, as an institution, does not hold the cultural capital it once did. However, much to the early modern antitheatricalist’s dismay, theatricality, artificiality, and un-reality still remain ways for us to better know ourselves and our communities. Our own ontological uncertainties are different than that audience at The Fortune Theater, but we are still turning to the theatrical to examine our own place in the world.
Krystal is a PhD student at the University of Pittsburgh. Her research is interested in early modern English drama, gender, and performance.