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The Haunted Stage: Recycling and Reception in the Theatre
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 July 2009
Extract
Some of the most thoughtful analysis of the theatre during this century was generated by a group of semiotically-oriented linguists and aestheticians in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in the 1930s and 1940s. These Prague theorists considered all aspects of the theatre experience—the dramatic texts, the various production elements, the audience—but they gave special attention to the complex matter of acting, developing a three-part model for the analysis of this phenomenon that may be taken as typical both of their strategies and of their theoretical concerns. They began with the actor, the living being appearing on the stage. This actor utilized expressive work, physical and vocal, to create the impression of an absent personage. The sum of this work resulted in the creation in the theatre of the stage figure. This figure was then interpreted by the audience, using whatever strategies seemed appropriate to them, to result in their mental image, the character. The character in short was the stage figure as received by the audience.
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- Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1994
References
Endnotes
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