Theatre is the art form par excellence in which there is no closure, the site par excellence of unlimited semiosis. The play text is that which is always open, always an open invitation to practitioners to make meaning. (McAuley p.3)
What I like about BioMechanics, this concept views actor as a machine. Good, we can work the skills, the details -- only master does it, only artist interested in professional small print.
Anatoly's Advise to Anatoly:
Relax. After a century or two (masybe sooner) all the misspelings on my pages will be corrected. It takes time, my friends.
Why do I say "friends"? Because you read what I write. The regular visitors could even watch the spectacle of evolution my pages. I hope that by now we all SEE the different between text on the scree and book pages. The Big Web is moving to "broacasting" functions, because webpage is PERFORMATIVE.
Web makes Total Theatre of One possible. VIRTUAL THEATRE is not a theory anymore. Watch it -- in a few years it will become the new SPECTACLE, which is to use all other arts.
Imagine this Theatre of One; what this single spectator can if not to get involved into action, becoming a part, the center of the spectacle. That's why there is that endless talk about INTERACTIVITY.
Summary
I am not sure about the order of reading, should public page come first, then -- audience? The biggest problem I am facing is that spectacle in our traditional view is not understood as product of the public. More so, public does not considered as a main part of the spectacle.
University of Melbourne, School of Creative Arts, THEATRE STUDIES 1B: BODY, TEXT AND PERFORMANCE, Dr Denise Varney (ref.)
Notes
McAuley: Far more than a novel, a poem, a painting or a film, a play is that which has no fixed identity or existence, and even within the pseudo-closure of performance it is a movement towards meaning rather than a fixed set of meanings. (4)
I do not speak Greek, the old Greek, and it's difficult for me to understand why Aristotle didn't make SPECTACLE into a main category. After all, "theatre" is the "place to see" -- spectacle must be the most important element in theatre, right?
Our philosopher put it together with the language and music!
He must be out of his mind!
On another hand, think again, Anatoly. The real drama happens inside you, my friend. The spectator' soul is the place for action.
The spectacle is only to stimulate it....
Aha! That means that the show doesn't have to be spectacular in order to be DRAMATIC.
But what is this "spectacle"?
Just about everything. Acting, directing, lights, music, costumes, etc.
Performance.... Can we speak about how the sound "acts"? Or set. Light produces no less ACTION than a line of the text. Semiotics actually treat everything as a text.
In acting classes I use some exercises to demonstrate THAT power of performance of staging. I place actor on the table (mini-set) and I ask actor to go with the same monologue. Try. You will notice that the meaning of this monologue, its effect on us (and on the actor himself) is different. What if I kill the light and dive his a flash-light (candle, lighter)? What if I ask somebody quietly sing accopella on the background? You see, I am talking about the multitude of possible expressions in numerous STAGE LANGUAGES!
Yes -- the Spectacle is no less important than Plot and Character and Idea.
Hmm....
Let me think about it.
Yes, please do it. Think.
See old "Spectacle" pages.
PS
Elements of Spectacle, Languages of Theatre.
Spectacle should be understood as a phenomena only with the audience as a part of it. [ How to links vTheatre pages to the metaphysics (POV, Self)? Also, 200X Files, Love of Beauty, Intro Aesthetics (the basics). ]
Show is the process, show is the tool, show is the meaning. Should we say the SHOW IS THE WATCHED SPECTACLE?
INTERPRETATION, TRANSLATION?
"Ion: Very true, Socrates; interpretation has certainly been
the most laborious part of my art.
Socrates: Then you are the interpreters of interpreters?"[1]
Imitation, interpretation, or should we say translation?
Next step -- creation. We have to master two languages: dramatic
text and performance text. On dramatic structure in my book
Playscript Analysis, this book on translating drama into a
performance, creating performance text. Actor has to know both.
In Poetics Aristotle separates them under two categories:
structure and texture. I would concentrate on how structure
expresses itself in Actor's Text -- performance.
-Anatoly, I don't understand what you want!
-I want your "reading" of this character?
"Your" means YOURS only.
Socrates: I wish you would frankly tell me, Ion, what I
am going to ask you: When you produce the greatest
effect upon the audience in the recitation of some
striking passage... are you in your right mind? Are you
not carried out of yourself, and does not your soul in
an ecstasy seem to be among the persons or places of
which you are speaking...
PS. To understand the spectator is to understand the spectacle, because if the magic take place they become almost the same. Remember, I told you that the place where the spectacle takes place is our spectator!
Think about show as a machine, think about your audience as a machine. Think to design one in such a way that the other will work. For simplicity sake, think about car and driver. Okay? Show is that car, the public is a driver.
Now reverse the roles! Yes, yes, you drive and you follow.
In classes I call it The Golden Triangle:
No next stage sentence until you received the public reaction. The most obvious -- the punch lines. Let them laugh, don't step of their lines, don't cut them off, do not upstage the public. They are the lead actors, they are the hero of the spectacle!
Relax, do you see how many of them there? Let them do the work! Let them act!
After you designed the machine of action, forget everything I said. Show is not a machine. Not when the show and the public is ONE! Now it's an organism!
But you have to get to this stage of the collective process, my friends. Than you have THEATRE.
