Since Jonas Barish pointed out the influence of anti-theatrical prejudice prevailing in the Western culture, the term 'anti-theatrical' or 'anti-theatricality' has been used to refer to various trends and movements within and out of theatre. However, as Martin Puchner and Allan Ackerman argue in Against Theatre (2006), the forms of anti-theatricality differ according to art forms and ages, which resist generalizations and definitions. While Against Theatre draws our attention to various cases of anti-theatricality in experimental attempts of Modernist drama, Lynn M. Voskuil discusses anti-theatricality in the Victorian theatre which reflects the audience and actors' taste for 'natural acting'. When Virginia Woolf staged her play Freshwater in 1935, she considerably rewrote the previous text she had completed in 1923. Although this play appears to have been written in a traditional style where no innovative attempt of modernist drama is discerned, it seems that Woolf's anti-theatrical thoughts on theatre are found in the alteration of the text and its performance. Her trust in good actors with personality shows a similarity to the Victorian drama theory whereas she seems to share with modernist dramatists a view that some tedious theatrical conventions should be defied. The purpose of this paper is to consider what forms of anti-theatricality can be recognized in the texts and performance of Freshwater. First, I show Woolf's thoughts on theatre noted in her dramatic reviews, then examine her anti-theatrical thoughts reflected in her texts and the performance.

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