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On Faithfulness: The Difficulties Experienced by the Text/Performance Couple

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

PATRICE PAVIS
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Abstract

The question of whether the director has been faithful to the author or whether the production conforms to the text of the play resurfaces in many different shapes. Three recent theories are given as examples of this dogma of necessary fidelity. But this dualism is itself historically relativistic. Examples of recent productions show that the text–performance ‘couple’ must constantly be reconsidered.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , July 2008 , pp. 117 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2008

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References

NOTES

1 See Robert Wilson's staging of Fables of La Fontaine: there is no rereading of the fables, or even of the dramaturgical story of each fable. The stage image, its logic and its visual evolution are the only important aspects, even more so because the textual details, its textuality, are no longer always accessible.

2 Braunschweig, Stéphane, Petites portes, grands paysages (Arles: Actes Sud, 2007), p. 290Google Scholar. (Added emphasis, p.p.)

3 Le Misanthrope, staged by Lassalle, Braunschweig or Lambert, reads as a system which is certainly open and enigmatic, but which proposes each time a way of understanding the motivation and the fate of the character in a global way.

4 Baugh, Chris, Theatre, Performance and Technology (London, Palgrave, 2005), p. 217Google Scholar: ‘The “making of a performance” has become a significantly different activity from that of “directing a play” and has required new practices, new technologies and a new stagecraft’.

5 Balme, Chris, ‘Robert Lepage und die Zukunft des Theaters im Medienzeitalter’, in Fischer-Lichte, Erika, Kolesch, Doris and Weiler, Christel, eds., Transformationen. Theater der Neunziger Jahre (Theater der Zeit, 1999), p. 142Google Scholar. (This and all other translations are my own unless otherwise indicated.)

6 Vitez, Antoine, Ecrits sur le théâtre (Paris: P. O. L., Vol. I, 1994), p. 196Google Scholar.

7 Presentation by Steve Bottoms for the Performing Literatures conference, University of Leeds, June 2007.

8 Plassard, Didier, ‘Esquisse d'une typologie de la mise en scène des classiques’, Littératures classiques, 48 (2003), p. 251Google Scholar.

9 Tackels, Bruno, Fragment d'un théâtre amoureux (Besançon: Les Solitaires Intempestifs, 2001), p. 119Google Scholar.

10 Lallias, Jean-Claude, ‘Les tensions fécondes entre le texte et la scène’, Théâtre aujourd'hui; 10 (2005), Paris, Centre National de Documentation Pédagogique, p. 4Google Scholar.

11 Lallias suggests that this process of translation is necessary for ‘toute mise en scène de valeur’ (‘any mise-en-scène of worth’). Ibid., p. 4.

12 Ibid., p. 4.

13 Ibid., p. 5.

14 Ibid., p. 5.

15 Ibid., p. 5.

16 Vinaver, Michel, ‘L'île’, Théâtre en Europe, 18 (September 1988)Google Scholar.

17 Craig, Gordon, Le Théâtre en marche (Paris: Gallimard, 1964). Quoted in Vinaver, ‘L'île’, p. 21Google Scholar.

18 Vinaver, ‘L'île’, p. 21.

19 See his report for the Ministry of Culture: Vinaver, Michel, Le Compte rendu d'Avignon (Arles: Actes Sud, 1987)Google Scholar.

20 Vinaver, ‘L'île’, p. 22.

21 Pommerat, Joel, ‘Vers l'autre Langue’, Théâtre/Public, 184 (2007)Google Scholar.