Actors and Onlookers: Theater and Twentieth-Century Scientific Views of Nature

This is the first detailed and analytic study of the revolutionary impact of contemporary scientific views of nature on contemporary postmodern theater in all its aspects--directing, scripting, producing, and acting. Natalie Schmitt centers her analysis on the opposition between the philosophical system of Aristotle, which for centuries anchored Western concepts of theater, and the non-systematic theorizing of John Cage, whose formulations most clearly reflect the aesthetic principles of avant-garde theater.