Physical Theatre - Problems With Defining Physical Theatre

Problems With Defining Physical Theatre

The definition of physical theatre is not easy to describe. This is partly due to multiple origins, and partly due to the discomfort that most practitioners have with the definition. In the book Through the Body, author Dymphna Callery suggests that the phrase originated more as a marketing term to describe anything that does not fit within commercial literary theatre. Indeed, this view has considerable support; the so called Phyl theatre based on "Staged Literature."

Many practitioners, such as Lloyd Newson, express a resistance to this term because they feel that physical theatre is used as a "misc." category, which is classified for anything that does not fall neatly into a category of literary dramatic theatre or contemporary dance. For this reason, contemporary theatre including post-modern performance, devised performance, visual performance, and post-dramatic performance, while having their own distinct definitions, are often simply labelled "physical theatre" without any reason other than because they are unusual in some way.

It is also problematic that dance is of a theatrical nature. A dance piece will be called "physical theatre" because it includes elements of spoken word, character, or narrative; it is theatrical and physical but does not necessarily share anything in common with a potential (and nascent) physical theatre tradition.