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Beyond Style: Typologies of Performance Analysis

Christopher Balme

Theatre Research International / Volume 22 / Issue 01 / March 1997, pp 24 - 30

DOI: 10.1017/S0307883300015911, Published online: 23 January 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0307883300015911

How to cite this article:

Christopher Balme (1997). Beyond Style: Typologies of Performance Analysis. Theatre Research International,
22, pp 24-30 doi:10.1017/S0307883300015911

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Theatre Research International Vol. 22 No. 1 pp. 24-30

Beyond Style: Typologies of

Performance Analysis
CHRISTOPHER BALME

The theory of mise en scene we are trying to In a third step I shall discuss these theories in rela-
establish allows us to eschew impressionistic tion to Peter Brook's Maiat/Sade, and Karen
discourse on the style, inventiveness and Finley's The Constant State of Desire. This selec-
originality of the director who adds his so-calledtion provides a historical perspective on an
personal touch to a precious text regarded as example of a text-based mise en scene—thirty
closed and inviolate.1 years have passed since Brook first presented his
Marat/Sade—and a comparison between a text-
For Patrice Pavis, notions such as style, personal based mise en scene and a 'performance' which
stamp, and so on, belong to the realm of 'impres- is almost inseparable from its performer (Karen
sionistic discourse' which he seeks to overcome Finley).
in his proposals for a structural theory of the
relationship between the dramatic text and its
concretization in stage performance. I propose to I
review recent typologies of the raise en scene Patrice Pavis divides the mise en scene into three
which attempt a greater problematization of the categories or dimensions, which he entitles:
terms mise en scene and performance. This form autotextual, ideotextual and intertextual. These
of terminological interrogation is itself a pre- categories are not mutually exclusive but rather
requisite for any kind of differentiated analysis co-existent in every mise en scene with varying
whatever its methodological provenience, be it degrees of ostension. By autotextual Pavis
hermeneutic, semiotic, or discourse analysis. understands primarily a closed system with little
Typologization is thus an essential first step in interest in relating the mise en scene to what he
the theorization of performance and consequently terms the social context.2 This type encom-
of analysis and interpretation. Furthermore, passes both the practice of historical reconstruc-
typological theories can help to relativize and tion, anchoring the dramatic text firmly in its
neutralize the still prevalent philologically period of creation, and the pure aestheticization
oriented valorizations of mise en scene implicit of the mise en scene whereby a director realizes
in such notions as loyalty to the text. From this a highly personal and hermetic artistic vision. An
discussion I hope to distil a refinement of example of the latter would be the symbolist
previously posited typological theories. theatre theory and practice of Appia and Craig.
My discussion centres on two different From a historical perspective this is an interesting
typological models posited by Hans-Thies typological grouping because Pavis subsumes two
Lehmann and by Patrice Pavis. A brief review of directorial practices hitherto perceived as mutu-
the central tenets of these theories will provide ally exclusive, or least as part of a process of
an introduction to the question of typologies and 'reaction': symbolist mise en scene defining itself
their function and relevance. In a second step I in contradistinction to historicist or naturalistic
shall relate these theories first to each other and practices. By collapsing this distinction Pavis
indicate where there are convergences and establishes a new historical category and redraws
discrepancies, and then open them up to a critical historiographical boundaries. At the same time
interrogation in relation to what they preclude. autotextual mise en scene is a structural category

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because its practice continues until the present
day and elements of autotextuality are present in
any production.
The antithesis to the autotextual mise en scene
is the ideotextual or ideological emphasis. Here
any number of possible metatexts 3 (political,
social or psychological) are staged and fore-
grounded as the primary statement of the mise
en scene. The concept that the dramatic text has
a fixed, immutable meaning or message which
can be 'released' is displaced and replaced instead
by the notion that the dramatic text is a point of
departure for engagement with the social context
of the immediate audience: 'the dramatic text is
regarded as an indeterminate signifying mass'. 4
Again, this structural typological category has
identifiable historical roots in the rise of political
theatre in the 1920s, but it is by no means
restricted to this theatrical practice. The direc-
torial metatext which dislodges the primacy of
the dramatic text can be of any kind of ideological
provenance. It encompasses in fact a multiplicity
of 'readings', be they Marxist, psychoanalytic or
whatever, which are linked by the fact that they
oppose a clearly defined directorial concept to the
dramatic text.
To complete his dialectical model, Pavis posits
as a 'necessary mediation between autotextuality
and ideological reference' the notion of intertex-
tuality.5 This type of mise en scene seeks to
communicate neither with the dramatic text nor
with some kind of prevailing ideology but with
past productions or previous metatexts. Pavis is
thinking here mainly of contemporary produc-
tions of the classics, citing as an example French
classical theatre. While intertextual mise en scene
is conceivable in any time and culture which
practices western-style theatre, Pavis's dialectical
model implies again that intertextual practice is
a historical synthesis of the two preceding
categories. The practice of implicit or explicit
citation suggests a strong congruence with certain
broader notions of postmodernism, which again
roots the term historically.
Although Pavis insists repeatedly that he views
the mise en scene as a structural notion (as
opposed to the personal creation/ work of art of
a director), his highly suggestive typology, which
is indeed a structural-systematic construct, is
historically determined and follows a very general
tripartite division. It is historical in so far as the
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Typologies of Performance Analysis 25
beginnings of each category can be historically
identified:
autotextual: Historicism (nineteenth century)
/ Symbolism (post-1900)
ideotextual: political theatre/ definable direc-
torial concepts (post-1918)
intertextual: post-1970
Yet because each category is still viable and part
of contemporary theatrical practice, the typology
must be recognized as a structural one as well.
The example of the German director Peter Stein
illustrates how one of the paramount exponents
of ideotextual mise en scene in the late 1960s and
early 1970s could, with his highly naturalistic
production of The Three Sisters, effect an
astonishing return to an autotextual practice.
This exemplifies, too, how Pavis's typology
transcends questionable divisions of historical
style which are posited as having a clearly iden-
tifiable beginning and end. On the contrary, the
typology is itself situated inside a history of mise
en scene of the dramatic text in which all the
options are still open.
The major limitation of Pavis's typology lies in
its focus on scenic realizations of the dramatic
text with no perspective on types of theatrical per-
formance which are not based on a literary text.
For this reason Hans-Thies Lehmann's essay, 'Die
Inszenierung: Probleme ihrer Analyse',6 can be
seen as a necessary corollary in the conceptualiza-
tion of typological models of the mise en scene.
His point of departure is the formulation of three
interrelated textual levels present in any mise en
scene: the linguistic text, the text of the mise en
scene, and the performance text. The first two
categories are relatively straightforward: the
linguistic text encompasses a more generalized
understanding of the linguistic material of a
performance than the narrower concept of the
dramatic text; the text of the mise en scene means
the totality of the visual and acoustic sign
systems as opposed to just the literary or dramatic
text. The third category, the performance text, is
derived from Richard Scheduler's notion that the
'performance event', the unique situation of a
performance, should be the primary object of
analysis in contrast to the aesthetic object. These
three interrelated levels are present in any mise
en scene, but because they manifest themselves
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26 Theatre Research International
with varying degrees of emphasis in any given
work it is impossible, so Lehmann, to posit a
generalized model of performance analysis.
Lehmann proposes a differentiation of types of
mise en scene, without claiming for it the rigidity
of a typology in any normative sense. Rather, he
identifies three manifestations of theatrical prac-
tice: metaphorical mise en scene, scenographic
mise en scene, and theatre as situation.7
By 'metaphorical', Lehmann means a mise en
scene in the sense of a 'reading' of a literary text,
but in which certain sign systems such as light
and space construct metaphorical representations,
not of the text, but of the directorial reading of
the text. Lehmann chooses the term metaphorical
in contrast, it seems, to the more conventional
notion of mise en scene as an illustration or
reduplication of the linguistic signs. If we under-
stand metaphor, especially in its contemporary
usage, as the blending together of two originally
separate spheres to form a new identity, then it
becomes clear that Lehmann is seeking to iden-
tify and characterize a specific practice of mise
en scene, very prevalent in contemporary German
theatre, although by no means restricted to it.8
We are in the realm of director's theatre and direc-
torial concepts which attain, if not primacy over,
then certainly equal value to the dramatic text.
Lehmann's metaphorical mise en scene is thus
very close to Pavis's notion of ideotextuality in
that it lays emphasis on a clearly identifiable
directorial metatext. Lehmann summarizes the
task of the analysis of such a mise en scene as
being to define a hermeneutic framework with
which to describe 'the play of metaphors between
text and theatre on the 9different levels of the
theatrical sign material'.
The scenographic mise en scene cannot be
approached through an analysis of a dramatic text,
or a comparison of text and mise en scene. As the
label 'scenographic' suggests, the visual compo-
nent is paramount and the primary task of
analysis is not to uncover a fixed, predetermined
structure of 'meaning', but rather to indicate the
way in which a multiplicity and ambiguity of
meanings are created. Lehmann points to a clear
privileging of non-verbal sign systems (colours,
spatial dimensions, temporal rhythms, geometric
structures) in scenographic theatre and thereby to
a questioning of the notion of mise en scene as
a visual communication of a pre-existing content:
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Scenographic theatre does not communicate or
represent something else but appeals in its con-
crete essence to the sensual ability of the spec-
tator to connect and structure meaning as a
possible effect and not as a predetermined
origin of the aesthetic realisation, as an effect
which remains necessarily, not accidentally,
ambiguous.10
The approach to scenographic theatre should be,
so it would seem, directed by a hermeneutic
model which owes more to the analysis of con-
temporary art than contemporary theatre.
Lehmann's third category, theatre of situation,
identifies a form of theatre in which the perfor-
mance text, the 'reality' of the theatrical event
becomes the central focus of analysis. This type
of theatre provides maximum space for the
spectator-participant to create his/her own in-
dividual experience and reaction to what is
presented. This social and aesthetic experience is
then the primary object of analysis, not an
aesthetic product presented to the spectator.
Although Lehmann illustrates the concept with
reference to the Viennese group Angelus Novus,
he also makes clear that the theatre of situation
is part of a tradition with immediate roots in
the paratheatrical experiments of the 1960s
(Performance-Art and Happening) and with strong
affinities to Artaud and to Brecht's Lehistiick
theory.
Lehmann's thoughts on performance analysis
culminate in a concerted attack on a
communication-based theory of semiotics, which
in its insistence on an objectifiable system of
codes and a denotatively oriented sign theory, he
claims to be totally unsuited for theatrical
analysis. Lehmann stresses instead the systemic
ambiguity of theatre signs, their indeter-
minedness in the textuality of the theatrical pro-
cess, and insists on the necessity of making the
materiality of theatrical signifiers the primary
problem of analysis.
II
Peter Brook's Marat/Sade
Peter Brook's film version of Marat/Sade is a rare
historical document in that we have at our
disposal a thirty year-old theatre production
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conserved by the medium of film. Even allowing
for the filmic transposition of Brook's own mise
en scene with all the medium-related changes,
enough elements of the original theatre produc-
tion have11been retained to attempt a typological
analysis. The production itself has accrued a
considerable body of critical and academic com-
mentary and is generally regarded as not only one
of the milestones in Brook's career but as a
benchmark mise en scene encapsulating impor-
tant theatrical trends of the time. Most commen-
tary devoted to the mise en scene has either
focused on what one could term a personification
of style in the persons of Brecht and Artaud or on
an explication of the somewhat vague epithet
'Total Theatre'.
In applying Pavis's typology, it is important to
stress again that the categories are not mutually
exclusive but rather subject to hierarchization.
The text itself with its overlapping temporal
layers renders difficult a coherent autotextual
approach either in the sense of historical
reconstruction or as a hermetic poetic universe.
It is a play which seeks continually to impinge
on the contemporary world of the audience from
the vantage point of the year 1808 while depic-
ting events that took place in 1793. In terms of
costuming there is attention to historical detail
and no attempt to modernize or actualize. Also
the set design reproduces the austere tiled sur-
faces of the asylum bathhouse as specified by
Peter Weiss. Thus the visual sign systems con-
vey at least on the surface the illusion of autotex-
tual reconstruction, but because the characters in
1808 are performing events from the year 1793
and the linguistic and musical texts continually
create connections with the twentieth century,
these sign systems serve almost a purely
decorative function, little more than indexing the
historical dimension of the play.
The concept of intertextuality excludes itself
almost by definition from Brook's mise en
scene, as it was only the second major produc-
tion of the play, and the first English-language
one. However, because of the importance and the
international resonance of the production, it has
itself become a key intertextual reference point
for future productions. Discussions of the inter-
textuality of mise en scene can only be fruitful
if a number of such objects of comparison are
present.
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Typologies of Performance Analysis 27
Intertextuality can, however, play a role in the
formation of ideotextual readings, where this
mise en scene provides the most productive and
controversial area of analysis. On the one hand
we have statements by Brook claiming an
avoidance of any particular 'point of view':
When I had directed the play for the stage, I had
not attempted to impose my own point of view
on the work: on the contrary, I tried to make
it as many-sided as I could. As a result, the spec-
tators were continually free to choose, in each
scene and at every moment, the points which
interested them most.12
He is seconded in this by Charles Marowitz, his
collaborator on the 1963/4 experimental work-
shop of the Royal Shakespeare Company entitled
Theatre of Cruelty. This season led to the produc-
tion of Marat/Sade, although Marowitz was not
directly involved in it. Marowitz provides both
an inter- and ideotextual perspective on the pro-
duction when he compares it with the Berlin
premiere, directed by Konrad Swinarski:
In the original Swinarski production which I
saw at the Schiller-Theater before the London
production, it was an indictment of revolu-
tionary fascism that set out to make a Marxist
point. One either took the play or left it alone,
but it was what it was, and there was no ques-
tion about its point of view. In the London pro-
duction, its ambience was neither political nor
(despite polemical longueurs) philosophical, but
exclusively theatrical.13
Both comments point to a directorial perspective
which refuses to engage with and extend or ac-
centuate the political and ideological perspectives
debated in the linguistic text. While Brook sees
this as a mise en scene of plurality of choice,
Marowitz views it as a very specific metatext
which promulgates an Artaudian view of theatre
which can 'resuscitate something in our jaded
senses and overhaul our aesthetic apprecia-
tion'.14 By focusing and restructuring the
theatrical sign systems at play, with a clear
dominance of kinesic and gestural signs, Brook
manages to create an impressive theatricality or
even aesthetic of lunacy so that the debates bet-
ween Marat and Sade are just one of the more
lucid lunatic 'entertainments'. Brook's keen
interest in the theatricality of madness as an
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28 Theatre Research International
antidote to the logocentric 'deadly' theatre is a
clear debt to Artaud and to the experimental work
in the Theatre of Cruelty season. This preference
and focus are particularly evident in the way
madness is depicted. The patients are differen-
tiated and individualized with an, it appears,
almost Stanislavskian attention to detail.
Madness is less a theatrical sign, like revolution,
which is cited and displayed, than the bedrock ex-
perience on which the other (ideological and
political) layers are constructed.15 Insanity is the
metatext that Brook focuses on. It does not
necessarily obscure the political debate, to which
space is certainly given, but rather relativizes it
as just one of the many irrational actions
presented on the stage. While Brook claims to
have presented an open production in which the
many perspectives presented by the linguistic text
are given equal weight, his theatrical instinct has
led him to fasten onto that element with the
greatest potential for theatrical effect for its own
sake.16
Ill
Karen Finley: The Constant State of
Desire
I like to perform in clubs because art spaces—
at least in New York—have completely
removed themselves from spectacle or happen-
ings or any kind of performance event. (Karen
Finley)17
The generally accepted categorization of Karen
Finley's work as 'performance art' or more
precisely as 'women's performance art'18 would
seem to preclude an application of Pavis's
typology, which is, as stated above, designed
primarily with the mise en scene of classical texts
in mind. The emphasis on 'performance' as op-
posed to theatre suggests that Lehmann's category
of theatre of situation is perhaps applicable,
privileging as it does the 'performance event' over
the linguistic or directorial text. Unfortunately an
analysis of theatre of situation requires the
theatrical equivalent of the ethnographic 'partici-
pant observer' of a live event, experience which
this writer cannot lay claim to. For the purposes
of this scholarly inquiry, however, it is the
linguistic and directorial texts that provide the
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material for study. The fact that the text of The
Constant State of Desire has been published
creates a new status of a 'work' in Barthes's sense
of the word as something objectified and con-
crete.19 This shift in status and accrual of func-
tion is reflected in the scholarly, as opposed to
the journalistic, interest in her work, which is
focused almost entirely on this one published
text.20 Also the video version, a partial recording
of a live performance in a New York club, pro-
vides the opportunity to analyse Finley's 'staging7,
her mise en scene of her own work, even if the
term here may be somewhat debatable. It is,
nevertheless, certainly possible to imagine other
stagings of the work by other performers or even
groups of performers.
Finley has, herself, stressed the importance of
the performance event, that normally she does
not rehearse her pieces but enacts them in a
trance or medium-like state, which is engendered
by a process of mental and spiritual preparation.
Therefore she makes a generic distinction both
between her performing and 'acting', and also bet-
ween one-off performance events and repeatable
pieces such as The Constant State of Desire,
which she terms 'performance procedures', an in-
termediary form that is 'getting to be experimen-
tal theatre'. 21
Finley's own comments and spectator response
as well as her much advertised difficulties with
the National Endowment for the Arts and venue
operators point up the difficulty of attaching any
label to her work, typological or otherwise.22
This is linked not just to what she does (her so-
called obscenity and shock aesthetic), but also
how and where she does it, i.e. to questions of per-
formance form and performance space. The Karen
Finley controversy, I would suggest, is primarily
a result of a particular configuration of codes,
none of which individually would raise any par-
ticular furore. The linguistic code she uses, the
associative technique of automatic writing, and
its content, a hyperbolic detonation of signs cen-
tring around sexual acts and scatological images,
often in unison, can on the page at least, be con-
sumed without too many severe side-effects.
Transferred to a live performance event, however,
these texts gain an uncomfortable intensity
through the shared experience of being exposed
to what is otherwise confined to the privacy and
safety of 'individual fantasies' imagined, read, or,
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at worst, shared with one's analyst. Pramaggiore
points out correctly that Finley on stage, 'in a
public arena, calls into question the distinction
between what is defined/confined to the personal,
constructed as depth, or interior to the self, and
what is considered social, performative, concep-
tualized as exterior to the self'.23
It is also necessary to examine just what 'public
arena' Finley chooses or is forced to use. The two
main venues, as she indicates herself, are clubs
and galleries, both of which engender on the part
of the spectator differing framing strategies. A per-
formance in a club, such as can be seen on the
sequence from New York II Mondo, places her
work in a semiotic field defined by performance
genres such as the stand-up comedienne. A scene
such as 'Hate Yellow' in The Constant State of
Desire, which Finley terms 'a celebration',24
combines elements of striptease and Body Paint-
ing, one of the many subgenres of performance
art. How this scene is perceived will be deter-
mined by the generic expectations engendered by
the performance space. The act of taking off her
clothes under the glare of theatrical lighting in
the context of a club, although she 'deliberately
mock[s] the conventions of the striptease',25 can
and will nevertheless be received in this way, as
the cat-calls and whistles amply demonstrate. In
the taped performance Finley actually responds
to the audience by briefly shaking her breasts in
a clear allusion to the conventions of the
striptease. The following section of the scene in
which Finley coats herself with egg-yoke, glitter
and confetti, demonstrates a code shift to perfor-
mance art, in which the body is sculpted in a
highly suggestive, sensual and symbolic act. It is
quite conceivable that spectators at a gallery
dedicated to performance art will try and view the
same sequence with a receptive code that is deter-
mined by knowledge of this artistic genre and its
conventions. Whatever the expectations, because
the scene straddles and thus redefines perfor-
mance codes it forces the spectator into a posi-
tion of self-interrogation which can be unsettling
or even threatening as Pramaggiore argues:
Ultimately the disclosure of her body is
threatening, not because she is naked, but
because it reveals more about my desire as
audience member and my desire to be an
audience member than it does about feminine
sexuality, female bodies or Karen Finley.26
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Typologies of Performance Analysis 29
The same unsettling rearrangement of codes
applies to Finley's presentation or mise en scene
of the linguistic text. Although various
'characters', 'voices' or subjects are discernible,
she makes no attempt to 'enact' them in any form
of psychological differentiation. As Catherine
Schuler puts it: 'Indeed, never during the course
of Constant State does she transform herself
physically or vocally into a series of readily
distinguishable characters that are suggested by
the text.'27 Finley's vocal delivery, which has
been described variously as 'an intense rhythmic
chant', a 'mantra-like monotone' or even as
comparable to an evangelical preacher in its
annoying repetitiveness,28 is a crucial factor in
determining how the actual content is received.
It is thus less the actual obscenities themselves,
the acts or thoughts depicted, that give cause for
offence, than the difficulty for spectators to link
the linguistic text with an existing performance
genre. It is this typological confusion that leads
ultimately to frustration and aggression.
IV
In summary we can conclude that no typological
model can conceal its historicity. Even Pavis's
structural categories, abstract and flexible as
they are, are rooted in and reflect historical
developments of mise en scene in this century.
Lehmann's 'types' are even more narrowly focused
on developments that have arisen since the late
1960s. Lehmann's categories are closer and more
applicable to recent developments in theatre and
performance which transcend the conventional
understanding of mise en scene as the scenic
realization of a dramatic text. The work of an
artist such as Karen Finley defines the limits of
performance typologies. A typological analysis or
categorization of a performer or a performance can
gain little by trying to attach pre-fabricated labels
such as performance art, Fluxus, Dada, Actionism
or whatever they may be. At the same time,
whatever shortcomings such models may have,
typological analysis can fulfil two important func-
tions in the broader field of performance analysis.
First, it serves to make explicit the implicit typo-
logical categories defining our own scholarly
work and of which we are perhaps not always
fully conscious. Second, typologies should ask the
question how the typological texts, mise en scene,
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30 Theatre Research International

linguistic and performance texts are configured 14. Marowitz, p. 171.

in relation to the place of performance and each 15. It is interesting to note in this context how the (film)
other. Typologies, if they are to be of productive actors physically present madness. Patrice Pavis has identified
four models of bodily presentation in Marat/Sade-, see Pavis
use in performance analysis, must be utilized as 1995, p. 221 ff.
flexible instruments with shifting conceptual 16. This reading is backed up by Marowitz: 'Although
boundaries rather than as hard, mutually ex- [Brook] has a firm intellectual grasp of a play's ideas, his
clusive lines of demarcation. If the art of raise en natural instinct for violence and stark effects seduces him into
scene and performance genres are conceptualized irrelevant sensationalism', p. 170. In a recent interview Brook
interpreted his production as an attempt to reveal the in-
as being in a state of typological flux, then teresting contradictions in the play: 'I did Marat/Sade because
typologies, as analytical categories, should be able I sensed that Peter Weiss who considered himself a Com-
to provide an important initial step prior to munist had formulated his own contradiction: He was for both
further-going analysis and interpretation. Sade and Marat. Out of this strong, tragic conflict between
two contradictory forces arose very good theatre. Weiss
thought he was for Marat, against Sade; but his play was dif-
ferent. That's the way I directed it.' C. Bernd Sucher, 'Das
Notes starkste und reichste Instrument ist der Mensch', Suddeutsche
1. Patrice Pavis, 'From Page to Stage: A Difficult Birth', Zeitung, 12-13 June 1993, p. 13.
Theatre at the Crossroads of Culture (London: Routledge, 17. Quoted in an interview with Richard Schechner, 'Karen
1992) p. 36. Finley: A Constant State of Becoming', The Drama Review
2. He is referring here to Mukarovsky's term for the total 32:1 (T117) (1988), p. 155.
context of social, political ideological factors informing an 18. Catherine Schuler, 'Spectator Response and Comprehen-
aesthetic text. See Pavis, 1992, p. 27. sion: The Problem of Karen Finley's Constant State of Desire',
3. For Pavis's notion of metatext, see the chapter 'Towards The Drama Review 43:1 (T125) (Spring 1990), p. 131.
a Semiology of the Mise en Scene', Languages of the Stage: 19. The text is published in (Schechner 1988; see note 17),
Essays in the Semiology of Theatre. (New York: Performing which also contains a descriptive analysis of the performance
Arts Journal Publications 1982), p. 149 ff. and an interview with Finley. I also had access to a film
4. Pavis, 1992, p. 37. sequence from The Constant State of Desire contained in the
5. Pavis, 1992, p. 38. film New York II Mondo.
6. Zeitschrift fir Semiotik 11:1 (1989), pp. 29-49. 20. Schuler's study (1990) on spectator response is primarily
7. Lehmann, p. 35. performance-based as it is an analysis of a survey of spectators
8. Lehmann's example is Jiirgen Flimm's production of who had attended a specific performance. Yet Schuler also
Heinrich von Kleist's Kathchen von Heilbronn, Cologne 1979. makes frequent reference to the published text in her own
9. Lehmann, p. 37. reading of the piece. See also the extensive essay by Maria T.
10. Lehmann, p. 40. Pramaggiore, 'Resisting/Performing/Femininity: Words, Flesh,
11. As Brook himself points out, economic considerations and Feminism in Karen Finley's The Constant State of Desire',
forced him to abandon the idea of a freshly conceived film. Theatre Journal 44 (1992), pp. 269-90. Although including
Instead he transplanted his theatre production to a film studio references to a specific performance, Pramaggiore's study is
where it was recorded with several cameras. See Peter Brook, almost entirely a text-based, psychoanalytic reading.
The Shifting Point: Forty Years of Theatrical Exploration (Lon- 21. See Schechner, 1988, p. 155.
don: Methuen, 1987), p. 189. For a detailed discussion of the
22. On spectator response, see Schuler, 1990; on her
two versions and the analytical problems the transposition
poses, see Patrice Pavis, 'From Theatre to Film: Selecting a problems with venues, see Schechner, 1988.
Methodology for Analysis. On Marat/Sade by P. Weiss and 23. Pramaggiore, 1992, p. 274.
P. Brook', Understanding Theatre, ed. J. Martin and W. Sauter 24. Schechner, 1988, p. 157.
(Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1995), pp. 212-30. 25. Pramaggiore, 1992, p. 282.
12. Brook, p. 190. 26. Pramaggiore, 1992, p. 282.
13. 'Notes on the Theatre of Cruelty', Tulane Drama 27. Schuler, 1990, p. 137.
Review 11:2 (T34) (Winter 1966), p. 171. 28. Schuler, 1990, pp. 137-8.

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