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In Michael Bennett's thoughtful book, analytic philosophy and dramatic performance share a balancing act between data and potentiality. In the case of analytic philosophy, as explained by Bertrand Russell's landmark essay "On Denoting," logic, mathematics, and epistemology emphasize "knowledge about" and "acquaintance about"—that is, unambiguous (definite data) and ambiguous (indefinite potentiality) knowledge. Definite knowledge employs empiricism (something happens, leading to general knowledge about); indefinite (or subjunctive) knowledge employs logic (something might, should, or could happen, providing an acquaintance about). In theatre the oscillation between definite and indefinite knowledge, or between reality and possibility, coincides with Coleridge's famous maxim, "willing suspension of disbelief." Productions depend on audiences' "willingness" to accept theatre's situated-ness between reality and modality (possibility). Bennett asserts that "fictional entities … exist analogously to 'possible worlds'" (7). The book's fundamental claim is that possible worlds enable theatrical productions to present "the world of the play [through] the developed idea of 're-creation'" (9).
Among Bennett's salient points is that theatre is, or should be, a laboratory for analytic philosophers to examine language, reality, and the imagination; theatre also provides a vehicle for considering distinctions among what is, might be, ought to be, and, for theatre, could be "re-created." He confects the various threads of theatre and analytic philosophy, whereby possible worlds initiate theatrical productions. For Bennett, "the world of play is a 're-creation' of our world" (2; emphasis in original). It is neither a reflection, copy, imitation, nor mirror of nature, nor is it a metaphysical abstraction divorced from reality; rather, theatre is a fungible operation recreating...