Metatheatre, defined as the aspects of a play that draw attention to its own nature as drama, is perhaps one of the most powerful and profound tools of any playwright. From the ancient world to the modern day, this age-old theatrical tradition has encouraged generations of theatregoers to collectively partake in the dramatic process, transforming a venerable art form into a means of communicating social, political, and cultural messages.
Though the term ‘metatheatre’ wasn’t coined until 1963 by academic Lionel Abel, this form of participatory theatre can be traced all the way back to the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Early examples range from Aristophanes’ The Frogs, where a conversation between characters debated the nature of theatre and the role of the playwright, or Plautus’ plays, where actors were said to address the audience directly. This process of what became known as ‘breaking the fourth wall’ made the audience aware that what they were watching was, in fact, fiction, drawing attention to their human futility.
The messages conveyed through the use of metatheatre have changed through the centuries. Away from the mythical sublimity of metadrama in the ancient world, its use in the Early Modern and Renaissance era was employed to address real-life issues directly to the audience. Through Shakespeare’s soliloquies, which were performed in what was known as the ‘platea’ – a liminal space at the front of the stage that represented a bridge between the real world and the world of the play – Elizabethan theatregoers were able to come face to face with the very human fatal flaws of his tragic protagonists. From Hamlet to Antony & Cleopatra, Shakespeare’s soliloquies questioned authority, religious structures, and the nature of humanity.
20th-century drama saw inspiration being drawn from the rise of the expressionist movement that translated art, literature, and screen to the stage. Metatheatre became a theatrical tool to encourage a reckoning – not just with the individual psyches of the audience, but also with that of the societies in which they collectively inhabited. It reflected societies torn apart by war, an upheaval of social norms, and political radicalism. Bertolt Brecht’s formulation of Epic Theatre, and more specifically the use of the ‘Verfremdungseffekt’ (‘alienation effect’), captured the mental fragmentation of a disrupted society. It has proven how metatheatre doesn’t just have the power to draw the audience in, but rather to isolate it too.
With metatheatre, we are provided with a window into the minds of the characters and an insight into human nature itself – the audience and the stage become one. We can understand the dramatic truth that The Bard himself declared: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”
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