for a semiotics of the theatre

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For a Semiotics of the TheaterAuthor(s): J. F. and Karen WoodwordSource: SubStance, Vol. 6, No. 18/19, Theater in France: Ten Years of Research (Dec. 1, 1977),pp. 135-138Published by: University of Wisconsin PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3683989

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For a Semioticsof the Theater

An analysis of the sign in respect to the theater, its characteristics, and its functions,supposes an a priori agreement that any theatrical performance is a system, a structureof signs. And every performance is, in fact, just that, from the very moment of concep-tion of its staging. Director and actors collaborate on an equal footing to produce thesame end, borrowing from other systems--which have already been organized func-tionally and socially-the elements of what will become a specific sign on stage:speech, gestures, elements of the setting, props, music, tone, mimicry, movement onstage, headdress, costumes, makeup, lighting, sound. Tadeus Kowzan, in Litterature etspectacle, attempted to establish a comprehensive list, which pays homage to Wagner-ian Gesamtkunstwerk, in which art is conceived as collective, producing a collec-tive effect due to the combination of differing materials, each one of which possessesits own specific method of functioning and its own autonomy. Music, text, actor, andsetting, each brings to the theater its particular semiosis; the director is charged withdistributing equitably the numerous impressions which strike the spectator at variousmoments of the diachrony and with integrating them into a harmonious whole.We would like to depart from this view of the dramatic work as a sum of varyingforms of expression which co-exist on the stage, each one autonomously, not in orderto contradict it-for the theater does in fact derive its specificity from a multitude ofother semiotic systems which kinesics, proxemics, and paralinguistics propose to ex-amine-but rather because we are confronted with the impossibility of affirming theunity of theatrical representation and of determining the characteristics of a specifi-city which differs from the simple recognition of the multiplicity of semiotic systemscomposing it.

By continuing along the first course, too often taken, the semiotics of the theateris condemned to follow in the wake of other systems of signs, awaiting their advancesin order to take a step forward itself, always remaining a tributary of the others,eternally in second place. Moreover, nothing allows us to affirm that the discoveries ofproxemics, kinesics, or paralinguistics will be able to find an application in the realmof the theater. Each of these systems, conceived as an autonomously functioningentity, is established on the base of a uniform corpus without taking into accountthe interferences from other systems with which it interacts constantly. Thus theresults obtained remain specific to each system and are not always applicable to thestage. The fundamental reason may be found in the fact that each of these systemsinvoked by the theater is necessarily defined in relation to other systems, and also inthe fact that the sense of the play is produced dialectically by the convergence orshifting of the different significations conveyed by the various systems rather thanwithin the framework of a single one of the systems involved. Thus every theatricalsign-gestural, temporal, spatial-must necessarily be read in terms of its relation tothe global structure which incorporates it rather than in terms of its more limitedrelation to the semiotic system to which it belongs, according to the demands of thetheory.Sub-Stance NO 18/19, 1977 135


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Josette FeralIn other words, we shall have to consider signs in terms of the structureswhich

integratethem into the play and in terms of their context and no longerby isolatingthem from their concrete manifestations. In fact, most fields of semiotic researchremain closed to any other manifestationof a system which might become parasiticor contradictory;therein lies the prime necessity for constitutinga uniform corpus.Therefore, it seems unlikely that the discoveriesto which this researchmay lead,whateverthey may be, will be able to assurea scenic operationin which the role ofa gesture, a tone, or a movement in space relates not only to the sum of the othergestures, tones, and spaces of the play but ratherto all of them individually,not tomention the other semiotic systemswhich overlapeach other andincorporate hem atthe same time. Thusword,gesture, prop,andsetting dependnot only on theirparticu-lar semiotic system and on a singlefield of investigation, hat is, linguistics,kinesics,proxemics,but ratheron all of them at one and the sametime, whence the difficultyof establishinga uniform corpus appropriate o the theater. From this assumptionderivesalso the necessity of findinga meansandprinciplesof selection different fromuniformity of form of expression, in order to delimit a field of researchcapableofsecuring he specificityof theatrical anguage.This step still remains o be taken.Certain members of the Prague School of Linguisticsattempted to explore thisproblemas early as 1933, in articlespublished n Slovo a Slovenost andin the Travauxdu Cercle Linguistique de Prague, but their efforts were interrupted by the war andhave infrequentlybeen followed up. (Formerly naccessible o a publicunfamiliarwiththe Czech language,these articles have recently been translated,collected, and pub-lished under the direction of LadislavMatejkaby the Universityof MichiganPressandMIT Press, entitled respectively, Sign, Sound and Meaning [1976] and Semiotics ofArts [1976]). These articles undertake an exploration of the whole problemof thetheater,beginningwith an inquiry nto the notions of signandstructure.Wewould like to takeup a positionwithin this line of research, n orderto profit bythe spiritwith which it has been conducted, rather than to take advantageof its con-clusions,since they concernmore often artin general hanthe theater n particular ndrelate more to the esthetic sign than to the specificallytheatricalsign.As opposedtothe theories of the neogrammarians f the late nineteenth century, who sought tointroducepositivist principles nto what:was at that time purelyhistoricallinguistics,the PragueSchool attempted to study languageas a functional system governednotonly by the immanent forces of nature but also by culture and the subject itself,allowingroom in their theory for the personal expressivityof the subjectand for thecreativityof language cf. Mathesius, On the Potentialityof LanguagePhenomena ).The dynamic characterof languageprevailedover the notion of its state as static, aspropoundedby the neo-grammarians,nd was accompaniedby a theory of the signviewed in a non-mechanisticway, to the extent that this theory opened the way tothe possibility of variations n structurewhich would account for the functioningofthe esthetic signand of the subject.In another respect, and in contrast to critics who accused them of severingartfrom reality, the members of the PragueSchool emphasizedthe necessity, for anysynchronic analysis of a work of art, of also takinginto consideration ts diachrony;thus they stressed the fact that art is not self-sufficientbut ratherconstitutes animportant component of the social structurewith which it is associated n a dialectical

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Semiotics of the Theaterrelationship, while remaining in constant contact with all other semiotic systems.There too the accent is on dialectical dynamism and not on an examination whichwould confine the work of art in order to grasp its nature more readily.

It is easy to recognize the importance of such explanations for the semiotics of thetheater, which endeavors to delineate theatrical discourse within its specificity (thenotion of discourse is here taken in its widest acceptance, that is, including bothdiscourse in the literal sense and also staging and the entire arrangement of the drama-tic space as well as all gestures, music, costumes, makeup), given that theater, incontrast with a pictorial work, implies above all movement, dynamism, a dialectic ofvarious systems of signification among themselves.What we must try to specify is, therefore:1. The characteristics of the theatrical sign which distinguish it from the purelylinguistic sign. This theatrical sign, once defined, must be analyzed in terms of itsrelation to the surrounding reality and to the objects it introduces onto the stage, sincethe theater still suffers from a presumption of reality which it is unable to shed.2. The structure which incorporates the theatrical sign and its functioning, bytaking as an example, in order to remain in touch with practical experience, the case ofa play which has been produced and whose text and staging are available throughdocuments or direct experience. We shall show how a purely synchronic study in thisfield would be of no avail and how diachrony intervenes inevitably in the establish-ment of meaning.

3. The last point would aspire to show that the stage functions as a text and stagingas an act of writing.* * *

The text of Keir Elam, Language in the Theater, attempts to respond to the firstpoint of laying the general foundation for a problematic study of the theatrical sign:the author endeavors to determine the specificity of the theatrical sign in relation tothe linguistic sign.

The second question is answered by the texts of Danielle Kaisergruber and AndreHelbo, each with its own approach. While Danielle Kaisergruber's Reading andProducing Theater, written in a didactic vein, is limited to the semiotic problems ofthe written theatrical text, Andre Helbo's article, The Semiology of TheatricalProduction, treats the stage more as performance, or spectacle.As regards the text of Anne Ubersfeld on A. Adamov, Adamov Today, we wishedto include it in this section, although its approach is not strictly semiotic, since itdemonstrates that any staging ( mise en scene ) is an act of putting into writing( mise en ecriture ) which appeals to the fantasy of the subject (in Kristeva's senseof the word), whether this subject be represented by the director or an actor, a warn-ing which reminds us of the limits of any semiotic analysis.As for the third problem, the present inarticulate state of the semiotics of thetheater does not yet allow its solution. It remains open to speculation and futureresearch.

Finally, by way of conclusion, the reader is referred to two books which mark thefirst phase in the establishment of a method of semiotic research specific to the

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138 Josette Feraltheater: Lire le theatre, by Anne Ubersfeld, and Problemes de semiologie the'trale, byP. Pavis (see our book reviews). These works do not claim to be comprehensive or toresolve the entire problem posed by the need for a more scientific and less historicalmethod of approach to the dramatic text, but they do take a new look at the stage forthe first time. J.F.

Translated by Karen Woodward

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