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The Corporeality of the Actor's Body: The Boundaries of Theatre and the Limitations of Semiotic Methodology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Eli Rozik
Eli Rozik
Affiliation:
Eli Rozik is Professor of Theatre Studies, Tel Aviv University.
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Extract

In recent years, it has been widely suggested that the bodily presence of the actor (and actress) on stage marks the limits and limitations of the semiotic approach to theatre and determines the need for a more complex methodology of research.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Summer 1999 , pp. 198 - 211
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1999

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References

Notes

1. Turner, Victor, From Ritual to Theatre (New York: PAJ Publications, 1982), pp. 68Google Scholar ff. and Schechner, Richard, Performance Theory (New York and London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 166 ff.Google Scholar

2. States, Bert O., Great Reckonings in Little Rooms (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1985), p. 8Google Scholar. All stresses in States's quotes are mine. Further page references to this book will be given in brackets after each quotation, thus (GR, p.).

3. States writes in note 5: ‘Throughout, I use the adjective phenomenal in the sense of pertaining to phenomena or to our sensory experience with empirical objects. The adjective phenomenological, of course, refers to the analytical or descriptive problem of dealing with such phenomena.’ Great Reckonings, p. 21.

4. Veltrusky, Jiri, ‘Man and Object in the Theater’, in Garvin, Paul L., ed., A Prague School Reader on Aesthetics, Literary Structure and Style (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1964), p. 84.Google Scholar

5. For a detailed discussion see Rozik, Eli, The Language of the Theatre (Glasgow: Theatre Studies Publications, 1992), pp. 18–29Google Scholar

6. Langer, Susanne K., Philosophy in a New Key (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), 1976 [1942]), pp. 26 ff.Google Scholar

7. Rozik, , The Language of the Theatre, pp. 1–17.Google Scholar

8. Ibid., pp, 14–15.

9. Ibid., pp. 15–17 and 30–40.

10. In decoding iconic signs on the grounds of similarity, the degree of detail/fullness or stylization is disregarded.

11. Elam, Keir, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama (London and New York: Methuen, 1980), p. 22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12. Plato, , Republic 10, translated by Halliwell, S. (Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1988), p. 39.Google Scholar

13. Rozik, , The Language of the Theatre, pp. 104–25Google Scholar. States's notion of ‘convention’ is different: it refers to what has become usual and, therefore, unnoticed.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid., pp. 151–2.

16. Shklovsky, Victor, ‘Art as Technique’, in Russian Formalist Criticism: Four Essays, translated by Lemon, Lee T. and Reis, Marion J. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), p. 12.Google Scholar

17. Scheler, Max, Selected Philosophical Essays, translated by Lachterman, David R. (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1973), p. 143Google Scholar. Quoted by States, p.23, note 8.

18. Frye, Northrop, Anatomy of Criticism. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1957), pp. 33–52.Google Scholar

19. I suggest that theatre semiosis in order to accomplish cognitive functions has to free itself from rhetoric and aesthetics, which I view as dealing with the experience of truth and not truth itself.

20. During my postdoctoral studies in London, 1973–4, I worked in the following theatres: The Shaw Theatre (Shakespeare's Macbeth), The Royal Shakespeare Company (David Mercer's Duck Song) and The Royal Court Theatre (David Storey's Life Class).