ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF ...

Bert O’States expands on the method, in order to specifically orient the
“phenomenological attitude” to theatre. 7 The notion of “frontality,” in the
phenomenological method, clearly identifies the perceptual puzzle of theatre studies.
One is always forced to look at one essence of a thing at a time. Theatre is, at its core,
frontality; each production is one frontality of a given play. In O’States’s own words:
[T]his problem takes us to the base of all our concerns with the problematics of
meaning: the central terms of our critical discourse […] can be treated as
variations on the principle of frontality. For frontality is not simply the perception
of the surface facing us; it carries with it what Husserl calls the “apperception” of
the rest of the object which is, in “a kind of” way, “co-present” even though
unseen. 8
When O’States speaks of frontality, he is describing what people normally refer to as
perception, that which is perceived as an essential fact of the object being perceived. One
perceives Sir John Gielgud playing the King Lear who grieves for his lost daughter
Cordelia, in act V of a present production. As one perceives this actor in this moment of
the character’s life, one also “apperceives” the previous moments in the production that
contribute to a complete understanding of Gielgud’s interpretation of the role. In turn,
one also apperceives other performances of the role, as well as one’s own readings and
outside study of King Lear. Co-present in every present frontality of Lear are all the
previous frontalities that contribute to shaping one’s total understanding of the character,
7
Bert O’States, “The Phenomenological Attitude,” Critical Theory and Performance (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 1992), 369.
8 Ibid., 371.
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