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‘Reading‘ and Directing the Play

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Michael L. Quinn
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Abstract

A director's ‘reading’ of the play – the hierarchical implications of which were discussed by Peter Holland in the preceding article – normally begins with just that: a reading, of the printed or typewritten text. Here. Michael Quinn discusses the various factors through which this initial acquaintance becomes a stage production carrying the stamp of the resulting perceptions – some of which go unrecognized, as much by the director as by those who evaluate his work. These may vary from preconceptions (or a lack of them) about the writer himself to the prevailing modes of the director's own work, or from such imponderables as the ‘lingering’ effect of objects on stage whose original function has been fulfilled to the ‘intertextuality’ always present when a play has a previous production history. The author argues not for the impossible elimination of such influences, but for their proper recognition, so that the director may be better aware of the reasons behind the choices he makes in translating a ‘reading’ into a production. Michael L. Quinn has previously published essays on Brecht and Roman Jakobson, and is currently serving as a play-reader for the San Francisco Magic Theater while preparing his doctoral dissertation on the theatre semiotics of the Prague school.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 3 , Issue 11 , August 1987 , pp. 218 - 223
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

Notes and References

1. On this point I cite Jiří Veltruský at length: ‘The unending quarrel about the nature of drama, whether it is a literary genre or a theatrical piece, is perfectly futile. One does not exclude the other. Drama is a work of literature in its own right: it does not need anything but simple reading to enter the consciousness of the public. At the same time, it is a text that can, and mostly is intended to, be used as the verbal component of theatrical performance. But some forms of theatre prefer lyric or narrative texts to drama: theatre enters into relation with literature as a whole, not just with the dramatic genre’. See ‘Dramatic Text as Component of Theater’, in Semiotics of Art: Prague School Contributions, ed. Matejka, L. and Titunik, I. (Cambridge, Ma: MIT Press, 1976), p. 95Google Scholar. This attitude, first voiced in 1941, is the only sensible approach to the paradoxical problem of the ‘play/text’.

2. McMullan, Frank, The Directorial Image (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1962)Google Scholar. McMullan enjoyed wide influence as a teacher of directing at Yale. Aleksandr Potebnja, who is not alone in this attitude, eventually became an important precursor of the Russian formalists. See Erlich, Victor, Russian Formalism: History – Doctrine (New Haven, Conn.: Yale U. P., 1981), p. 23–6Google Scholar.

3. These remarks are quoted with permission from a master class in directing given 22 Oct. 1986 at the University of Toronto's conference ‘Brecht: Thirty Years After’.

4. See, for example, Umberto Eco's position in ‘Semiotics of Theatrical Performance’, The Drama Review, XI, No. 2 (T74), p. 107–17.

5. Primary examples of this model exist in the work of George Poulet and Maurice Merlau-Ponty, but its most mature form can be found in Iser's, WolfgangThe Act of Reading: a Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U.P., 1978)Google Scholar.

6. This area is explored, for example, by Holland, Norman, who describes the Freudian fantasy element in reading in his Dynamics of Literary Response (New York: Norton, 1975)Google Scholar. Holland would claim a more fundamental importance for individual reader fantasies than they deserve, particularly in an art like theatre that is collectively produced and perceived.

7. By claiming that some texts have little or no relation to the workplace I do not deny their ideological aspect, as seen from the standpoint of socio-political (viz. Marxist) criticism. I would, however, like to avoid the extremist stance that plays are essentially political.

8. The only recent essay I have seen till now on the subject of reading and directing is fairly good on this point. See Weitz, Shoshana, ‘Reading for the Stage: the Role of the Reader-Director’, ASSAPH, Sec. C, No. 2 (1985), p. 122–41Google Scholar. However, many of her points are more clearly presented in Veltruský's, JiříDrama as Literature (Lisse: Peter De Ridder, 1977)Google Scholar. There are two books specifically addressing the reading of plays, neither of which takes a very sophisticated approach to the comparative problems of literature and theatre: Hayman, Ronald, How to Read a Play (New York: Grove Press, 1980)Google Scholar and Rowe, Kenneth Thorpe, A Theater In Your Head (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1960)Google Scholar. Rowe's book demonstrates the extent to which secondary theatrical norms can influence even a theory of play reading.

9. Ingarden's major work on reading. The Cognition of the Literary Work, trans. Ruth Ann Crowley and Kenneth R. Olson (Evanston, III.: Northwestern U. P.), is fairly well-known. Vodička's contribution, which extends Ingarden's theory historically, has exerted considerable influence on Konstanz reception. See ‘The Integrity of the Literary Process’, Poetics, IV (1972), p. 5–15.

10. States, Bert O., Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: on the Phenomenology of Theater (Berkely: California U. P., 1985), p. 29–34Google Scholar.

11. The focusing problem in relation to cinematic principles has been thoroughly explored in Ruffini, Franco, ‘Horizontal and Vertical Montage in the Theatre’, trans. Bassnett, Susan, New Theatre Quarterly, II, No. 5 (02 1986), p. 29–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Eco, Umberto, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana U. P., 1979), p. 33Google Scholar.

13. For a survey of intertextual scholarship see the special number of the American Journal of Semiotics, III, No. 4 (Winter 1985).

14. When I talk about ‘making sense’, I have something more in mind than a common-sense definition. See the adaptation of Frege's concepts of Sinn and Bedeutung in Doležel, Lubomúr, ‘Mukařovský and the Idea of Poetic Truth’, Russian Literature, XII (1982), p. 283–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.