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Beyond Style: Typologies of Performance Analysis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Christopher Balme
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Extract

The theory of mise en scène we are trying to establish allows us to eschew impressionistic discourse on the style, inventiveness and originality of the director who adds his so-called personal touch to a precious text regarded as closed and inviolate.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 22 , Issue 1 , Spring 1997 , pp. 24 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1997

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References

Notes

1. Pavis, Patrice, ‘From Page to Stage: A Difficult Birth’, Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (London: Routledge, 1992) p. 36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2. He is referring here to Mukarovsk's term for the total context of social, political ideological factors informing an aesthetic text. See Pavis, , 1992, p. 27.Google Scholar

3. For Pavis's notion of metatext, see the chapter ‘Towards a Semiology of the Mise en Scène’, Languages of the Stage: Essays in the Semiology of Theatre. (New York: Performing Arts Journal Publications 1982), p. 149 ff.

4. Pavis, , 1992, p. 37.Google Scholar

5. Pavis, , 1992, p. 38.Google Scholar

6. Zeitschrift für Semiotik 11: 1 (1989), pp. 29–49.

7. Lehmann, , p. 35.Google Scholar

8. Lehmann's example is Jürgen Flimm's production of von Kleist, Heinrich's Käthchen von Heilbronn, Cologne 1979.Google Scholar

9. Lehmann, , p. 37.Google Scholar

10. Lehmann, , p. 40.Google Scholar

11. As Brook himself points out, economic considerations forced him to abandon the idea of a freshly conceived film. Instead he transplanted his theatre production to a film studio where it was recorded with several cameras. See Brook, Peter, The Shifting Point: Forty Years of Theatrical Exploration (London: Methuen, 1987), p. 189Google Scholar. For a detailed discussion of the two versions and the analytical problems the transposition poses, see Pavis, Patrice, ‘From Theatre to Film: Selecting a Methodology for Analysis. On Marat/Sade by P. Weiss and P. Brook’, Understanding Theatre, ed. Martin, J. and Sauter, W. (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1995), pp. 212–30.Google Scholar

12. Brook, , p. 190.Google Scholar

13. ‘Notes on the Theatre of Cruelty’, Tulane Drama Review 11:2 (T34) (Winter 1966), p. 171.

14. Marowitz, , p. 171.Google Scholar

15. It is interesting to note in this context how the (film) actors physically present madness. Patrice Pavis has identified four models of bodily presentation in Marat/Sade; see Pavis, 1995, p. 221 ff.Google Scholar

16. This reading is backed up by Marowitz, : ‘Although [Brook] has a firm intellectual grasp of a play's ideas, his natural instinct for violence and stark effects seduces him into irrelevant sensationalism’, p. 170Google Scholar. In a recent interview Brook interpreted his production as an attempt to reveal the in teresting contradictions in the play: ‘I did Marat/Sade because I sensed that Peter Weiss who considered himself a Communist had formulated his own contradiction: He was for both Sade and Marat. Out of this strong, tragic conflict between two contradictory forces arose very good theatre. Weiss thought he was for Marat, against Sade; but his play was different. That's the way I directed it.’ Sucher, C. Bernd, ‘Das stärkste und reichste Instrument ist der Mensch’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 12–1306 1993, p. 13.Google Scholar

17. Quoted in an interview with Schechner, Richard, ‘Karen Finley: A Constant State of Becoming’, The Drama Review 32: 1 (T117) (1988), p. 155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

18. Schuler, Catherine, ‘Spectator Response and Comprehension: The Problem of Karen Finley's Constant State of Desire’, The Drama Review 43: 1 (T125) (Spring 1990), p. 131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. The text is published in (Schechner, 1988Google Scholar; see note 17), which also contains a descriptive analysis of the performance and an interview with Finley. I also had access to a film sequence from The Constant State of Desire contained in the film New York Il Mondo.

20. Schuler, 's study (1990)Google Scholar on spectator response is primarily performance-based as it is an analysis of a survey of spectators who had attended a specific performance. Yet Schuler also makes frequent reference to the published text in her own reading of the piece. See also the extensive essay by Pramaggiore, Maria T., ‘Resisting/Performing/Femininity: Words, Flesh, and Feminism in Karen Finley's The Constant State of Desire’, Theatre foumal 44 (1992), pp. 269–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Although including references to a specific performance, Pramaggiore's study is almost entirely a text-based, psychoanalytic reading.

21. See Schechner, , 1988, p. 155.Google Scholar

22. On spectator response, see Schuler, , 1990Google Scholar; on her problems with venues, see Schechner, , 1988.Google Scholar

23. Pramaggiore, , 1992, p. 274.Google Scholar

24. Schechner, , 1988, p. 157.Google Scholar

25. Pramaggiore, , 1992, p. 282.Google Scholar

26. Pramaggiore, , 1992, p. 282.Google Scholar

27. Schuler, , 1990, p. 137.Google Scholar

28. Schuler, , 1990, pp. 137–8.Google Scholar