There are always rules. Total freedom is total annihilation. This is true in theatre and in life.
Performance is movement in relation to rules. What is produced by the dissonance is an idea. The idea is that that is a way of doing, and maybe a way it has always been done.
Theatricality is the space in which one can see an apparatus in its entirety, and subjects working in relation to that apparatus. (Because onstage, anything can happen, and so a whole different set of rules may be established.) This is true, of course, because theatre is itself an apparatus.
It’s not that originality and revolution don’t exist. It’s just that they don’t come from outer space. It’s not that rules can’t be changed. It’s that they can’t be abolished altogether.
Actors knows this, but dancers know this better: Freedom comes from constriction (or, one might say, structure), not from its annihilation. The more the better.
