Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Introduction to Theatre
& Performance
LECTURE 2 TEXT AND PERFORMANCE
2.1 Text and Stage Directions
What is text?
• A text is something that invites
itself to be read
• Text = Script?
–Inscribed & Read / Enacted & Read
Greek Theatre Favours Poetry & the
Written Text
• Aristotle’s components of dramatic poetry:
(ranked in order of importance)
– (1) plot (mythos)
– (2) character (ethe)
– (3) message or thought (dianoia)
– (4) diction (lexis)
– (5) melody (melos)
– (6) spectacle (opsis)
Greek Theatre Favours Poetry & the
Written Text
• Even though theatre is a visual medium ‐ we
still refer to the people watching a theatre
performance as an audience ‐ we hear text
audio
being recited
– The spectacle is secondary to the poetry
Reading Texts in Theatre
• Read – ‘decoding symbols in order to
construct or derive meaning’
• Reading is a complex interaction between the
text and the reader which is shaped by the
reader’s prior knowledge (& resultant
expectations), experiences, attitudes and
socio‐cultural context/environment.
Texts In The Theatre
• In theatre there are two kinds of text:
– The play‐text (or dramatic text) AND
– the theatrical text (or performance text)
Texts In The Theatre
• Consider the dramatic text as a
pretext – something that comes
‘before’ the thing audience actually
‘reads’ in performance – the
dramatic text is ‘previous’ to the
theatrical text
Texts In The Theatre
• When we read a realist novel, we
‘stage’ them in our heads – but the
play has a ‘real stage’ in mind, not
just private imagination. The play is
designed to function as a basic
template
Texts In The Theatre
• Most of the time, we read a play like
we read a novel – we focus on the
dialogue and exchanges between the
characters to figure out what the
plot is – but if we do so, we lose the
design and the complexities of the
play‐text
Texts In The Theatre
• The play‐text is a unique genre of
literature – it has two texts working
simultaneously
• Haupttext and Nebentext ‐ Primary
versus ancillary ‐ Dialogue of the
characters vs stage directions
Texts In The Theatre
• The dialogue does a lot more than
telling a story – it creates images,
movement, a stage world.
• The stage direction is just as
important in scripting what is to
happen on stage.
Texts In The Theatre
• Even in the absence of an actual stage
production, the dramatic text produces the sense
of one – the dramatic text scripts what might
actually happen on stage. Each dramatic text
contains an implied theatrical production
• The actual content of the theatrical text – what
actually happens on stage – depends on the
creative choices of the theatre makers and
designers.
Texts In The Theatre
• The dramatic text provides one of the ‘frames’
for making a show – the dramatic text is one
of the determinations on the theatrical text –
all sorts of different interpretations in
different societies can happen.
• But the dramatic text offers something to
determine each – through its inscription of an
implied production
STAGE DIRECTIONS
• Stage directions offer a view of the production
• it provides information on the conditions of the
stage world in terms of the environment,
• psychical states & behaviours of the character(s)
inhabiting this world:
• time‐space‐players
STAGE DIRECTIONS
• In many cases, stage directions work
in conjunction with dialogue,
explaining it – such stage directions
may be called conjunctive stage
directions
STAGE DIRECTIONS
• Stage directions can also act in
tension with or against dialogue –
these sorts of stage directions may
be called disjunctive stage directions.