Summary: Play texts are a form of representation. Yet they are also objects in the world. When actively engaged by the theatre-making process they take on complex crypto-agency via those who interpret and/or create them. They are a form of being. Drawing on the recent work of Alain Badiou in reviving discussions of the subject and of objective truth, this paper makes some remarks about the ontological parameters of dramaturgy, arguing that while the precise nature of a play text is hard to define, nevertheless dramaturgy is predicated on the notion that plays do have essential natures. On this ontological supposition resides the sense of a play’s structural elements, as well as its relationship to the real world ie. its relationship with truth. Dramaturgy is a way of intervening in processes of representation but it is anchored on issues of being. Questions of style, content, characterization, cultural context (both source and target) come second to the question of a play’s essential nature – its alethia. The paper further argues that while dramaturgy is both a function and a method of work it is, at present times, also a metaphor. Dramaturgy as a ‘truth-procedure’ provides a language – limited, flawed but extant – to speak of the ‘whole’ of the theatre experience rather than a specialised part of it. As theatre becomes more technological, capitalised and rationalised – its identity as a totality is eclipsed. ‘Theatrical vision’ – whether that of the director’s, the designer’s, or the playwright’s – detaches from philosophical understanding and becomes the deployment of technique only.
