Theatre as Signifier

Introduction: Space as Theatrical Signifier

• Theatre exists as both a physical site and an art form.
• Theatre's location shares the name as the artistic event itself.
• Communication exists between physical space and artistic expression.
• Spatial reality can be inadvertently overlooked by those deeply involved in it.

Summarizing Theatre

• Theatre involves live representations of reported or invented events involving humans.
• Primary purpose of theatre is entertainment for the spectator.
• Theatre emphasizes enactment, narrative, and the making processes.
• Essence of theatre = "A impersonates B, while C looks on."
• The formula underscores the relational and double nature of theatre (A to B and A/B to C).
• Mirror is a histrionic object that allows the actor to become C (the audience).
• Bentley abstracts the spectator resulting in the removal of the act from real space into domain beyond theatre

Live Performance

• The definitive feature of theatre is its liveness.
• Grotowski's definition emphasizes immediacy and the performer's physiological reality, needing a spectator's presence.
• Theatre is defined as what takes place between spectator and actor.
• "Paratheatrical" describes performance activities that occur without an audience.
• English language emphasizes the location where events "take place".
• Peter Brook states, any empty space can be a stage when someone watches another.
• Minimal act of theatre involves transforming space, by calling it a stage
• German theorists necessitate intentionality from both performer & spectator

Noteworthy Points About Theatre

• Beauty of Brook's definition: it highlights the space's function.
• Empty space enables simultaneous performer/watcher presence.
• Richard Southern uses Peer Gynt metaphor to find theatre's essence, eliminating movable scenery, auditorium, stage, costume, and mask.
• Theatre's core elements = Player and Audience
• Theatre requires performer and spectator's relationship.
• A space is required for performer and spectator to convene.
• The third term to acknowledge in theatre is space between actors & spectators.

Space in Performance

• Exploration of spatial reality's multiple functions constructs + communicates theatrical meaning.
• Focus will be on "the lived space of performance," experienced and occupied by spectators/performers.
• Theatrical semiosis has been clarified by the evolution of different media in 20th century.
• Symbiotic bond between theatre and drama since Aristotle's time has been severed by film & television popularity.
• The impact = new challenges, and a clearer understanding of the specificity of theatre.
• Aristotle's distinction has been used by those reluctant to engage the reality of performance
• Paradigm shift in theatrical studies has broken the nexus of cinema & theatre, due in part to the development of other media

Theatre Today

• The future of text-based theatre in the United States is seriously questioned.
• Antonin Artaud is a key figure in theatre, arguing against the subordination of the theatrical to the literary.
• The importance of the physical and of space itself in theatrical semiosis must be insisted on.
• Primacy of the theatrical over the written = reevaluation of performance's physical reality.
• Rethinking the role of space is a consequence of the reevaluation of performance's physical reality.
• Specificity of theatre = interaction between performers/spectators in a given space.
• In theatre primary signifiers = physical and spatial in nature; it's a social event. Experience of wide range of performance (physical theatre, mixed-media production, theatre of image, performance art, street theatre, and improvisation) has fed into thinking & theorizing.

Language in Theatre

• Understanding and appreciation of theatre experience emerging from this century's avant-garde + alternative performance practices also can refocus thinking about traditional forms.
• Artaud's idea of stage's physical language = difficult to theorize or describe.
• Early semioticians used linguistic analogy to bring a new understanding of how meaning is constructed + communicated
• Rigid linguistic models hampered communication in theatre + was part of the problem.
• It might not be appropriate to describe theatre as a language.
• Henri Lefebvre calls theatre, music, architecture, painting, and sculpture "non-verbal signifying sets".
• Lefebvre defines non-verbal signifying sets are "characterised by a spatiality which is in fact irreducible to the mental realm."
• Models of language acknowledge that speech is embodied, gendered, + always socially + culturally situated.
• It is theatre that can serve as a heuristic device + illuminate the functioning of language and not the other way around.

Semiotics for the Stage

• Contemporary theorists are wary about linguistic analogies because of semiotics in the early theatre.
• Theatrical event = part of a series of interconnected processes of socially situated signification and communication.
• Aims: Explore space functions in the physical places of performance the perform-spectator interaction, the energized space where stage is rendered meaningful, arrangement of stage and offstage, and the space of verbal reference .

Signifiers in Space

• Signifiers on the stage are as important as the stage itself (experience of film has shown).
• The performers occupation of the space is vitally important.
• Entrances, exits, movements, and the proxemic relationships activate the space and make it meaningful.
• Emphasis is not on theatre buildings themselves, but how space functions in practice.
• Studies of theatre buildings can adopt an overtly semiotic perspective
• Key interest is how space functions in the performance experience and construction of meaning by spectators.

The Building Itself

• We lack knowledge about the location of great theatres of the past within the urban plan and backstage areas.
• What is absent from the historical record: wings, dressing rooms, practitioner entry points
• Such documentation would be a repository of the work process involved.
• Absence of areas is an indication of studies only concerned with building as aesthetic object.
• Valuable information can come from the playtext when read w/ architectural + iconographic records.
• Space is a category in theatrical meaning making.
• Text is the only constant element that can be questioned due to director/actor modification during rehearsal process.
• The issue that theatre performance is ephemeral + unrepeatable can't be talked about other than anecdotal.

Theatre's Uniqueness

• Theatre's uniqueness lies in being local and located.
• Performances have potent incarnation in particular venues for particular communities.
• Documented empirical studies are a basis for theoretical generalizations.
• Analysis of theatrical function comes from filmed versions of theatre.
• Personal experience helps with writing for everyone.
• Performance studies is moving into the methodological domain of ethnography.
• New tasks/skills are demanded of analysts, and relationships between academics & theatre practitioners.
• The Centre for Performance Studies in the University of Sydney has been developing arrangements allowing for space and the work processes.

Theatrical Intentions

• Full rehearsal or an experimental workshop = energy/inventiveness with dangerous edge to the work.
• Text-based theatre study is a recognition of historical significance
• Recognition must still be given for tensions in the debates.
• In Sydney theatre the divisions have been sharp + rhetoric is fairly brutal,
• Distinctions between theatre and performance is unrecognized.
• Professional theatre practitioners' rehearsal and performance practices, rather than university theatre practices, are observed.

More Insight Into Theatre

• It is a necessity to be very clear about the status + role of the observer in phenomenon under analysis.
• Ethnographic method can be valuable in facilitating the discussion of cultures.
• Theatre: Complex phenomenon that needs lots of prep by the artists.
• A single performance or production has little impact on audiences.
• Theatre performances are only variables that the product has conjured. Processual nature of dynamic role of the spectator in the construction of meaning are shared by artistic expression.
• All realities can affirm the known which is difficult due to knowledge being exclude.

In Summary

• Rehearsals: Number people + materials, choices are made, + performance made.
• Performance is related to audience + subtle ways over time.
• Nothing exists in the theatre in isolation.
• The actor is always situated in relation to other actors, to the stage, and to the audience.
• Being an event, the performance needs to have ethical + methodological problems.
• Framework + methods in study derive from semiotics, phenomenology, ethnography, + sociology.
• Centrality of space needs precise vocabulary.
• Distinction set must me less established.

Categories and Definitions

• It is desirable to review categories + definitions to function effectively as a theatre space.
• Taxonomy isn't naming parts but provides analytical tool + convey understanding.
• Theatre space meditations depend on play text and more
• Stage is straightforward and the scene is more complex.
• Way presentation incorporates social political commentary
• Theatrical space is the physical, and scene is a derived abstraction.
• Dramatic space is made of both textual + performance
• Essential conflict with the hero's space
• Jansen insist the spatial system of the playtext construction of meaning.
• Must define between the parts of the scene.
• Different terms account for theatre.
• Theatre produces a the theatrical space dimension for each space.
• Space defined through word, movement, gesture.

In Conclusion

• Notions should be packed into a single term
• Theatre: Is a unique physical state that can be seen
• Onstage is perceived and conceived.
• Off stage Is conceived. Other staging includes body language that can be verbal or nonverbal.
• If there are many the categories cannot be applied.
• Textual play must be considered important.
• Space can be independent. Theatre works if plays work and texts can change.
• Text space can occur everywhere and means nothing if people don't know about it.
• Analysis allows all people to show. Space allows analysis that will thematically function overall.