
Improbable Theater
Ghosts, poltergeists, sepulchral spirits—these things (which, of course, are not things) are usually treated with an unabashed seriousness in contemporary performance. Whether in the bloodcurdling incantations of Diamanda Galas or in the bloodless formalism of Robert Wilson, the “ghost” haunts the live body onstage without a smile or a wink. But every performative act is, in essence, a ghost story, a séance, haunted by the absence it labors to make present. In the age of mass-media entertainment, the concept of live-ness has become the raison d’être of theater; exposing it as a sham is treated