1. On both of these aspects see, for example, the work of the Magazzini Criminali (ex-Carrazzone), who have been using video recordings (along with other techniques) for some years for the documentation of what they now (following Pasolini) refer to as their ‘theatre of poetry’. See Bonifiglioli, R., Frequenze barbare (Firenze: La Casa Usher, 1981)Google Scholar; Lombardi, S.–D'Amburgo, M.–Tiezzi, F., Sulla strada dei Magazzini Criminali (Milan: Ubulibri, 1983)Google Scholar.

2. Luxereau, Francois, ‘Filmer le théâtre’, Cahiers du Théâtre Louvain, 46 (1981), p. 91Google Scholar.

3. Foucault, Michel, The Archaeology of Knowledge (London: Tavistock, 1972)Google Scholar.

4. le Goff, Jacques, ‘Documento/Monumento’, Enciclopedia Einaudi, Vol. IV (1978), p. 44–5 (my italics)Google Scholar.

5. See, for example, the recent Teatri prima del teatro: visioni dell edificio e della scena fra Umanesimo e Rinascimento (Rome: Bulzoni, 1983), p. 68–71. See also what Marotti, Ferruccio wrote on the subject ten years ago, ‘Note di metodo per lo studio del teatro di regia’, Biblioteca Teatrale, β (1973), p. 33–6Google Scholar.

6. Zumthor, Paul, ‘Document et Monument:à propos des plus anciens textes de langue francaise’, Revue des Sciences Humaines, 97 (1960)Google Scholar.

7. From now on my discussion should be understood to refer to video recording so far as that is the widely adopted solution, by reason of cost and ease of handling, to the problem of theatrical documentation for purposes of study or conservation.

8. See the Catalogo-listino delle registrazione videomagnetiche dello A.S.A.C., ed. Gagliardi, Paola Gonzo, di Venezia, La Biennale, Archivico Storico delle Arti Contemporanee (Venezia, 1979, with an update to August 1981); Films sur le théâtre et tart du mime (Paris: UNESCO, 1965). In 1962 UNESCO also published a catalogue of films about opera and musical theatre, Films for Music Education and Opera FilmsGoogle Scholar.

9. A number of films by the Odin group, mainly those produced by the Odin Teatret Film, seem outstanding in this area, from the by now famous Training at the Odin Teatret (1973), shot in two parts under the direction of Torgeir Wethal, to the films about the experiences and theatrical ‘exchanges’ that the Danish group went through in various parts of the world. See In cerca di teatro (1974), a RAI production, and Vestita di bianco (1974–75), on their experiences in Southern Italy; L'Odin Teatret nell Amazzonia venezuelana (1976), a Kurare production; and Sulle due sponde delfiume (1979–80), on their two month journey, undertaken in 1978, in the Peruvian Andes. Miklos Jancso's film about the Luca Ronconi workshop in Prato is also interesting because of its attention to the process and context of the experience.

10. On the contextual analysis of performance, see my Semiotica del Teatro (Milan: Bompiani, 1982); ‘Capire il teatro: per una semiotica storica come epistemologia delle discipline teatrali’, Versus, 33 (1983).

11. Marotti, Ferruccio, ‘Intervista’, in Savarese, Nicola, ‘Film didattici sul teatro’, Biblioteca Teatrale, 13 (1975), p. 83Google Scholar

12. See Nicola Savarese, ‘Film didattici’, op. cit., p. 54. An excellent introduction to the problems and the history of ethnographic film is Jean Rouch, ‘Le Film ethnographique’, in Encyclopédie de la Plé, Vol. XXIV–16: Ethnologie Générale, Vol. II (Paris: Gallimard, 1968). Particularly useful for the Italian area is the recent Anthropologie visuale by Chiozzi, Paolo (Firenze: La Casa Usher, 1984Google Scholar, with a vast international bibliography). There is a valuable, coherent list of ethnographic films of theatrical interest in the catalogue edited by Marotti, Ferruccio, Per ritrarreil grido che ho sognalo: 100 film alle radici del teatro (Centro per la Ricerca e la Sperimentazione teatrale di Pontedera, 1979). It must be added that the ethnographic approach is precisely that which Marotti has emphasized from the beginning of his more than ten years of audiovisual research into theatrical traditions and acting codes in Bali and in India. See, especially, the films Trance e dramma a Bali (1974); Le dieci incarnazioni di Visnu. II-Kathakali (1978); and Le dieci incarnazioni di Visnu. I-Yakshagana (1978) – the last two under the direction of Giorgio Moser. Recently, Marotti has gathered a large number of texts containing comments on these films and on other audiovisual researches into eastern theatrical culture: see Il volto dell invisible. Studi e ricerche sui teatri orientali (Rome: Bulzoni, 1984)Google Scholar.

13. See, in this regard, the theoretical framework for a pragmatics of theatre communication that the present writer has attempted to outline in Semiotica del Teatro, op. cit., Chapters 6 and 7. A French version of Chapter 6 has been published in Versus, 30 (1981). For more recent developments than my researches into the reception and comprehension of performance, See ‘Theatrical Comprehension: a Socio-Semiotic Approach’, Theater (Yale School of Drama, USA), Winter 1983, p. 8–15; ‘L'esperienza dellospettatore: fondamenti di una semiotica delle recezione teatrale’, in Documenti e Pre-pubblicazioni, CISL (Urbino, 1985); and ‘Toward a Cognitive Semiotic of Theatrical Emotions’, Versus, 41 (1985).

14. Peter Brook, ‘A propos de Roi Lear et de Marat Sade’, in Cahiers du Théâtre, Louvain, op. cit., P. 22.

15. Obviously, I am much less in agreement with Brook when, in the same discussion, he seems to link the usefulness (profitability) of the filmic document with, above all, its (for me, impossible and undesirable) completeness and impartiality.

16. Yet even that can be useful, especially in cases where performances take place in non-traditional theatre spaces (basements, sheds, squares, streets, etc.), and for which it is thus especially important to know about the physical organization of the audience in relation to l'air de jeu.

17. Denis Bablet, ‘La Vidéo au service de la recherche théâtrale:de quelques expériences’, Cashiers du Théâtre Louvain, op. cit., p. 82.

18. Taviani, Fernando, ‘Presentazione’, Quaderni di Teatro, IV, 16 (1982), p. 8Google Scholar.

19. My previous remarks certainly do not follow the line – which, I repeat, is impracticable and counterproductive – of making the audiovisual document more complete or more ‘faithful’, but that of making it more useful and functional in terms of the scientific use that one intends to make of it, firmly retaining its partial and incomplete character.

20. See Ferruccio Marotti, ‘Intervista’, op. cit., p. 77. In particular, the audiovisual medium can prove itself (has already proved itself) invaluable in those researches into theatrical anthropology which, thanks to the boost given by Eugenio Barba and the International School of Theatre Anthropology, have for some years been concerned with the transcultural concepts underlying the actor's work and, more generally, human behaviour in unusual situations. In this context, see Barba, Eugenio, La corsadei contrari: abtropologia teatrale (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1981)Google Scholar, with a partial English translation in The Drama Review, XXVI, 2 (1982); and Anatomia del teatro: un dizionario di antropologia teatrale, ed. Savarese, Nicola (Firenze: La Casa Usher, 1983)Google Scholar.

21. Nicola Savarese, ‘Film didattici’, op. cit., p. 55.

22. Torgeir Wethal, ‘Intervista’, in Nicola Savarese, ‘Film didattici’, op. cit., p. 66–7.

23. Obviously, there is an exception to every rule; thus, the ‘neutral’ shot with the fixed camera, usually of very little documentary value, can have a technical and expressive justification. There is the case of the well-known film of The Constant Prince by Grotowski (1967), in which the fixed framing manages, analogically, to convey something of the intense atmosphere of claustrophobia and oppression which the performance gave to the audience. Something similar can also be said of the differences between Apocalypsis as recorded in the theatre and the Olmi Apocalypsis. In the former, the recording comes out literally illegible because of a virtually absolute lack of light (the only illumination is provided by candles used by the actors) which, however, manages perhaps to give a theatrical atmosphere, to reproduce something of the emotional climate produced by the show, evoking in the spectator certain elements of the experience of the audience – not a minor achievement. On the other hand, the Olmi version, with its TV lights, its clean and living colours, etc., is certainly mendacious and ‘traitorous’ with regard to the show, but documents some of its most important – if decontextualized – elements, which could not be followed in the first version, such as the acting of the cast and, in particular, their physical gestures.

24. François Luxereau, ‘Filmer le théâtre’, op. cit., p. 92.

25. On the theoretical and technical problems posed by the multiple transcription (notation) of performance, see Pavis, Patrice, ‘Reflections on the Notation of the Theatrical Performance’, in Language of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of the Theatre (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982); and my own Semiotica del teatro, op. cit., p. 76–93Google Scholar.