We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 January 2009
Whether described as adaptations, documentations, translations, or transcriptions, the video cassettes which allow us to see performances on video are proliferating. Not always easily available for begging, borrowing, or buying, not always willingly turned over by the theatre companies who hold them for in-house use, often lost or erased by television channels, and always beleaguered with copyright problems, these electronic arts ‘documents’ are none the less causing a revolution in teaching, rehearsal methods, and research. In what constitutes a first detailed mapping of the territory, Annabelle Melzer's two-part article, of which the first part appeared in NTQ42 (May 1995), deals with the theoretical and aesthetic questions surrounding performance documentation, with some of the hands-on issues of such filming – and with her own journey to seek out the documents themselves. Annabelle Melzer, Associate Professor of Theatre at the University of Tel Aviv, is completing ten years of research on the adaptation and documentation of theatre through moving image documents. Shakespeare on Screen, the first volume of her multi-volume filmography, Theatre on Screen, appeared in 1991, receiving the Choice and American Library Association awards as outstanding reference book of that year. Her articles on avant-garde performance have appeared in Artforum, Theatre Research International, and Comparative Drama, and her Hazan Prize-winning book Dada and Surrealist Performance has recently been reissued by Johns Hopkins University Press. She is at present writing a book on the theatricality of war.
34. Elam, Keir. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London: Methuen, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
35. Tornqvist, Egil, Transposing Drama: Studies in Representation (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), p. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
36. Carlson, Marvin, ‘The Theatre Event and Filmic Documentation’, Degres, IV, No. 48 (Winter 1986), p. 1Google Scholar.
37. Pavis, Patrice, ‘Reflections on the Notation of the Theatrical Performance’, Languages of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of the Theatre. (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), p. 111Google Scholar.
38. Pavis, op. cit., p. 111.
39. Carlson, op. cit., p. 11.
40. Tornqvist, op. cit., p. 8
41. De Toro, , in Erenstein, Robert L., ed., Theatre and Television (Amsterdam: International Theatre Bookshop, 1988), p. 191,192Google Scholar.
42. Brook, Peter, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, XLVI (1981), p. 18Google Scholar.
43. Denis Bablet, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 146.
44. Kott, Jan, ‘After Grotowski: the End of the Impossible Theatre’, Theatre Quarterly, X, No. 38 (Summer 1980)Google Scholar.
45. Peter Brook, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 30.
46. Harvith, John and Harvith, Susan Edwards, eds., Edison, Musicians, and the Phonograph: a Century in Retrospect (Greenwood Press, 1987), p. 30Google Scholar.
47. Marcel Bluwal, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 86.
48. Ibid., p. 84.
49. Otomar Krejca, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 84.
50. Pavis, op. cit., p. 123.
51. Egil Tornqvist, op. cit., p. 21.
52. Olivier Veillon, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 33.
53. There is neither time nor appropriate place here to consider such intensely ‘subjective’ films of performance as Nam June Paik's 1966 Variations on Johnny Carson vs. Charlotte Moorman, which features Moorman conversing with and later performing a John Cage piece for Johnny Carson. Here the tape itself is the subject rather than the content of the recorded discussion and performance, with the Cage work as a matrix for Paik's meta-critique.
54. Carlson, op. cit, p. 11–12.
55. de Marinis, Marco, ‘A Faithful Betrayal of Performance: Notes on the Use of Video in Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, I, No. 4 (11 1985)Google Scholar.
56. Francois Luxereau, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 91.
57. Goff, Jacques le, ‘Documento/Monumento’, Enciclopedia Einaudi, Vol. IV (1978), p. 44–5Google Scholar, quoted in de Marinis, op. cit., p. 383.
58. Miller, Jonathan, Subsequent Performances (London: Faber, 1986), p. 53Google Scholar.
59. De Marinis, op. cit.
60. Denis Bablet, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p.42.
61. Miller, op. cit., p. 50.
62. Peter Brook, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 22.
63. Miller, op. cit., p. 54.
64. Daniele Sallenave, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 144.
65. Pavis, op. cit., p. 124,129.
66. Jonathan Miller, op. cit., p. 63.
67. Davis, Douglas, ‘Filmgoing/Videogoing: Making Distinctions’, in Video Culture: a Critical Investigation, ed. Hanhardt, John G. (Rochester, New York: Peregrine Smith Books, 1986), p. 270–1Google Scholar.
68. Richard Kalisz, in Erenstein, op. cit., p. 81.
69. Jaap Drupstein, in Erenstein, op. cit., p. 74.
70. Davis, in Videoculture, op. cit., p. 272.
71. David Antin, ‘Video: the Distinctive Features of the Medium’, in Videoculture, op. cit., p. 149.
72. Cavell, Stanley, ‘The Fact of Television’, Daedalus, III, No. 4 (Fall 1982), p. 75–96Google Scholar.
73. Nears, Colin, ‘Bridging the Distance: Television and Dance’, Dance Research, V, No. 2 (Autumn 1987), p. 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
74. ‘Theater in America: Can Directors Co-Direct?’ Action, July–August 1975, p. 7.
75. Ibid., p. 13.
76. Cunningham, Merce, in Grossman, Peter Z., ‘Talking with Merce Cunningham about Video’, Dance Scope, XIII, Nos. 2–3 (1979), p. 61Google Scholar.
77. Bart Geeraedts, in Erenstein, op. cit., p. 197.
78. Jose Angel Gomez, in Erenstein, op. cit., p. 218–19.
79. Francois Luxereau, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 91.
80. Colin Nears, op. cit., p. 44.
81. Dialogue – Schaeffer, George and Freedman', Lewis, Television Quarterly, I, No. 2 (05 1962), p. 10Google Scholar, cited in Rose, Brian G., Television and the Performing Arts: a Handbook and Reference Guide to American Cultural Programming (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986)Google Scholar.
82. Miller, op. cit., p. 66.
83. Ibid.
84. Pavis, op. cit., p. 123.
85. Peter Brook, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 35.
86. Jaap Drupsteen, in Erenstein, op. cit., p. 73.
87. Miller, op. cit, p. 63.
88. Antoine Vitez, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 98–9.
89. Zeisler, Peter, quoted in Zesch, Lindy, ‘National Video Festival: Looking Backward and Forward at the Art of Television,’ Theatre Communications, III, No. 5 (08 1981)Google Scholar.
90. Peter Brook, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 21.
91. Beckerman, Bernard, Dynamics of Drama (New York: Knopf, 1970), p. 150–1Google Scholar.
92. Gildon, Charles, The Life of Mr. Thomas Betterton, 1710Google Scholar, quoted inRoach, Joseph R., The Player's Passion: Studies in the Science of Acting (London: Associated University Presses, 1985), p. 47Google Scholar.
93. Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’, Illuminations, trans. Zohn, Harry (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p. 217–51Google Scholar.
94. Luigi Pirandello, Si Gira, quoted by Pierre-Quint, Leon, ‘Signification du Cinema’, L'Art cinematographique, II (Paris, 1927), p. 14–15Google Scholar.
95. Peter Brook, Cahiers Théâtre Louvain, p. 28–9.
