The Body, Space and
Spectator
An introduction by
Marie-Gabrielle Rotie
September 2015
Space
•  What is it?
•  What is theatrical space?
•  What is this space?
•  What is the space between you and others? (proxemics)
•  What is the space between you and me?
•  What does this space mean?
•  What is the space inside you?
Peter Brook on Space •  ‘An empty space entails the elimina0on of all that is superfluous – the polar opposite of the constant wastage and excess which exists in life, where we re bombarded by thousands of impressions incessantly. Theatre doesn’t reproduce life, it suggests it by clearing away and freeing up the space around the ac0on… In a space swept clear of all superflui0es, it is possible to inhabit several different ‘0mes’ at once.’ (Brook, 1992, 107) Body
•  What is your body?
•  What can it do?
•  What can the body signify? (semiotics)
•  What is the function of the body in performance?
Spectator
•  What is a spectator?
•  Where are they in relation to a performer(s) ( examples, Grotowski,
promenade etc )
Peter Brook Equa-on Theatre = R r a •  Repe::on representa:on, assistance •  Rehearsal -­‐ representa:on is making present – •  Assistance – eyes of ‘good’ audience audience assists the actor The Body, Space and Spectator
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The sine qua non of all live performance: (Brook and The Empty Space)
A constant relationship between the 3
Working with an awareness of this in all performance making
Peter Brook •  The Deadly Theatre bad, commercial, money and economic pressures , dull, mediocre audiences – we are also to blame for our preten:ous upholding of this type of theatre. Mannered ac:ng, posturing, style, old methods, old formulae. Peter Brook: The need for ‘crea0ng works that evoke in audiences an undeniable hunger and thirst’. (p.148) A necessary theatre In rare moments ‘ the theatre of joy, of catharsis, of celebra0on, the theatre of explora0on, the theatre of shared meaning, the living theatre are one’. (p.151) When a performance is over, what remains? (P.152) The spectator – ‘’ does he want anything different in himself, his life, his society? If he doesn’t then he doesn't need the theatre to be an aid, a magnifying glass, a searchlight or a place of confronta0on.’’ (p. 153) Postmodern Theatre Defini:ons of Postmodernism •  ‘’ postmodernism can be defined as differing from modernism because it carries modernist principles beyond an0cipated boundaries or because it rejects modernist principles all together.’’ (Gaggi 1989,19) •  ‘Extensions of modernism include collage, atonality, nonlinearity, decenterdness, imbalance, scep0cism, abstractness, ambiguity, serialisa0on, stream of consciousness and the like.’ (Whitmore p.3) Postmodern Aesthe:cs Whitmore defines Postmodernisms as ’performances that are primarily nonlinear, non literary, non realis0c, non-­‐discursive and non-­‐closure oriented’. (p. 4) •  Rejec:ons of Modernism includes ‘the highligh0ng of self-­‐referen0ality, deconstruc0on, and popular culture..’ (p. 4) ‘Extensions of modernism include collage, atonality, nonlinearity, decenterdness, imbalance, scep0cism, abstractness, ambiguity, serialisa0on, stream of consciousness and the like.’ (page 3) Some examples of Postmodern directors – • 
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Richard Foreman (Ontological-­‐Hysteric Theatre) Peter Brook Jerzy Grotowski Robert Wilson Ariane Mnouchkine (Theatre du Soliel) Whitemore cites Wooster Group as an example of Total Theatre – Gesamkunstwerk (a term used by composer Richard Wagner). •  Theatre creates meaning – how are meanings communicated and assembled? •  As directors increasingly abandon, adapt, fragment the play text or rely on visuals to appeal to contemporary audiences: using mul:ple languages, density, mul:ple ‘tracks’ leads to complexity and layering of meanings •  ‘postmodern theatre offers simultaneous, overlapping, interwoven, disjointed, and non-­‐
sequen0al experiences that defy a simple narra0ve reading. The expansive simultaneous bombardment of signifiers, signs and sign systems in the postmodern theatre has taken spectators 0me to adjust to’. (p.205) Performance analysis
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A tool for exploring all the systems of any performance
A transverse slice in time of any performance moment
The inter-relationship between everything which goes into a production
An acknowledgement of the contribution of all factors in a performance
experience:
–  designed by the production
–  which may arise from social, geographical, architectural and other
factors.
–  spectatorship as a contextualised experience - the meanings in all
the factors which bring you to and exist during the spectatorship as
experience
•  Recall: how do we remember performances? Tools and approaches
Ann Furse, Performance Analysis Ques0onnaire – Ques0ons Towards a 21st Century Performance Analysis. On the VLE. John Whitmore Direc0ng Postmodern Theatre •  Use of semio-cs – a Directors grasp of semio:cs can help them to not rely on ins:nct alone. •  He covers around 20 sign systems each of which act as a signifier of meaning. •  Framing systems •  Audience systems •  Performer systems •  Visual systems
•  Aural systems
•  Olfactoral and tac:le systems Communica-on in Performance •  Directors need to orchestrate the foregrounding and backgrounding of signifiers and sign systems. •  Directors can make choices about the signifiers, sign systems and cultural codes that can best be employed to help spectators construct meanings (page 24) Chapter 2 Framing Systems Each individuals aesthe:c is formed by educa:on, background, values, knowledge, experience. ‘I decode and construct meanings according to unique sociopsychological perspec0ve’. Space/loca:on/architecture/Intellectual, historical and social framing system – pre-­‐
knowledge informs recep:on. Chapter 3 Audience Systems •  Why do we go to the theatre? •  Entertainment, educa:on, s:mula:on, intellectual awakening, stress relief, religious experience? •  The Uniqueness of the live mee:ng between performer and audience •  Sensory s:mula:on –audience is inside rather than outside the experience – •  Excitement, fulfilment, illumina:on Chapter 5 Visual Systems •  ‘ when all the visual elements unite with the performer’s sign systems, and with the framing and aural systems, the full impact of a performance is experienced by the audience’. (p.113) •  ‘Postmodern theatre oXen relies on pictures, visionscapes, abstract movement, and video and film images to provide the primary means of significa0on’. (p.123) SEMIOTICS Semio:cs Defined •  ‘ Semio0cs can best be defined as a science dedicated to the study of the produc0on of meaning in society. As such is is equally concerned with processes of significa0on and those of communica0on […] Its objects are thus at once the different sign-­‐systems and codes at work in society and the actual messages and texts produced thereby.’ (Elam, 1980, 1) page 5 •  ‘the meanings that emerge from a theatrical performance come from the unique juxtaposi0on of signifiers in a par0cular mix that gives a context from reading each signifier not in isola0on but, instead, in a complex clusters or grids.’ (p. 8) Semio:cs Defined •  Each SIGN system is complex and has its own ‘cultural codes through which significa:on takes place. •  ‘ A language is a system in which all the elements fit together, and in which the value of any one element depends on he simultaneous coexistence of all the others’’ (Saussure, 1983, 113) page 203 •  to interpret performance you need to look at clusters of signs and how they interact. ‘ A shared ‘semio:c objec:ve’ or ‘signifying func:on’ •  ‘ each spectator draws from a performance clusters of signifieds that they personally structure into some form of coherent grid, which ul:mately leads to personalized meanings’ (P.204) •  SIGNS Signs (Saussure) Are two part en:ty – a signifier and a signified Examples are Briefcase –> execu:ve Red light –> danger, fire, pros:tu:on ‘Signifieds and their signifiers are highly transformable […] the same object may stand for different signifieds at different moments of the performance’.(p. 21) •  A chair could be a throne and then a toilet for example. •  Directors need to orchestrate the foregrounding and backgrounding of signifiers and sign systems. • 
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•  Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-­‐part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of: •  a 'signifier' (signifiant) -­‐ the form which the sign takes; and •  the 'signified' (signifié) -­‐ the concept it represents. •  The sign is the whole that results from the associa:on of the signifier with the signified. •  The rela:onship between the signifier and the signified is referred to as 'significa:on', Youtube video Ferdinand Saussure and Structural Linguis:cs •  hmps://youtu.be/B5vhq3aRNjE Semio:cs/ Pierce SIGNS AS TRIADIC We create meaning through our crea:on and interpreta:on of signs. For Pierce our thinking takes place through signs. Signs can take the form of words, images, sounds, flavors, acts or objects but we invest these with meaning via interpreta:on. Anything can be a sign as long as someone interprets it as 'signifying' something -­‐ referring to or standing for something other than itself. By what systems can we refer to an object? This is Doogal my Dog. Inconically – by Resemblance – for example a photo and realis:c pain:ng or video s:ll. Symbolically – for instance a logo version of a dog
•  Indexically – by associa:on (a bone) – through a casual rela:onship – a shorthand reference for a dog. AUDIENCE AS SIGN SYSTEM • 
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Whitmore views the audience as a sign system ‘when spectators come together they cons0tute a sign system for both performers and other audience members,. That is, each spectator serves as a signifier for performers and other spectators to read’. (56) ‘the audience contributes directly to the meanings of the performance’ (57) Audience as Signifier -­‐ Audience both interpret signifiers and can also become a major signifier – a circularity of communica:on ‘ spectators play a crea0ve role in signifying the very meanings that they construct for themselves.’ (page 15) –he expands defini:on of mis en scene to include the performance as signifier and also the ac:ve role of the spectator. mis-­‐en –scene as a dynamic dialec:c between all personel of a produc:on and the audience .’ ‘fundamental to our [Wilson’s and Glass’s] approach was the assump0on that the audience itself completed the work. The statement is no mere metaphor; we meant it quite literally. In the case of Einstein on the Beach, the ‘‘story’’ was supplied by the imagina0on of the audience, and there was no way for us to predict, even if we had wanted to, what the ‘’story’’ might be for any par0cular person.’’ (Philip Glass, 1987, 35) p. 56 Reading a Performance •  The audience/reader is also an author of the work. •  Whitmore prefers post structuralist Roland Barthes ‘in this ideal text, the networks are many and interact, without any one of them being able to surpass the rest: this text is a galaxy of signifiers, not a structure of signifieds: it has no beginning: it is reversible: we gain access to it by several entrances, none of which can be authorita0vely declared to be the main one: the codes it mobilizes extend as afar as the eye can reach.’ (Barthes 1974, 5-­‐6) p.18 •  ‘The Reader becomes a writer in the sense that s/
he must construct meaning out of the open-­‐ended signifiers of a work of art.’ P. 19 •  ‘ A text’s meaning and significance is in0mately bound up with the ac0vity of the reader… Texts are full of gaps, blanks, ambigui0es, indeterminacies, which the reader must fill, close up, or develop. Some reader-­‐response cri0cs place an emphasis on the reader’s contribu0on to a text’s meaning, while others recognise that there are ‘’triggers’’ in the text which direct the reader’s interpre0ve ac0vity’ •  (R. Seldon 1989, 121) Bibliography Barthes, Roland, “ The Death of the Author’’, Image,Music,Text (London: Fontana, 1977) Brook, Peter, The Empty Space (Middx: Pelican Books, 1968) Furse, Anna, Performance Analysis Ques0onnaire – Ques0ons Towards a 21st Century Performance Analysis. On the VLE. Elam, Keir, The Semio0cs of Theatre and Drama, (London: Methuen, 1980) Gaggi, Silvio, Modern/Postmodern,( Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989) Peirce, Charles Sanders (1931-­‐58): Collected Wri0ngs (8 Vols.). (Ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss & Arthur W Burks). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Whitmore, Jon, Direc0ng Post Modern Theatre, Shaping Significa0on in Theatre (USA: University of Michigan, 1994) Web hmp://visual-­‐memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/sem02.html [accessed September 29th 2015]