“Theatre and theory are both contemplative pursuits” and the words themselves “come from the same root” (Fortier, 1997). Theory abounds. But ‘to theorise’ isn’t ‘to be’. Life named by the theoretical description isn’t real existence in the here and now.

John Berger in A Fortunate Man offers up “…patients are inordinately relieved when doctors give their complaint a name. The name may mean little to them; they may understand nothing of what it signifies; but because it has a name, it has an independent existence from them. They can now struggle or complain against it. To have a complaint recognised, that is to say defined, limited and depersonalised, is to be made stronger” (p. 74).

Theory then is the stage set for depersonalising life. A naming of something that we should not denote and where connotative language is not satisfying enough. To theorise is to represent life in another form but not life itself.