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The Signs of the Theatre

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Lionel Gossman
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Extract

There have been few systematic studies in English of the signs of the theatre. I hope in this essay to indicate something of the range and interest of the topic. The focus of attention, clearly, will be the theatrical act of representation or performance rather than the dramatic text or script. The dramatic text has a life of its own, independent of all performances of it: on the one hand, as Gordon Craig, one of the great champions of the theatre over the text, recognized, it overflows all performances and is exhausted by none; on the other, any performance overflows the literary text that it purports to be a performance of, and is not reducible to it. A clear distinction must therefore be made between theatrical representation and literary text. As most theatrical performances are based on dramatic texts, however, some consideration of the nature of the relation between the two is desirable. Before broaching the subject of signs in the theatre directly, therefore, I propose to say a word or two about this question.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 2 , Issue 1 , October 1976 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1976

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References

Notes

1. Craig, Gordon, Art of the Theatre (1911)Google Scholar, in Bentley, Eric, ed., The Theory of the Modern Stage, Harmondsworth, 1968, pp. 116–17.Google Scholar Gf. the comments of Andrzeij Wajda, the Polish director, on the text of Dostojevski's The Devils, of which he had produced a stage version (‘Dialectic and Humanism’, Polish Philosophical Quarterly, 1, 1974, pp. 159–61).Google Scholar

2. In a passage of the Preface to Les Précieuses Ridicules, which has received surprisingly little commentary, Molière indicates his awareness of the transition from theatre to literature. He justifies the printing of the text of the play on the grounds that altered versions of it were being produced. As he was a man of the theatre himself, however, and was thoroughly familiar with the commedia dell'arte tradition, Molière knew that adaptation was inseparable from production and performance. In fact, the printing of his text marks the beginning of his ambition as a writer rather than a man of the theatre.

3. Schriften zum Theatre, Frankfurt a/M., 1957, p. 31.Google Scholar

4. On this question, see Veinstein, André, La Représentation théâtrale et ses conditions esthétiques, Paris, 1955.Google Scholar

5. ‘On liguistic aspects of translation’, in Brower, R. A., ed., On Translation, Cambridge, Mass., 1958, pp. 232–9.Google Scholar

6. Indeed, for some directors, the problem of fidelity presented itself quite differently. Gaston Baty, for instance, apparently took his point of reference to be not the original text, but the original relation between the work in performance and its public, the original impact that he supposed the play had on the original audience. To re-create this original relation in the altered conditions of his own time was, he claimed, the aim of his productions of classical works. (See Virmaux, Alain, ‘Baty et la fidélité aux classiques’, Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études françaises, 21, 1969, pp. 87–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar) Baty's position is, of course, still very conservative and recalls a traditional – and untenable – position in translation theory, according to which the translator's task is to reproduce on a new public the effect the original work had on its contemporary public.

7. The problem is immense and should no doubt be considered within the general context of translation theory.

8. Tairov, Alexandr, Notes of a Director, New York, 1969, pp. 101–2.Google Scholar

9. Mic, Constantin, La Commedia dell'arte, Paris, 1927Google Scholar, (Originally published in Russian, 1914.)

10. Kowan, Tadeusz, ‘Le texte et le spectacle: rapports entre la mise en scène et la parole’, Cahiers de l'Association internationale des études françaises, 21, 1969, pp. 63–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11. Bogatyrev, Pjotr, ‘Les signes du théâtre’, Poétique, 8, 1971, pp. 517–30.Google Scholar (Originally published in Czech, 1938.) See also Levý, Jirí, Die literarische Übersetzung: Theorie einer Kunst-gattung, Frankfurt a/M., 1969Google Scholar, chapter 5, ‘Die Übersetzung von Theaterstücken’. (Originally published in Czech, 1963.)

12. Schriften zum Theater, pp. 21–2.Google Scholar

13. Estetika dramatickeho umení. Teoreticka dramaturgie, referred to by Bogatyrev, p. 519, note 5.Google Scholar

14. I put forward the category of conventional signs somewhat uneasily. For one thing, conventional signs cannot be considered an absolutely distinct category. The sign functions mentioned by Zich are themselves often filled by conventional signs, notably in certain highly codified forms of theatre. (See, for instance, on the Chinese theatre, Zung, Cecilia S. L., Secrets of the Chinese Drama, 1937, reprinted N.Y., 1964.Google Scholar) But in addition, to the degree that the theatrical work is viewed as subject to analysis as a system of signs, it must be supposed that all the signs are in some measure or another conventional, that is, coded. It is usually because they have dropped out of the contemporary repertory that certain signs are perceived as ‘conventional’ or ‘non-natural’.

15. Reported in Mantzius, Karl, A History of Theatrical Art, vol. 5, p. 250.Google Scholar