Social Semiotics

ISSN: 1035-0330 (Print) 1470-1219 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/csos20

The expanding galaxy of performing arts:

extending theories and questioning practices

Maria Grazia Sindoni, Janina Wildfeuer & Kay L. O’Halloran

To cite this article: Maria Grazia Sindoni, Janina Wildfeuer & Kay L. O’Halloran (2016) The
expanding galaxy of performing arts: extending theories and questioning practices, Social
Semiotics, 26:4, 325-340, DOI: 10.1080/10350330.2016.1189733

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2016.1189733

Published online: 17 Jun 2016.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2161

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 2 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=csos20
SOCIAL SEMIOTICS, 2016
VOL. 26, NO. 4, 325–340
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2016.1189733

INTRODUCTION

The expanding galaxy of performing arts: extending theories

and questioning practices
Maria Grazia Sindonia , Janina Wildfeuerb and Kay L. O’Halloranc
a
Department of Ancient and Modern Civilization, University of Messina, Messina, Italy; bFaculty of Linguistics
and Literary Studies, Bremen University, Bremen, Germany; cSchool of Education, Faculty of Humanities,
Curtin University, Perth, Australia

This paper introduces the Special Issue on the languages of performing arts and is there-
fore aimed at designing how the context of the latter can be illuminated by socio-semiotic
and multimodal approaches to communication. In this Special Issue, performances and
performing arts are described as multimodal semiotic acts that co-deploy a range of
semiotic resources to produce and construct meanings across different cultures and
ages. Seen as dynamic and interactive processes of meaning-making, their analysis calls
for new and multidisciplinary frameworks which are collected in this Special Issue. The
introduction gives an overview of these papers and discusses their range of diverse
phenomena, both live and recorded, including theatre performances and films, art instal-
lations, opera, as well as reading out aloud. By outlining the significance and contribution
of different disciplines and fields of studies to the broad area of performance studies, the
chapter argues the case for innovative approaches that can extend theories and analyse
aesthetic and performative practices in context. With the help of some case studies, it pro-
vides guidelines for the reading and interpretation of the several theoretical discussions
and practical case studies presented to encourage further multidisciplinary research on
these domains.

1. When fiction and reality become blurred

On 23 October 2002, 50 armed Chechen militants took 850 spectators hostage in the
Dubrovka Theater in Moscow. Immersed as they were in a fictionalized world, the audi-
ence, at least for the first few minutes of the takeover, were convinced that what was hap-
pening was part of the play. Known as the “Moscow Theatre Hostage Crisis”, this siege had,
in fact, been carefully planned and nothing could have been farther removed from fiction
than the militants’ demands for Russian troops to be withdrawn from Chechnya. Some-
what ironically, the theatrical setting completely tricked the audience, distorting their per-
ception of reality, and, in the process, blurring the boundaries between the real and the
fictional.
A recent imaginative recreation of this fusion, and confusion, was presented in Interrup-
tion, a film directed by Zois (2016) that premiered in September 2015 at the 72nd Venice

CONTACT Maria Grazia Sindoni mgsindoni@unime.it

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
326 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

International Film Festival. Set in a theatre in Athens, the film’s opening sequence appears
to be a reference to the Moscow Theatre Hostage Crisis (cf. Dolnik and Pilch 2003), as a
group of armed people interrupt the postmodern adaptation of the trilogy of ancient
Greek tragedies Oresteia and invite the audience to join the bewildered actors onstage.
In the ensuing surreal atmosphere and ambivalent context, the audience appear not to
be willing to admit that what is happening onstage, including a brutal murder, might –
or might not – be real. This allows us to raise several questions about the epistemological
boundaries of performance studies. What, in particular, is performance? Does it only
involve traditional in praesentia: that is, the quality of acting out something live in front
of an audience? Can we accept this narrow definition of performance or should we
invoke wider notions, like the broad spectrum definition proposed by Schechner
(1988a, 2010) which involves most aspects of human activity? How much light can a multi-
modal approach, involving the study of the interaction of language with other semiotic
resources, throw on this issue, and which multimodal theories and practices can be
brought together to this end?
Conceptualizing performance within and beyond the stage is a major theme in this
issue and presupposes a recontextualization of traditional notions of theatre. Theatre,
the most exemplary form of performing arts, provides a first striking example of the rich-
ness of resources and modes enacted in a play that suggest the viability of a multimodal
semiotic approach for understanding the nature and impact of performance on society.
For example, theatre stands somewhere between “convention” and “spectacle”, to use
Helbo’s terms (1987, 15). Older examples testify to what happens when fiction breaks
into the real world, the case with the first performance of Victor Hugo’s Hernani
(1830), when the conflict between Romanticists and Classicists erupted in violence
(Pasco 1997). Likewise Daniel Auber’s opera Masaniello, or La Muette de Portici (1828),
which triggered the Belgian Revolution in July 1830 (Slatin 1979). These extreme
examples show that “staged” performances have the capacity to trigger social upheaval.
Other instances where fiction and reality are mixed up include Orson Welles’ well-known
radio drama The War of the Worlds (1938) which caused mayhem, and the more recent
Italian mockumentary Amnésia by Matteo Caccia (2009, see Bonini 2011), a fictional radio
drama which tests out listeners’ skills as regards to whether the storyteller Matteo, who
claims to have lost his memory, is telling the truth or not. All these examples point to
the dissolution of a clear-cut distinction between fiction and reality. So how can we pin
down the notion of performance when the arena where it takes place is so slippery and
deceitful?
A starting point for introducing this domain of enquiry into performance and performing
arts is to adopt a multimodal semiotic perspective to specific kinds of performance. Before
going into further details below, we emphasize here that we see any act of performing,
similar to the acts of viewing these performances, as multimodal semiotic acts, that, on
the one hand, use a variety of semiotic resources to produce meaning and communicate
ideas, values, and beliefs and, on the other hand, construct meaning out of the dynami-
cally unfolding interplay of semiotic patterns in performance.
On this basis, this Special Issue explores performances and performing arts as dynamic,
interactive processes of multimodal semiosis, both in the Halliday (1978) sense of making
meaning as an unfolding social practice, and with regard to the active process of interpret-
ation in the traditional Peircean (1931–1958) sense. By taking into consideration both
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 327

production- and reception-oriented approaches to performance, we see this focus on the

meaning-making patterns as a necessary and fundamental basis for further interpretation
and discussion of the texts and genres under consideration. We aim to demonstrate that a
multimodal semiotic approach not only helps us find a more reliable way of providing a
problem-oriented definition of the object of study for any discipline concerned with the
notion and concept of performance, but also supports our aim of bridging the gaps
between these disciplines and research areas and their variety of theoretical and meth-
odological accounts.
In the following, therefore, we will expand on the multimodal social semiotic per-
spective on performance by taking a further look, first, into the notions and defi-
nitions of performance as well as the associated concept of performing arts by
asking: How do we understand performances and how do we define them in the
broad context of humanities? Socio-historical references to the origin and develop-
ment of performance studies will help us expand traditional and contemporary the-
ories and practices by shedding light on how multimodal analysis can be used to
this end. We will therefore elaborate on the usefulness of multimodal social semiotic
approaches for the analysis of performances theoretically and analytically through two
case studies, and following this, we introduce the papers in this issue, each of which
contributes to this approach.

2. Performance
The term performance is considered to be a major category for the exploration, descrip-
tion, and analysis of a wide range of social and cultural activities from standpoints that
embrace many different disciplines including, as the papers in this volume demonstrate,
philosophy, linguistics, literary theory, psychology, and sociology. In addition, other dis-
ciplines, such as history or anthropology, have increasingly focused on the role of per-
formance within different cultures and societies, while attempting to borrow the
already broad definition from neighbouring disciplines as well as adding their own
views and perspectives. Both the dynamic debate and the on-going analysis of a multi-
plicity of instances of performance have established a complex, heterogeneous field of
debates and exchanges that is continuously redefining its object of study and its theor-
etical and methodological specifications. Moreover, as documented in this volume, this
shift has led to a profound reconsideration of the underlying semiotic frameworks of per-
formance theorists in the last three decades (cf. McAuley 2003, 2007). However, cat-
egories and/or taxonomies are shaped within the broad research agendas of specific
disciplines, and redesigning such categories is useful when remapping this fragmented
territory.
Rather than giving a further definition of what we understand as performance, we
approach this problematic field by describing patterns and regularities, as well as different
extensions and differentiations of what is seen as having a performative force, being a per-
formative act or, simply, what has been described as performing arts. The examples dis-
cussed at the beginning of our introduction have already indicated the problematic
nature of performance and the use of the term for various forms of performed actions
and experiences, including both intended and scripted acting in front of an audience as
well as – in fact a very different view of – certain forms of unintended or spontaneous
328 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

human behaviour, taken to be real, fictional, or imagined as real. As Schechner (1988a,

[1988b] 2004, see also below) discusses, both actions and behaviours as well as artistic
practices are the main objects of interest in performance studies, including all kinds of
intended and often scripted work with resources such as language, image, gesture,
sound, and music, not only in theatre, but also, in spontaneous situations in face-to-face
or digital contexts. In addition to these live performances, more inclusive approaches to
the study of performance also take into account recorded performances, such as recorded
rehearsals or films (cf. Schechner [2002] 2013).
The history of performing arts can in fact shed light on far-ranging communicative
and socio-semiotic phenomena across all stages of human history. The process of under-
standing, interpreting, and classifying performing arts has also relied heavily on the well-
known and Euro-centred opposition between spoken and written language, thus con-
trasting improvised and/or ritualized forms of performance (e.g. folk narratives in the
Òkó-speaking community in Nigeria, see Akerejola 2013) and steadfastly logocentric per-
formances based on a written tradition that involves the transposition of a written text
into a live or recorded performative event: the classic case being theatre and cinema.
Many examples point to the merging between theatre and cinema as having always
characterized the history of these two media, since the days of the Lumière brothers
(Askari et al. 2015). We may quote, for instance, the “Fregoligraph” (c. 1898), which
refers to the use of a screen projecting images that interacted with Fregoli’s live perform-
ances. He used it to hybridize what was happening live onstage with what was happen-
ing backstage, playing with the two media and interacting with them so as to surprise
and amaze his audience by overtly disclosing, and thus downplaying, his tricks (Tabet
2015).
The corporeal presence of performers, their reciprocal interaction, and their direct
forms of communication with a live audience evoke socio-semiotic discourses that
frame historical, social, and philosophical questions, such as community building, a
nation’s Weltanschauung, individual versus collective artistic agency, ideas of beauty, art
and politics, and much more. Performing arts are in fact ingrained in the histories of com-
munal, social, and individual identity building (see Zhang, Djonov, and Torr’s and also
McMurtrie and Murphy’s contribution to this volume), as reflected in the development
of social and political systems of government, which have been commented on, purposely
avoided or critiqued, and reshaped by artists and performers, in the form of theatre plays
or musical genres from ancient times to the present.
From a socio-historical standpoint, the development of performing arts in fact parallels
social transformation in power relations between producers, performers, and their public.
Probing into the complex social and historical development of performing arts would lead
us too far off the beaten track, however. Nonetheless, it needs to be pointed out that the
multiplicity of roles adopted by social participants tells us something about social shifts in
the wake of seismic transitions. One example is the history of Western theatre which
shifted away from Classical Greek tragedies, which had incorporated acting, dance, and
music in front of an audience mirrored in the chorus, to later forms, such as those that
would give rise to Morality Plays in the Middle Ages, when the Church played a key role
in shaping art into an edifying mould of subservience and humility, rather than an aes-
thetic blend of art.
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 329

The role of the audience was also understood differently by Renaissance theatre-goers
who frequently participated in performances, and later on, contributed to the canoniza-
tion of the genre of opera, a typical aristocratic and bourgeois form of entertainment.
Be it cathartic as in ancient Greece, edifying in Medieval Europe, introducing profession-
alism, hybridization, and improvisation as in Renaissance and Baroque theatre in Europe
or entertaining during the Enlightenment in Central Europe, “art-for-art’s sake” or as a pol-
itical manifestation during Romanticism and beyond, performance, as a broader definition
of theatre, has a long standing tradition as the locus par excellence where social roles and
power relations are negotiated.
However, it is in contemporary times that a major breakthrough has been accom-
plished in terms of producer–performer–spectator relations. Paraphrasing Benjamin’s
ground-breaking study ([1936] 1968), the transformative and regenerative work of per-
forming art in the age of mechanical and digital (see Ziarek 2005) reproduction has
deeply affected its forms, practices, experiences, and aesthetic values. Ease of access
to digital media has accelerated the process that has been amply documented in
socio-semiotic and multimodal theories of communication and interaction, inaugurating
what has been defined as a “participatory culture” (Delwiche and Henderson 2013). The
culture of participation has paved the way for new texts and genres, such as blogs and
vlogs, which thrive in the web-based phenomenon of “citizen journalism”. The practice
of copying, pasting, and sharing, which in some ways revives older forms of literary
composition, as is the case of chivalric romances typical of the Middle Ages and
beyond, also heralds a new participatory performative culture. The rise of reality
shows, such as “Big Brother”, points to the extremes that the “spectacle of the other”
(Hall 1997) can reach, whereas the common citizen becomes the centre of attention
of a more and more delocalized audience, tickling spectator’s voyeurism (Metz 1982).
A more recent example is Ridley Scott’s experiment, initially released in 2011, Life in
A Day, a crowdsourced documentary that includes clips selected from videos posted
on YouTube and submitted for that project by “tubers”.
It is this multiplicity of practices that contribute to the complex process of represen-
tation and interpretation of performance that we aim to account for in this Special Issue.
For a comprehensive and integrative exploration of performing arts, all the expressions,
practices, and activities will be included in theoretical descriptions as well as practical
analyses and case studies. The papers collected in this issue thus represent approaches
that take this wide range of artefacts and contexts into account, all considered as per-
formances in their broadest scope and focusing on specific instances in further detail in
their analyses.

3. Performance studies and performing arts: theories and practices

Our reflection on performance and performing arts starts from the consideration that the-
ories, practices, and reception are inextricably tied together. Schechner’s (1988a, [1988b]
2004) theorization, one of the first in this field and celebrated in many of the articles in this
volume, holds that performance is distinct from its genres, such as theatre, dance, music,
and performance art (a term essentially linked to twentieth century experimentations such
as durational performances or art installations, as discussed in McMurtrie and Murphy in
this volume), and that performance is:
330 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

a “broad spectrum” or “continuum” of human actions raging from ritual, play, sports, popular
entertainments, the performing arts (theatre, dance, music), and everyday life performances to
the enactment of social, professional, gender, race, and class roles, and on to healing (from
shamanism to surgery), the media, and the internet. (Schechner [2002] 2013, 2–3)

Consistent with this view, performing arts can thus be analysed in terms of theoretical (e.g.
avant-garde) or applied arts, with the latter constituting the majority, since they are typi-
cally audience-oriented applied practices. They are also eminently ephemeral and fluctu-
ate between the volatile nature of live performance and the conservative nature of their
related practices, such as routine rehearsals, traditions, academies, conservatories, and dis-
cipline legacies; for example, bel canto, virtuosity, ballet (see, for example, Sindoni and
Rossi’s contribution to this volume).
The question of practice is particularly relevant in the field of performing arts, as tra-
ditionally performers (actors, dancers, and musicians) struggle to master highly codified
skills which they “act out”; that is, perform in live contexts. However, the tradition of valor-
izing virtuosity over improvisation, for example, can be detrimental to the development of
experimentation and innovation in art (Arlander 2011). Experimentation and improvisation
that originate uncodified and unpredictable events can be thought of as standing at one
end of this continuum, which sees at the opposite end the presence of codified and pat-
terned artistic behaviours that are explicitly within the agenda of tradition and virtuoso
practice. All these expressions, practices, and activities lend themselves to socio-semiotic
multimodal analysis and offer insights on research into art and performing arts.
Research in the field of performance tout court is problematic outside academia, even
though practice is essentially at the very heart of performance. As has been argued by
Arlander (2011, 321):
Research is considered distant to ordinary practice in many forms of theatre, dance and film.
Though most choreographers and directors use experimentation extensively, and some form
of background research by many film directors, the main focus is on expression and on reception.

Furthermore, the related question of ownership (i.e. Who owns a work of art? Who is
responsible for it?) brings to the fore other relevant questions, such as the idea of encoura-
ging the production of research by performing and visual artists to frame their own
research questions, thus preventing their colonization by traditional academic outlets,
or traditional academic agendas. Another related question deals with the topical issue
of reproducibility in the digital age, given that its mediascape has continued to expand
and colonize different forms of art.
Some key notions from the past help us in our understanding of performing arts today.
For example, when it comes to performance, we must first recognize that it is impossible
“within Western culture, to think ‘performance’ without thinking ‘theatre’, so deeply
engrained is the idea of theatre in both performance and discourse about performance”
(Auslander 1997, 4). The once dominant genre in performing arts, that is, dramatic or
spoken-word theatre, now only represents a segment of the broader category known
today as “theatre” and its related range of practices, such as the use of stage directions
discussed by Moghaddam in this volume. The category of “performance” has thus incor-
porated a wealth of practices and events in the realms of visual and performing arts. In
visual arts, “performance art” subverts and critiques the reification and commodification
of artistic works by incorporating elements typical of theatre, such as live presence,
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 331

embodiment, and synchronicity, while at the same time exhibiting its differences with
theatre. In performing arts, the genres that Fuchs (1996) calls “performance theatre”
expands the category of mainstream theatre practice by adding descriptive labels, such
as “experimental”, “alternative”, and “physical” theatre (Carlson 1990, 1996; Goldberg
1988).
Although McAuley (2007) fully acknowledges the wide range of activities that can be
grouped together under the label of “performance”, from the most complex, organized,
and elaborate, to the simplest expressive practice, she nonetheless argues for a lowest
common denominator; that is, the presence of an artist/performer and a public/spectator
who views them. The interactional quality of performance is thus fulfilled in a semiotic
space that absorbs both the act of performing and the act of viewing which at the very
least tallies with the fact that the word “theatre” comes from ancient Greek “θέατρον”,
that is, “theatron”, a place where we view.
While it is true that the act of viewing lies at the very heart of any kind of performance,
we still need to explore how viewing has come to be a major category in multimodal
studies that responds to socio-semiotic considerations, which is very much the common
denominator in this Special Issue. Viewing living texts and interpreting them is the first
heuristic move in our understanding of how multimodality can be applied as a model
theory, as a field of inquiry, and as a methodological, descriptive tool that helps us to
come to terms with these issues. First, however, we need to connect performance
studies and multimodality and establish a dialogue between them.

4. Socio-semiotic and multimodal approaches

The seminal role that semiotics can play in the mapping of performance studies has
already been recognized in ground-breaking discussions by early theorists and prac-
titioners in the then bourgeoning field of performance studies, for example in the study
by Helbo (1987), who, as early as 1970s and 1980s, discusses the epistemological shifts rep-
resented at that time by loosening the dependence on the Saussurean tradition. That not
only early performance studies, but also their development into a broader field of analysis
has been framed and in some cases revitalised by semiotic approaches is described in par-
ticular by Helbo himself in his contribution to this volume and further exemplified by
several of the other papers and their respective theoretical basis. We leave the evaluation
and discussion of this general concept of semiotic analysis to the authors of these papers
and will not further elaborate on their work here.
However, in the wake of current epistemological shifts that question the boundaries of
disciplines, we add to this semiotic perspective insights and advancements of an emerging
field of application that is still developing its theoretical and methodological strength and
has not yet gained full attention as a research discipline, though fascinating not only the
humanities with its rapid developments: the field and concept of multimodal analysis. The
range of application of studies of multimodality have begun to show their flourishing
potentials in the 1990s and 2000s, when some pivotal works begun to circulate and sys-
tematically define their domains of enquiry, such as displayed art (O’Toole 2011), visual
design (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006), mathematics (O’Halloran 2005), web-based dis-
course (Baldry and Thibault 2006), multimodal documents (Bateman 2008), to name but
the most ground-breaking. The initial theoretical impulse as prompted, for example, by
332 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

Kress and van Leeuwen (2001, 2006, 3), was the simultaneous description and analysis of
all kinds of semiotic resources included in an artefact or a performance, no longer focusing
on language as the central mode of communication or giving primacy to one leading
resource over others in a specific text or genre. Today, the notion of multimodality is extre-
mely fashionable and has led to a range of theoretical, methodological, and analytical
achievements across a multitude of disciplines (see an overview in Wildfeuer 2015, for
example). It is now broadly understood as one of the most influential concepts of the semi-
otization of diverse forms of communications (Bucher 2007, 49), providing detailed frame-
works for the examination of meaning construction within and across several modes. With
its basic semiotic nature, it goes back not only to different schools of linguistics engaged
with communicative modes other than language (van Leeuwen 2011, 50), but also inten-
sively relates to the Peircean tradition of fundamentally differentiating individual sensory
skills and impressions and examining the various dimensions of (verbal) signs in connec-
tion with other modalities (Peirce 1909, 8–10).
It was indeed this heuristic need of finding ways to explore ecological and aesthetic
views of performances and the corresponding instances of art (similar to other multimodal
situations) that has motivated this Special Issue. Furthermore, our own education and
experiences in applying multimodal analysis to a variety of artefacts and situations in
which communication takes place in a semiotically varied field of expression motivated
us to also take into consideration multimodal performances as a possible object of
study. As said above, we see performances similar to other communicative artefacts as,
first and foremost, semiotic acts of expression, using a variety of semiotic resources to con-
struct these expressions and meanings. It is thus helpful and interesting to find out how
these resources work together in their interplay, how their coherence and structures
create the expressive force of the performance and how these patterns and regularities
can then be compared to other expressive text forms and situations. These questions,
we think, will then also help evaluating and discussing instances of performances as the
ones described at the beginning of our introduction, taking into consideration not only
the various characters and referents of performing arts, but also blurring boundaries
between fictional and non-fictional representations, for example.
Although it is rather unexplored which role the notion of multimodality as well as its
multitude of analytical frameworks can play in theorizing, describing, and evaluating per-
formances within the broad realm of performance studies, the theories and approaches
elaborated within this discipline so far are indeed integral to the approach we describe
above. They provide fundamental contextual layers for the inclusion of a multimodal
semiotic approach and have been commented on, purposely avoided, or critiqued, and
reshaped by artists and performers, for example in the form of theatre plays or musical
genres, from Delphic Hymns of ancient Greece to contemporary gansta rap, electro-
swing and indie rock.
The notion of performance, on the other hand, is also already anchored in the context
of multimodal studies. In addressing, for example, the ensuing relationship that these
studies have created with non-verbal studies (referring to the epistemological shift as
defined by many disciplines in relationship with language and linguistics), Scollon and
Scollon (2009, 171) argue that the latter are interested in active real-time performance
by humans, while the former are also concerned with “the design of objects, the built
environment, works of art and graphics, film, video, or interactive media productions”. It
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 333

is thus a similarly broad spectrum of instances that multimodal analysis is able to address
and analyse in detail – including most of the instances described above as falling under
the notion of performances as well as the intersection of real-time performances of
various kinds on the one hand and the design of (artistic) objects, environments, and
media on the other hand.
From a multimodal perspective, these occurrences and every further instance of art are
not observed in a vacuum, but exemplified in distinct case studies that are focused not on
objects of contemplation (as is the case in theatre studies as an object-driven discipline;
Auslander 2008), but as instantiations (in the Hallidayan meaning, see 1978) of
performance(s), within the agenda of a paradigm-driven discipline, akin to performance
studies. A discipline or research area such as multimodal performance studies then inves-
tigates how different social actors (auteur, artist, producer, performer, etc.) produce
artwork (object, practice, event, display, etc.) and grapple with tradition (e.g. continuity
and stability of codes vs. innovation and experimentation), also in relationship with
other social actors, be they spectators or collaborators (e.g. audience, listeners, and co-
artists) and/or providing other forms of professional or financial participation (e.g. produ-
cers, agents, directors, event organizers, etc.). In the following, we will give two examples
of these case studies in order to describe the power and strength of a multimodal dis-
course analytical approach to the analysis of performances. We will then see more of
these analytical discussions in the papers collected in this issue.

5. Towards multimodal performance studies

Auslander (2008) claims that performance studies are a paradigm-driven field, suggesting
that the field adopts the concept of performance as the object of inquiry and main analyti-
cal concept. He argues that the primary question which lies at the core of the discipline is
“What is performance?” and that the more contexts are taken into account and the more
case studies to which they are applied, the better this question will be answered. In Aus-
lander’s (2008) view, each answer becomes a theory of performance, that is, an under-
standing of performance that is used to make sense of different practices and forms of art:
Every theory frames and focuses our attention on some things while leaving other things
outside the frame or out of focus. Thus, performance studies is always in search of new the-
ories that might open up new ways of seeing and interpreting performance. (2008, 1)

This search for new theories accords well with our approach that proposes multimodal
studies as an example of a set of theories that can complement socio-semiotic theories
developed within the agenda of performance studies.
However, the basic acquisitions of performance studies over time which have devel-
oped tools of analysis that broaden our understanding of a wide repertoire of performing
arts, such as theatre, ballet, music, dance, opera, circus, mime, and puppetry, to name just
the most common, are included in the multimodal approach developed in this volume
That is, every paper in this collection shares the belief that multimodality provides a per-
spective that brings together disparate genres, subgenres, and texts in a single arena,
including the disparate fields of performance studies.
We have selected two case studies that show the kind of contribution that a multimodal
approach can bring about, stimulating oriented research questions and providing models,
334 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

such as transcription and annotation systems in order to come to terms with different
kinds of performances. These two case studies involve (1) an ongoing practice of a dura-
tional performance artist (Johnson 2015) and (2) an exhibition of Austrian Actionists artists/
performers in New York (Weiner 2015). Both examples may at first sight seem distant or at
least peripheral from the traditional concerns of multimodal studies. However, they indi-
cate directions in research that can be usefully applied within a multimodal framework of
analysis, for example understanding whether and how the artist can engage with art-
based research practice and whether the lack of synchronicity in performance (e.g. the
time lag between when art is performed and when art is understood and appreciated)
challenge the nature of performance itself. Other related research questions deal with
who is the owner of the artefact, the role of reproducibility, and whether performance
is a product or a process.
In the first example presented in our discussion, a durational artist is seen in the act of
becoming a document (Johnson 2015). Durational performances are forms of endurance
art, involving hardship, such as pain, mental suffering, or loneliness experienced by artists
in time. This is nothing new, but endurance art has been also augmented by the pervasive
presence of social networks and media sharing platforms. In this case, following Arlander
(2011), Joy Johnson, a durational artist, will become and eventually be a multimodal docu-
ment of endurance art. A recent example of this state of affairs in which the paradoxical
relationship between process and product surfaces can be found in the durational per-
formance staged by Joy Johnson over a period of two weeks in November 2015, in
which she carried out the task (voluntarily distancing herself from Schechner’s (1988b)
idea of performing a task), that is bulling (i.e. polishing in order to see one’s reflection) a
pair of black boots so as to radically change her mental identity, thus experiencing the sol-
diers’ ritualized regime to see how discipline (Foucault 1975) turns them into war
machines. The act of polishing one’s own boots until they reflect the image of the
soldier is a pretty powerful picture of performance seen as identity change. But how can
a researcher, or the artist-researcher, if this is the case, pin down and map this process?
The objects and documents created by the durational performance artist are also part of
the semiotic space in which experience occurs, and Joy Johnson will only carry out the
routine without external contacts, without sleeping, eating, or drinking but water for
hydration purposes, but, significantly, posting pictures on Instagram, thoughts on Twitter,
Facebook, Tumblr, videos on YouTube, and messages with WhatsApp. The challenging
questions raised by the durational performer are: “Can the document be the performer?
Is Instant replacing the live, and if so, can the digital App become ‘my’ digital self? Can
the audience collaborate with me as they tweet, kik and whatsapp me?” (Johnson 2015).
In this sense, a socio-semiotic and multimodal approach can help mapping, transcrib-
ing, and annotating the range of different multimodal documents (including the perfor-
mer’s body), analysing the ongoing process through a replicable model able to unpack
the semiotic resources and texts produced and generated within the process. Body-as-per-
formance is a living semiotic entity. It is both an intangible entity, and paradoxically living
multimodal document, a domain of enquiry, a developing theory and an unfolding
method, at the same time. But art can also be seen as representing social interactions,
something that the durational performance aims to document. In addition, visual texts
(e.g. pictures and drawings) and digital discourse (e.g. tweets, kiks, and WhatsApp mess-
ages) can be also analysed in multimodal terms, with the aim of discovering patterned
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 335

and hierarchically organized meanings. The intersection of the real-time performances of

various kinds and the design of (artistic) objects, environments, and media brings socio-
semiotic and multimodal approaches together, thereby shedding light on how performing
arts can be analysed and described from a different perspective, as in the tradition of prag-
matics, used by Piazza’s contribution to this volume to discuss how cinema borrows from
stage traditions and theatre conventions. Furthermore, the ways in which people make
sense of their own experiences of being in the world is explored, ranging from children’s
efforts to handle standardised TV in absentia storytelling and parents’ in praesentia custo-
mised efforts, as discussed by Zhang, Djonov, and Torr (this volume), to handling changes
in horror genres (novels, TV, and plays) that require sophisticated audience responses as
described by Tan, Wignell, and O’Halloran’s contribution to this volume. In each case, mul-
timodal social semiotic analysis leads to greater understanding of the meaning-making
patterns involved in the various social activities which constitute “performance” in the
widest possible sense.
The second example, showing the diversity of the range of social activities and cultural
practices that create radical conflicts in the experience of art, can also be interpreted as the
coexistence of two apparent opposites, in this case in the exhibition space of the leading
Swiss art gallery Hauser & Wirth in Manhattan Upper East Side in New York. In 2014, with its
minimalist and softly decorated interiors, the gallery hosted the most transgressive and
provocative of the European post-war avant-garde movement, that of Actionists. The
“RITE OF PASSAGE: The Early Years of Vienna Actionism, 1960–1966” Exhibition, presented
a display of the shocking materials used by the extremely controversial Austrian artists,
Günter Brus, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler.
Actionists received critical acclaim in Vienna in 1966 as they experimented with their
pictorial thinking in real time and space. As early precursors of performance art and
body art, their work is still rather unexplored by academia, and Weiner (2015, 50)
points out the contrast between the “fastidious luxury of a premier showroom for
blue-chip art” and “the chaotic messes of paint, meat, and bodily fluids” typically fea-
tured in the Actionists’ works. However, this apparently irreconcilable contrast is in
fact reconciled by “the seemingly limitless recuperative powers of late capitalist
culture, or the types of repressive tolerance exerted by Western liberal-democracies”
(Weiner 2015, 51). This pioneer and blasphemous art turned into an inert Upper East
Side exhibition stands for a double identity paradox. The double paradox lies in the fleet-
ing live quality of performative art (and of performance, by extension) and in its pro-
gressive (and inevitable?) domestication by means of normalization pressures exerted
by late capitalist elites.
A critical and socio-semiotic approach may help unearth how artistic practices are never
in a vacuum, and how ideological pressures impinge on discourse on art. However, how
can we account for the way in which the urban environment is designed, constructed,
and arranged? How can we tackle the multiplicity of multimodal documents that mark
the (hi)story of artistic movements, documents that at first sight might seem ephemeral
(e.g. brochures, leaflets, and exhibition captions)? From a multimodal perspective, the
orchestration of these documents is fully significant for the whole meaning-making event.
The questions raised in this introduction are purposely left unanswered. The two case
studies will not be further discussed in this Special Issue, as they were meant more as
starting point when addressing the various strands of investigation that we assembled
336 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

and brought together. From this perspective, socio-semiotic approaches may help
unearth the contribution that different modes and resources play in meaning-making
and semiosis of interpretation and communication. However, different resources need
to be analysed when complex phenomena, such as performing arts, are at stake, even
though research and scholarship tend to be traditionally enshrined in their epistem-
ologies. Furthermore, every single semiotic resource involved in the process of communi-
cation both on the production level as well as on the reception level of making meaning
would have to be analysed in full detail and with regard to their relationship(s) to other
semiotic resources, to the specific context as well as the various social actors involved
and recognized.
We will omit further details here in favour of the more general description that we have
given so far as well as the individual case studies to be elaborated in the following papers.
However, our own examples discussed in this introduction nevertheless show the rich
potential of analytical questions to be addressed from the semiotic and multimodal per-
spective. In particular, we need to engage with the real social practices and their multifar-
ious implications for the production, distribution, and consumption of such multimodal
texts and events. These and other questions will be addressed in this issue and the indi-
vidual papers, which we summarize in the following section.

6. The Special Issue

The articles collected in this Special Issue are inaugurated by Andre Helbo’s contribution
which comes to our assistance when facing the previously mentioned questions. His paper
points to the directions that semiotic studies should take to address the contemporary
crisis in representation that can be associated with experiences and events in postmodern
and postdramatic performance. Highlighting the relationship that we have also invoked in
the discussion about multimodal semiotics and theatrical practices, Helbo addresses three
fundamental issues: (1) the place of externality (including embodiment and theories of
corporeity), (2) the role of the researcher and the related issues, such as forms of specta-
cularization of practices that are spectacularized in and through the scholar’s gaze, and (3)
the role of semiotics in terms of universalizing vocation and the problems of reproducing
subjectivity. In his conclusions, Helbo shows the need for models of an experiential semio-
tics that places the spectator at the centre of research, thus pointing to shifts in current
debates in terms “of enunciation collective, of the observer’s position, of the distinction
between observer-observed, listener-performer, of corporeity”.
Ideally drawing from Helbo’s suggestions, Nita Moghaddam deals with an understudied
resource, that is, stage directions, to explore the relationship between the play world of the
text, in and off stage. The interaction between what is real and what is not-real raised at
the beginning of our introduction is brought to light in her analysis that blends the various
resources inside and outside the theatrical text and confronts the readers of the dramatic
text with a communicative semiosphere. Stage directions thus become the ideal bridge
between what is already written in the text and what is potentially in performance, sin-
gling out the case of stage directions produced by the American playwright and director
Sam Shepard. It is in this semiotic space, from virtual to real performance, that stage direc-
tions show their potential and usefulness for analysis.
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 337

As discussed above, the relationships between theatre and cinema (and opera) are inex-
tricably tied. Roberta Piazza introduces this topic not by analysing how cinema borrows
from stage tout court, but how cinema borrows from stage conventions taken from
theatre mise-en-scène. For this purpose, Piazza presents two case studies, namely Peter
Greenaway’s The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989) and Lars von Trier’s Dogville
(2003). Following Gauldreault’s claim about the common “monstrative” nature of theatre
and cinema, Piazza argues that the two directors exploit typical elements from theatre to
implicitly critique the typical realism of cinema. This critique is carried out, for example,
by means of voice-overs and by using monstrative techniques, such as with the explicit
use of indexical relations that she identifies with mismatches between what is shown and
what is said.
Further exploring the boundaries between theatre and cinema, Maria Grazia Sindoni
and Fabio Rossi explore opera as a multimodal genre, singling out as a case study a
sextet from La Cenerentola by Gioachino Rossini. They aim to show how multimodal
studies cast a wider net that brings a whole spectrum of semiotic modalities – music,
singing, and voice – that jointly impact on the audience in an integrated way, overcoming
the situation whereby opera’s music is analysed by musicologists, the libretto by literary
critics, and singing by yet other professional categories.
The relationship between different media and resources is also taken further in the
analysis by Sabine Tan, Peter Wignell, and Kay O’Halloran who study several forms of
adaptations, from novel, to stage, to screen in the case of the The Woman in Black by
Susan Hill. This case study epitomizes how the horror genre is the result of different
forms of socio-semiotic transformations that orchestrate different modes and resources
interpreted and understood differently by different audiences. In their conclusions, the
authors open their view to wider questions, such as issues of how viewership is affected
by these semiotic transformations and adaptations, alluding to the consequences for con-
temporary socio-cultural events and practices.
Linked to the latter is the topic discussed in the work by Kunkun Zhang, Emilia Djonov,
and Jane Torr who adopt a critical multimodal stance that compares two very different and
interesting kinds of audiences: children who listen to stories told by their parents, and chil-
dren who listen to the same stories told by a presenter on a television programme. The
practice of reading aloud books is a form of performance in the “broad spectrum defi-
nition”, often recalled in this introduction. As a form of oral performance, this brings
back to mind typical discourses of orality, where community life and joy of participation
were part of performance as well as the story as a plot told by the bard or storyteller.
This is consistent with Zhang, Djonov, and Torr’s findings that identify differences
between adult-child shared reading and its representation on television. Benefits and
limitations of both modalities are accounted for with the aim of promoting early literacy
skills and active engagement of children.
The potential for positive change of actively performing life-changing activities lies at the
core of the article closing our collection. Robert McMurtrie and Aurora Murphy provide an
ideal closure for our discussion by building on the premise that performance not only
engages, entertains, diverts our attention from the evils of life, but also plays a powerful
transforming role in our changing society. They report on how movement and interaction
in and within the Spread the Love art installation can contribute to transforming what they
call the script of rape, that is, scripted and pre-planned interaction that can be rewritten by
338 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

systematically overturning social configurations of sexuality and gender. It is in the power of

transformation – be it a transformation of resources, texts, and genres or individual, inter-
personal, or social – that the editors wish to promote as a way of extending current theories.
Considering traditional and Western performing arts, complexity does not fade, even
though descriptive models for the study of theatre, music, ballet abound. If we assume,
for example, that music has traditionally been the focus of the study for opera, and move-
ment for ballet, how can we approach the contributions of other less explored resources,
such as voice, temporary or permanent body ornaments in what are purposely created
and historically determined semiotic patterns? And also, how are such systems of prioritiz-
ing modes, resources, and practices validated or rejected in theory and in practice by indi-
viduals and communities? To this end, the articles collected in this Special Issue address
the interplay between semiotic resources, such as speech, music, stage directions, lighting,
proxemics, and kinesics in performing arts in different contexts, ages, and cultures, but
they are ultimately considered as the ideal context where assumptions and heuristics
about views of art and, consequently, views of the world can be tested out.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors
Maria Grazia Sindoni, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in English Linguistics and Translation at the Uni-
versity of Messina. She has published four books and articles in national and international journals,
and edited two books. Her main research interests include systemic-functional linguistics, multimod-
ality, critical discourse analysis, corpus linguistics, theories of semiosis of communication, and com-
puter-mediated interaction.
Janina Wildfeuer is a Researcher in the Faculty of Linguistics and Literary Science at Bremen Univer-
sity, Germany. Her areas of research include multimodal linguistics and media studies as well as dis-
course analysis and semiotics. She teaches classes in multimodal, interdisciplinary, and applied
linguistics and analyses film, comics, and other multimodal documents within several projects
exploring the notion of multimodal discourse.
Kay O’Halloran is Associate Professor in the School of Education, Faculty of Humanities at Curtin Uni-
versity. Her areas of research include multimodal analysis, social semiotics, mathematics discourse,
and the development of interactive digital media technologies and visualization techniques for mul-
timodal and socio-cultural analytics.

ORCID
Maria Grazia Sindoni http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6220-2981
Janina Wildfeuer http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1330-8800

References
Akerejola, Ernest. 2013. “Multimodality in Òkó Folktale Discourse and Its Sociosemiotic Purposes.” In
Multimodal Texts from Around the World. Cultural and Linguistic Insights, edited by Wendy L.
Bowcher, 11–38. Basingstoke: Palgrave.
 SOCIAL SEMIOTICS 339

Arlander, Annette. 2011. “Characteristics of Visual and Performing Arts.” In Routledge Companion to
the Arts, edited by Michael Biggs, and Henrik Karlsson, 315–332. London: Routledge.
Askari, Kaveh, Scott Curtis, Frank Gray, Louis Pelletier, Tami Williams, and Joshua Yumibe, eds. 2015.
Performing New Media, 1890–1915. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Auslander, Philip. 1997. From Acting to Performance. London: Routledge.
Auslander, Philip. 2008. Theory for Performance Studies. London: Routledge.
Baldry, Anthony, and Paul J. Thibault. 2006. Multimodal Transcription and Text Analysis. London:
Equinox.
Bateman, John. 2008. Multimodality and Genre: A Foundation for the Systematic Analysis of Multimodal
Documents. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Benjamin, Walter. [1936] 1968. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” In
Illuminations, edited by Walter Benjamin, and Hannah Arendt, 219–253. New York: Harcourt,
Brace and World.
Bonini, Tiziano. 2011. “Blurring Fiction with Reality: The Strange Case of Amnésia, an Italian Radio
Mockumentary.” In Radio Content in the Digital Age: The Evolution of a Sound Medium, edited by
Angeliki Gazi, Starkey Guy, and Stanislaw Jedrzejewski, 85–103. London: Intellect Books.
Bucher, Hans-Jürgen. 2007. “Textdesign und Multimodalität Zur Semantik und Pragmatik medialer
Gestaltungsformen.” In Textdesign und Textwirkung in der massenmedialen Kommunikation,
edited by Kersten S. Roth, and Jürgen Spitzmüller, 49–76. Konstanz: UVK.
Carlson, Marvin. 1990. Theatre Semiotics: Signs of Life. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Carlson, Marvin. 1996. Performance: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge.
Delwiche, Adam, and Jennifer J. Henderson, eds. 2013. The Participatory Cultures Handbook. London:
Routledge.
Dolnik, Adam, and Richard Pilch. 2003. “The Moscow Theater Hostage Crisis: The Perpetrators, Their
Tactics, and the Russian Response.” International Negotiation 8 (3): 577–611.
Foucault, Michel. 1975. Surveiller et unir: Naissance de la Prison. Paris: Gallimard.
Fuchs, Elinor. 1996. The Death of Character: Perspectives on Theater after Modernism (Drama and
Performance Studies). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Goldberg, RoseLee. 1988. Performance Art from Futurism to the Present. New York: H.N. Abrams.
Hall, Stuart, ed. 1997. Representation. Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. Milton Keynes:
Open University Press.
Halliday, Michael A. K. 1978. Language as Social Semiotic: The Social Interpretation of Language and
Meaning. London: Arnold.
Helbo, André. 1987. Theory of Performing Arts. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Hill, Susan. 1983. The Woman in Black. London: Vintage Books.
Johnson, Joy. 2015. “Durational Performance: Endurance No 2, 2015. Presented within a Digital Stage
in Order to Provide New Research into My PhD Question ‘Can the Document Be the Performer?’”
Accessed September 15, 2015. https://www.academia.edu/15353296/Durational_Performance_
Endurance_No_2_2015_Presented_within_a_digital_stage_in_order_to_provide_new_research_
into_my_PhD_question_Can_the_Document_be_the_Performer
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2001. Multimodal Discourse. The Modes and Media of
Contemporary Communication. London: Arnold.
Kress, Gunther, and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. 2nd ed.
London: Routledge.
McAuley, Gay 2003. “Performance Studies.” Semiotics Encyclopedia Online. Victoria University.
Accessed September 1, 2015. http://www.semioticon.com/seo/P/performance.html
McAuley, Gay. 2007. “State of the Art: Performance Studies.” SemiotiX 10. Accessed August 23, 2015.
http://www.semioticon.com/sx-old-issues/semiotix10/sem-10-05.html
Metz, Christian. 1982. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
O’Halloran, Kay L. 2005. Mathematical Discourse: Language, Symbolism and Visual Images. London:
Continuum.
O’Toole, Michael. 2011. The Language of Displayed Art. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
340 M. G. SINDONI ET AL.

Pasco, Allan H. 1997. Sick Heroes: French Society and Literature in the Romantic Age, 1750–1850. Exeter:
University of Exeter Press.
Peirce, Charles S. 1909. “Studies in Meaning”. In The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Charles
S. Peirce. 1938–1951, edited by Charles Hartshorne, and Paul Weiss, 22–44. Cambridge: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press. MS 619.
Peirce, Charles S. 1931–1958. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by Charles
Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Schechner, Richard. 1988a. “Performance Studies: The Broad Spectrum Approach.” The Drama Review
32 (3-T119): 4–6.
Schechner, Richard. [1988b] 2004. Performance Theory. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.
Schechner, Richard. [2002] 2013. Performance Studies: An Introduction. 3rd ed. London: Routledge.
Schechner, Richard. 2010. “Broadening the Broad Spectrum.” TDR: The Drama Review 54 (3): 7–8.
Scollon, Ron, and Suzanne Wong Scollon. 2009. “Multimodality and Language. A Retrospective and
Prospective View.” In The Handbook of Multimodal Analysis, edited by Carey Jewitt, 170–180.
London: Routledge.
Slatin, Sonia. 1979. “Opera and Revolution: La Muette de Portici and the Belgian Revolution of 1830
Revisited.” Journal of Musicological Research 3: 45–62.
Tabet, Frédéric. 2015. “La trasparence du Fregoligraph en question.” In Performing New Media, 1890–
1915, edited by Askari, Kaveh, Scott Curtis, Frank Gray, Louis Pelletier, Tami Williams, and Joshua
Yumibe, 57–66. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
van Leeuwen, Theo. 2011. “Multimodality and Multimodal Research.” In SAGE Handbook of Visual
Research Methods, edited by Eric Margolis, and Luc Pauwels, 549–569. London: Sage.
Weiner, Andrew Stefan. 2015. “Reevaluating Actionism: Austrian Performance, Then and Now.” PAJ: A
Journal of Performance and Art 37 (3): 50–57.
Wildfeuer, Janina, ed., 2015. Building Bridges for Multimodal Research. International Perspectives on
Theories and Practices of Multimodal Analysis. Bern: Peter Lang.
Ziarek, Krzysztof. 2005. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Electronic Mutability.” In Walter Benjamin
and Art, edited by Andrew Benjamin, 209–225. New York: Continuum.

Artworks
Auber, Daniel, comp. 1828. Masaniello or La muette de Portici.
Brus, Günter, Otto Muehl, Hermann Nitsch, and Rudolf Schwarzkogler. 2014. RITE OF PASSAGE: The
Early Years of Vienna Actionism, 1960–1966. New York.
Caccia, Matteo. 2009. Amnésia.
Greenaway, Peter, dir. 1989. The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover.
Hugo, Victor. 1830. Hernani, ou l’Honneur Castillan.
Rossini, Gioachino, comp. 1817. La Cenerentola, ovvero la bontà in trionfo.
Scott, Ridley, dir. 2011. Life in a Day.
von Trier, Lars, dir. 2003. Dogville.
Welles, Orson. 1938. The War of the Worlds.
Zois, Yorgos, dir. 2016. Interruption.