Etymology
The word "metatheatre" comes from the Greek prefix 'meta', which implies 'a level beyond' the subject that it qualifies; "metatheatricality" is generally agreed to be a device whereby a play comments on itself, drawing attention to the literal circumstances of its own production, such as the presence of the audience or the fact that the actors are actors, and/or the making explicit of the literary artifice behind the production.
Some critics use the term to refer to any play which involves explicit 'performative' aspects, such as dancing, singing, or role-playing by onstage characters, even if these do not arise 'from specifically metadramatic awareness' ; whereas others condemn its use except in very specific circumstances, feeling that it is too often used to describe phenomena which are simply 'theatrical' rather than in any sense 'meta'.
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Famous quotes containing the word etymology:
“Semantically, taste is rich and confusing, its etymology as odd and interesting as that of “style.” But while style—deriving from the stylus or pointed rod which Roman scribes used to make marks on wax tablets—suggests activity, taste is more passive.... Etymologically, the word we use derives from the Old French, meaning touch or feel, a sense that is preserved in the current Italian word for a keyboard, tastiera.”
—Stephen Bayley, British historian, art critic. “Taste: The Story of an Idea,” Taste: The Secret Meaning of Things, Random House (1991)
“The universal principle of etymology in all languages: words are carried over from bodies and from the properties of bodies to express the things of the mind and spirit. The order of ideas must follow the order of things.”
—Giambattista Vico (1688–1744)