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2008.txt : Stoppard is not Dead!
Go.dot'06
... Showcase : R/G are Dead : Hamlet (Shakespeare) + R/G (Stoppard) + Players (Theatre) 3 levels : pit + stage + platform * transitions from one world to another (when and how). ... Relation of the three chronotopes to PUBLIC (Hamlet/Shakespeare + R/G-Stoppard + Us/theatre). * director's notes
... 2009 :
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Williams: It haunts me, the passage of time. I think time is a merciless thing. I think life is a process of burning oneself out and time is the fire that burns you. But I think the spirit of man is a good adversary.
[ advertising space : webmaster ] text LINKS  Fundamentals : BioMethod [ references ] HamletDreams 2001: mindscape  3 Sisters, Mikado, 12th Night, The Importance of Being Earnest, Dangerous Liaisons, Don Juan SummaryIn acting classes, when we talk about "addresses," one comes very easy -- to myself, to public, human race, God... If indeed all those are included in good monologue, what does it say about the choronotope of this action? God's chronotope? The place where time ends and eternity starts...QuestionsTheatre is an interaction between performer and audience in space and time.NotesDo you see "topics" bar at the top of theory pages? The topics are discussed on the Script Analysis pages; I do not replace them (I even started another strange directory Film600: "Bad Theory + Wrong Subjects"), because we CANNOT do any dramatic analysis without the matter of forms (time-space). What "matters"? Emotions, thoughts! Remember, I told you that space and time do not exist without each other -- and without the MATTER (Einstein, physics). 
Eugenio Barba: "Actions are all the relationships, all the interactions between the characters, or between the characters and the lights, the sounds, the space. Actions are what work directly on the audience's attention, on their understanding, their emotiveness." It is the weaving together of all such actions that constitutes the performance text, in the sense of texture. Theatre Books Master-Page * Bakhtin, Genre Formation Bart KEUNEN for Drama Genre Page: Genre in Stagematix * 2006: new
... I do not know when again I can come back to this page (and many others). Maybe, when I could get to theatre4.googlepages.com = dramaturgy pages... 2008? Stoppard Pages.
Chronotope Page in BIOMX (biomechanics) : acting2 ...
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Chronotope = Space + TimeThere are several ways to approach the concept of chronotope (Bahktin): in script.vtheatre.net this is "dramatic chronotope of a writer" (potentiality). In Acting I talk about transforming objective time and space into "subjective" time and space, and in The Book of Spectator we deal with the audience imagination (close, but different from the writer's chronotope)Or even Space as Time and Time as Space?
From Spectator II, part 1.
According to Eisenstein we can't speak about time without space; they do seperately.
I don't remember where is the "Event Theory" page, where I speak about the transformation of the "objective" time and space into dramatic chronotope, but this is the only "human" world, where we can read, write and understand life.
[ I have to come back! 3D space directions and time -- and explain the graphs ]
I think there is another chronotope page in Biomechanics directory (Acting).
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2007+
projects: Demons 2003 texts: Theatre History in focus: Taming of the Shrew Theatre Books list * reading: Theatre Theory
 Chekhov, Ibsen, Bard, scripts
play writing amazon list *
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[ the inner chronotope, where indeed we can't see time and space apart, because this is subjective universe. ]
[ As usual the "notes for myself" only. The theatre semiotics is indeed "theory" subjects; I have no time for it in my classes. I use it! The relations between chronotope, metrics, matrix, mise-en-scene is for Performance Study area. Again, the notes from Melburn U.
*The performance text, the performance as a whole, is a macro sign that can be broken down into smaller units.
*That the stage radically transforms all objects and bodies defined within it and bestows on them an overriding signifying power that they lack in their normal everyday function – 'on the stage things that play the part of theatrical signs . . . acquire special features, qualities and attributes that they do not have in real life' or put otherwise: ‘All that is on the stage is a sign’ (cited in Elam 1984,7).
* the first principle of the Prague School's theory of performance was that what occurs on the stage is the semiotization of the object - the very appearance of an object on the stage suppresses the practical function of the object in favour of a symbolic or signifying function; in other words once on the stage an object such as a chair ceases to be just something the actors sit on, but one of the signs that makes up the performance as a whole.
The chair on stage is no longer a kitchen chair but a representative of a whole class of objects of which it is a member -such as furniture. It can have a symbolic and signifying function that is communicated through the type of chair it is.
The process of semiotization puts quotation marks around objects : chair, hero, heroine, window and gun;
* mobility, dynamism or transformability characterizes the theatrical sign. The same stage item can stand for different signifieds depending on the context in which it appears. `What appears in one scene as the handle of a sword may be converted, in the next, into a cross by a simple change of position. In western realistic and naturalistic theatre there is less transformation of signs and we generally expect to see a likeness between stage signifiers and their signifieds. However in traditional Asian theatre for example there is far more transformation of signs.
* a hierarchy of signs
Ideally theatrical signs should combine (a) to transmit clear messages and (b) to hierarchise the messages sent.
]
@2000-2004 index *
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Theatre is ¡®composed¡¯ (cum-ponere = placed together) Dramatic Text: The author's written text - the script - sometimes further defined as that text spoken by actors during a production. Performance text: "all that is made visible or audible on stage" [Pavis, 1992 Crossroads, 25], and includes the dramatic text, the vocal delivery of that text, physicality, facial expression, the use of mask, light, movement, the use of space, costume and so on. Theatre Semiotics: The mise en sc§Úne is a more complex term, and is created by both production and reception. The term mise en sc§Úne is of course a French term, literally meaning 'the putting into the scene', or 'on stage'. It comes from Latin words missus in scaenam meaning 'the placement or sending onto the stage'. Patrice Pavis has described the mise en scene as "the utterance of the dramatic text in performance" [Pavis, 1992, 25] and the creation of context for this utterance. Of course he is talking here about theatre that has a 'dramatic text'. ...
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"The mise en scene is the performance text perceived as a system of signs working together to produce meaning. In other words, it involves the same three elements that any sign involves: signifier (the complex performance text), the signified (the open ended denotative and connotative meanings that are generated by the performance text) and the perceiver of the sign (the audience member).
While the performance exists as an object - even if a constantly shifting and tenuous one - the mise en scene only exists as it is received and reconstructed by the individual spectator. It is like electricity - it only exists when it is switched on. There can therefore be as many mises en scene as there are spectators."
[ LECTURE # 6: MISE EN SCENE: THEATRE AS A SIGN SYSTEM ]
"The mise en scene is a network of relationships between different stage materials and is created by the artistic team - dramatist, director, designer, actor, musicians, technicians, and the relationship between all of this and the spectator through the process of reception.
Pavis makes the crucial statement that
"The utterance is always intended for an audience, with the result that mise en scene can no longer ignore the spectators and must even include them as the receptive pole in the circuit comprising the mise en scene produced by the artists and the mise en scene produced by the spectators" (Pavis p.38-9)Pavis use of the phrase "the mise en scene produced by the artists" is potentially confusing, in that it calls attention to a more common use of the term mise en sc¨¨ne, meaning ¡®the staging and scenography¡¯ of the production, or even ¡®the performance text¡¯. But his emphasis on dual agency (artists and audience) elucidates the essential role of the audience in the 'meaning creation' loop that is the mise en sc¨¨ne, which Pavis defines as "the bringing together or confrontation, in a given space and time, of different signifying systems, for an audience".
The ¡®fitting¡¯ of the act of reception and the production of the performance text creates the mise en scene.
It is for this reason that one cannot speak of the mise en sc¨¨ne as something solely produced by the artists. Similarly, in "The Death of the Author", Barthes emphatically asserts the role of the ¡®reader¡¯ in the ¡®unity¡¯ of ¡®text¡¯:
"a text is made of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader and not ¡ the author¡ a text¡¯s unity lies not in its origin but in its destination"The transitory and elusive nature of the theatrical 'text' ('performance text') could be called its "hazardous nature", for which "there is no other time than that of the enunciation". Researching performance is, as Pearson and Shanks argue, an archaeological project, because theatrical performance is 'the always already gone by'. The mise en scene is held together momentarily by acts of production and reception. At the end of that moment, the relationship falls back into nothing. The lights go out, the electricity is turned off, so to speak, and we go home.
In reality it is most difficult to distinguish between text and reader, or between the performance text and the mise en sc¨¨ne, precisely because in order to ascertain what constitutes the performance text one has engage in a reading of it in some way. Perhaps this is why Pavis' use of the terms "performance", "performance text" and mise en scene seem somewhat confused at times.""
... "Staging is not, as Pavis notes,
"the mere physical uttering of a text with the appropriate intonation and ‘seasoning’ so that all can grasp the correct meaning; it is creating contexts of utterance in which the exchanges between verbal and non-verbal elements can take place." (p. 38)Pavis argues at length (pp. 24-47) that the mise en scène is not the literal staging that has been indicated in various ways by the written text. To view the performance text as a direct equivalent, in performance terms, of the written text on the page, is to ignore the polysemic nature of performance and at the same time to condemn it to irrelevance. Such a proposition, he argues, "would entail disregarding the signifying materiality of verbal and stage signs" (p.26). In response to the catch cries of ‘one must let the text stand for itself, do not interfere’ - that manifestation of the 'anti-theatrical prejudice' [Barisch, 1981] which regards performance as the degradation of the perfect written text - he argues that it simply is not possible to "neutralise the stage so that the text can speak on its own, or be heard without mediation or without distortion."(pp45-6).
Nor is performance the signifier (in its own terms) of exactly the same signified that is indicated by the written text. In this case there would certainly be no purpose in staging a play at all, since absolutely nothing would be gained by it. The mise en scène is not, as Pavis notes, "the reduction or the transformation of text into performance, but rather their confrontation"(p.26). The performance text and mise en scène, as outlined above, are formed from a dialogue between what is said, how it is said, what other sounds are heard, what is shown by various means, what is spatially experienced, and so on. As Vitez puts it,
"theatrical pleasure, for the spectator, resides in the difference between what is said and what is shown …what seems exciting to the spectator springs from the idea that one does not show what is said."These injunctions to ‘let the text be heard’ also presuppose that there is only one ‘true’ staging of a play which is already present in the written text, and which it is the duty of the production team to extract. This erroneous attitude is particularly strong in relation to performance of canonical works such as Shakespeare and Greek tragedy. The mise en scène of the same text can vary over time and place, that is to say the social and cultural context of the performance. Each mise en scène is a new reading of the dramatic text. "With every new mise en scene, the text is placed in a situation of enunciation according to the new Social Context of its reception, which allows or facilitates a new analysis of the text and so on, ad finitum."(Pavis, 1992, 30)
The concept of mise en scène disrupts and overthrows the idea that the dramatic text is a fixed, stable, finite linguistic object. Every performance is an original restaging of the meaning of the dramatic text, in conjunction with the spectator(s). The point is,
‘that there is no definitive originary meaning, since what the "original" performance meant will itself have been fragmented, and experienced in many different ways’[Thomas 1994: 143, quoted in Pearson & Shanks, 2001, 59]"
[ more about semiotics in film theory. ]
source -- http://www.sca.unimelb.edu.au/ths/public [Theatre Studies at the SCA]
French performance theorist Patrice Pavis describes mise en scène as:
1. – ‘reading actualized’ (31)
2.- ‘speaks by showing, not by speaking’ (31)
3 – ‘tries to provide the dramatic text with a situation that will give meaning to the statements (énoncés ) of the text.’ (30)
4.- ‘the bringing together or confrontation, in a given time and space, of different signifying systems, for an audience.’ (1992:24)
Film-North * Anatoly Antohin * eCitations
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cite: anatoly antohin. URL + date [ my shows : 1. writer * 2. director * 3. dramaturg * 4. actor ]
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