I. Metatheatrical Trends In his foundational work devoted to defining the difference between tragedy and metatheater, Lionel Abel identifies numerous distinguishing characteristics of metatheater. Numbered among them is the claim that "for metatheatre, order is something continually improvised by men." (1) Even this singular tenet, which for the sake of brevity I will call the "Ontological Order Tenet" can be regarded as fairly comprehensive, especially if it is read as suggesting that metatheater endeavors to point out ontologically that the physical world might not be quite what it seems. Moreover, distinguished participants in the form such as Luigi Pirandello and Bertolt Brecht are defended by Abel as metatheatrical, at least according to his theory. (2) When Pirandello "explores dramatically our inability to distinguish between illusion and reality" it can be seen as metatheatrical (according to the Ontological Order Tenet) because even as metadrama blurs the boundaries between illusion and reality, it does so by circumscribing a theatrical order explicitly "improvised by men"; Brecht is metatheatrical, in Abel's scheme of things, because "he insists on the fact that [his characters] are puppets"; he "does not try to pass them off as real people, and [he] delights in exhibiting their mechanisms." In keeping with the Ontological Order Tenet this reminds us that the point of Brecht's plays is to focus on the very fact that they have indeed been "improvised by men."
