Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics

Performance and Perception

Author(s): Frank Coppieters
Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 2, No. 3, Drama, Theater, Performance: A Semiotic Perspective
(Spring, 1981), pp. 35-48
Published by: Duke University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772463
Accessed: 23-05-2016 13:00 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted
digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about
JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Duke University Press, Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics are collaborating with
JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Poetics Today

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION

FRANK COPPIETERS
Theater, Antwerp (UIA)

0. INTRODUCTION

Since 1975 I have directed a research program in order to investigate the nature
of the interaction that takes place in and around (theatrical) performances.
Both for obtaining and analyzing empirical data I rely heavily on the ethogenic
method as it has been developed by Rom Harr6 and his associates in Oxford.
Three large-scale projects have been set up so far in Belgium:
(i) an analysis of audience reactions to two performances by the London
"fringe" theatre group The People Show (cf. Coppieters, 1977);
(ii) an analysis of audience reactions to five performances of the English
"performance" ("behavioral"/"body art") group Reindeer Werk (cf. Goossens,
1978; Wuyts, 1978; and Pattoor, 1980);
(iii) an analysis of both the intentions of the makers and the reception by the
public of a series of performances of a "well-made play" by a Flemish author
(Hugo Claus) in a municipal theater (cf. Michielsen, 1978).
My present project centers around performances in Amsterdam and New York
by The Performance Group (1978-79): the trilogy Three Places in Rhode
Island composed by Spalding Gray and Elizabeth LeCompte and Cops written
by Terris Curtis Fox. In 1979-80 two new projects are scheduled.

1. THE ETHNOGENIC APPROACH (cf. Harr6 and Secord, 1972; Harr6, 1974,
1976, 1977; Marsh, Rosser and Harre, 1978; Brenner, Marsh and Brenner,
1978)
1.1 The discontent of ethnomethodologists, phenomenologists, Marxists and
many others with traditional research methods in use in sociology, social
psychology and psychology mainly boil down to the feeling that the study of
people and their everyday social world requires methods which are different,
and especially more refined, than those narrowly or blindly borrowed from the
scientific study of things. It is obvious, for instance, that many early and still
prevalent attempts at legitimizing the social sciences as sciences led to an
almost exclusive reliance on mass methods and statistical analysis in the hope
? Poetics Today, Vol. 2:3 (1981), 35-48.

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 36 FRANK COPPIETERS

that these would lead to nomothetic results. But, it can be argued, a social
collective is not merely a statistical aggregate of individuals. Rather, it is a
supra-individual, having a distinctive range of properties. How are these to be
got at? For general principles to emerge it is necessary to carry out detailed
particularistic studies. The example of chemistry is suggestive. Chemical laws
have emerged only after intensive study of hundreds of thousands of individual
compounds to determine their composition, structure and mode of preparation.
That is, as a result of both quantitative and qualitative work. Relatively little
qualitative work has been done in the social sciences. Consequently the design
to be favored here should be the intensive (or qualitative) over the extensive
(or quantitative), that is, detailed studies of individual people selected as
typical members of social collectives, and of particular occasions identified as
typical examples of kinds of social events are to be preferred to studies of large
numbers of individuals and of social occasions based upon external manipula-
tions of only one or two variables. It is a difficult hermeneutic problem to
decide what is "typical." Another hermeneutic point is that the emphasis on
the intensive design implies an interest in how poeple understand the social
worlds they are creating. This also leads to a change in the role given to
indivduals under study and a quite new attitude to their contribution to the
study.
1.2. It is possible to make a distinction between speech which accomplishes
action (identified first by Austin, 1965, in his category of performative utter-
ances) and speech which accompanies action and has the general role of
making action and the speech which accomplishes action, intelligible and
warrantable; such speech is accounting. When I take it that going to the
theater, witnessing a theatrical event and afterwards discussing and remembering
it is nested in one's social life, I can also see how a person's social life involves
two kinds of performances. There are the actions he or she contributes to the
total social process, and there are the accounts in which action is interpreted,
criticized and justified. The fundamental ethogenic hypothesis that links acting
and accounting is the idea that an individual's ability to do either depends upon
his stock of social knowledge. And since it is the very same social knowledge
and skill which is involved in the genesis of action and of accounts, we should
record and analyze each separately so as to have two mutually supporting and
reciprocally checking ways of discovering the underlying system of social know-
ledge and belief. A corollary of this is the idea that the best, though not
necessarily the ultimate authorities as to what the action "actually" is, are the
participants themselves.
In dealing with accounts it is the task of the investigator to reveal how
situations, events and actions are rendered meaningful within the terms of
reference of the person giving the account. In doing this, however, one is not
trying to see how what is said fits with what has been the objective fact of the
situation one describes. Rather, objective data (such as the videotape of an
event) allow for a contrast to be made when the terms of reference being used
are examined. In listening to accounts one should not be trying to find the

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION 37

"truth," as an event may have different or even any number of "truths."

Events are capable of being construed in a number of ways depending upon the
viewpoint from which interpretations are made.
1.3. Ethogenic analysis involves attribution of meaning to the elements of
action-sequences, but the meaning of elementary action depends upon the
social meaning of the whole sequence by which a social act is achieved in an
episode. For a sign-system to be possible, actions must be experienced as
semantically distinct. Saussure makes the useful distinction between signification
and valeur ("value"). Linguistic units have a value within the system, a
meaning which is the result of the oppositions which define them; but when
these units are used in an utterance, they have a signification (cf. Culler,
1976:26). Value is defined by the intersection of the action-sequences into
which a sign can fit, with the set of alternative signs it excludes. For example,
understanding the social meaning of a smile involves not only differentiating
one smile from another phenomenologically, but knowing the various action-
sequences into which a smile of a given type can fit with propriety, and
recognizing those in which it would be socially bizarre.
Common sense or folk understanding of social life cannot be eliminated from
the social psychological analysis, not only for empirical reasons (e.g., its
essential role in picking out the units of the sequences), but for deeper,
philosophical reasons. Since a social act is constituted by its place in a humanly
constructed social reality, it is what the folk take it to be. Individuals, of
course, may be deviant in both the production and understanding of the acts
their actions accomplish, but the folk cannot be.

2. THE PEOPLE SHOW PROJECT

2.0. To give an idea of the working method I will present in this paper some of
the main outlines of the People Show project and occasionally refer to the
other projects.
2.1. The Drama Review corpus
Prior to the project a corpus was sampled of articles from The Drama Review,
the main journal presenting and documentng contemporary trends in the
theater. All the articles in four recent, consecutive issues, from Vol. 18 No.4
(December, 1974) to Vol. 19 No.3 (September, 1975) describing one single
event amounted to a sample of 29 articles. Among other things, enough
information was found in these to enable me to make an analysis of the social
event surrounding the actual performing of the show. The event was divided
into episodes, e.g., "gathering," "dispersing," and further subdivided into
"haptodes," the fine structures of the set of interpenetrating "episodes,"
within which the playing of the piece before the audience is contained.
The "gathering episode" consisted, for example, of:
(i) assembling ("Spectators began lining the Green at about 3 a.m.")
(ii) waiting space ("The audience for the Iowa Theater Lab's 1974 perfor-
mance, Dancer Without Arms, gathers in the second-floor lounge.")
(iii) division in limited groups ("The director, Ric Zank, takes three or four

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 38 FRANK COPPIETERS

spectators at a time to the third floor, where they are led through a black
draped corridor lit by small blue floor bulbs to the acting area.")
(iv) transference to play area ("They move through the audience and lead
them to the first performance area in the hall, which is divided by a black
curtain.")
(v) "environmental appetizer" ("In a dark hallway, their feet encounter a
bed of fine, pure sand.")
(vi) obtaining a place in an environment ("The audience was free to wander
through the open areas, stand in front of the booth of platform to watch
specific events, or perch themselves on iron scaffolds that were placed in
strategic positions throughout the grand ballroom at the Union.")
(vii) witnessing ongoing activities ("The performers warmed up in full view
of the audience.")

From the information pertaining to the "dispersing episode" it may be noted

that the end may be unclear so that the public does not immediately burst out
in applause or there may be "false starts" in the public's reactions. Another
characteristic feature is the slowness with which the public detaches itself from
the spectacle.
Quite generally, the analysis of the Drama Review corpus showed that going
to a "new" spectacle is more risky than going to a traditional one. The traditional
theater frame is in itself safely framed in a programmed life. It is a cultural
and/or entertainment packet or commodity the contours of which are relatively
clear and predictable. In contrast, the new theater tends to be more like a real-
life event with more elements of unexpectedness about it.
2.2. People Show: data
Some of the above findings and some others not reported here led to a second
and more embracing phase in my investigations. In May 1976 the People Show,
whose work is representative of much that is going on in the contemporary
theater, was invited to give two performances (one in the evening and one in
the afternoon of the following day - which would entail different lighting
conditions) of the show with which they had just finished touring Holland, at
the university campus of Antwerp in Belgium. Publicity was made via the usual
channels so that a "normal" theater audience (mainly students, though) of
about 145 people came to see the shows. Two teachers were asked to come
with their pupils, one class of final year secondary school girls and a similar
boys' class from another school. The two performances were videotaped by
hidden cameras and spectators were invited to come and have a chat with me or
one of my two colleagues. None of the spectators had known beforehand that
they would be asked for an interview. Within ten days following the perfor-
mances we had interviews with 80 people who were all confronted with the
same video extracts of the performance they had witnessed.
I made a non-sequential (i.e., not chronological) 15-minute montage of
seven fragments of unequal length. The reason for showing fragments and
reshuffling the chronology of the order in which these fragments were shown to
the subjects was to prevent their viewing of the video documentation becoming

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION 39

too much of a new experience - an experience no doubt related to the theater

experience, but one difficult if not impossible for me to disentangle afterwards.
Seeing the entire show again on videotape or seeing the fragments in the
original sequence might, to give an obvious example, have resulted in respon-
dents constructing a tighter narrative structure than they would without seeing
the video. The function of the video fragments in the People Show interview
was in the first place to serve as (i) a memory aid, (ii) to ground the memorial
experience in the theatrical experience (see 2.3.4. for an explanation of these
terms), and (iii) to facilitate the interviewer-interviewee interaction. FRAG-
MENT 1 and its questions ((a) You have probably recognized this fragment?
(b) Can you situate it? (c) Do you know other things which this man did before
this fragment? (d) And after this fragment?) helped the respondent to recall or
"get back into" the performance. Of course, one should be fully aware that
any question or video fragment reshapes to some extent the original experience
and that an interview afterwards belongs to the "dispersing episode" just as
talks with fellow members of the public and even non-spectators, or the
reading or writing of reviews do. There are two basic transformational steps:
from theatrical into memorial experience and from memorial experience into
interview accounting.
Interviews lasted for about one hour or longer and were taped. Interviewers
were instructed in the nondirective probing technique (cf., e.g., Kahn and
Cannell, 1957). A probe, as the name implies, is a stimulus and guidance to
further communication on the part of the respondent. The use of brief assenting
comments ("I see," "um-hm," head nodding or other postural indications of
interest and acceptance), well-timed "pregnant" pauses giving the respondent
time to think and consider how to respond further (to be differentiated from
"embarrassed silences"), or simple encouraging requests for more information
stimulate communication without introducing bias and without damaging the
interviewer-respondent relationship. Interviewers did react to what was said
but were careful not to offer the respondents any conceptual categories which
would influence the phrasing of their reactions and opinions. Most questions
were simply asked in order to seek further clarification or detail. All questions
were open, which is most appropriate when one wants to learn something
about the respondent's frame of reference or the process by which one has
arrived at a particular point of view. Questions were asked earlier than originally
planned when it suited more naturally the flow of the interaction and thus
made more sense to the respondent. In this we followed Kahn and Cannell's
(1957:161) excellent advice that "the sequence of ideas in the questionnaire
should follow the logic of the respondent." So it was possible to have a real talk
packed with meaning instead of stimulus-response utterances in vacuo. At
times, questions were repeated later on and then used as a kind of internal
check. On closer inspection of the data it is remarkable that internal inconsisten-
cies are absent from our respondents' texts. After one or two questions respon-
dents often assumed that we were interested in certain phenomena (which, of
course, they could not know) and took the initiative to talk about them. Many also
spontaneously started commenting when looking at the video fragments themselves.

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 40 FRANK COPPIETERS

The transcripts (of both interviewer and interviewee utterances) amount to

approximately 1,000 pages. In addition the two school classes were asked to
write down their impressions in school and one class was interviewed systemati-
cally by me. The reasons for asking pupils were (i) to introduce some group
differentiation (university students/school-pupils), (ii) to be able to look at the
differences and similarities obtained by written and oral data, and (iii) to have
a complete investigation of one subgroup by one and the same interviewer.
Finally, newspaper reviews that appeared in the various places where the
People Show presented their work were assembled as well.
2.3. People Show: analysis
It is of course not possible to present here a full-fledged report of the wealth of
interesting information yielded by the talks. Instead I will treat a few points
somewhat more deeply.
2.3.1. Episode structure. The structure of the social episode as formulated on
the basis of the analysis of the Drama Review corpus is clearly replicated in the
accounts of "ordinary" playgoers. Many make "categorial" remarks; i.e.,
considerations about the episode structure readily lead to statements about
different categories of theater experiences each with a social topography of its
own.

Examples:
(assembling)
[...] and to walk to the Fort is pleasant [...] and then you had completely
different surroundings to go to see theater I.. .]I what it is about is not announced,
what it precisely is - that is not on the poster I[.. . so now you get a specific public
that came there to see, and somehow that corresponds with its not being ordinary
theater, that it is something different, and it is also different surroundings [. . .] and
I also don't think that the average man, you see, they don't go to see the K.N.S.
(=local established playhouse), but they won't go either to that play I think, I
mean, that is not something ordinary, to come and see in that shed, that's more for
people who know something of the UIA (=university) and who already have been
there or something, or from hearsay.

(ohtaiining a place in an environment)

R.: It was something different.
I.: In comparison with what?
R.: When you go to look at other theater.
I.: And where is the difference?
R.: The coming in, for example, that is something completely different but when
you enter the K.N.S. you have to crawl in a booth and actually you sit a very long
way from the stage, but here you were actually sitting on the stage itself.

2.3.2. Embarrassment. The accounts contain a great number of references to

feelings of embarrassment even though the questionnaire did not contain any
specific question to elicit comment on it. And people are remarkable precise in
their memory about it. Quite a number of respondents refer to physical
symptoms to indicate how "anxious," "uneasy," "embarrassed," etc. they felt:
the heart beating faster, the perception of other people's breathing, but especially

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION 41

one's "sitting behavior." Erving Goffman (1972:97-112) lists some of the

objective signs of emotional disturbance by which an individual may recognize
extreme embarrassment in others and even in himself and says that these
gestures "provide the individual with a screen behind which he tries to bring his
feelings back into tempo and himself back into play" (p. 102).
Close inspection of the material provided by the different projects shows that
quite a number of factors seem to be operating in inducing embarrassment in
the audience but almost always the breaking of some kind of frame (in the
sense of Goffman, 1974) is involved. If we envisage a continuum ranging from
non-environmental (performances staged in Georgian and Victorian picture-
frame theater where the proscenium arch separates the auditorium from the
stage) toward environmental performances (where the public and/or the space
occupied by it are felt to be a constituent part of the event and where there are
continuously shifting borderlines between the territories of the performers and
the public) it can be maintained that the more environmental a performance is,
the more moments of uneasiness or embarrassment it tends to foster.
Let us look a bit closer now at some of the frame breaks:
(i) Gaze. Traditionally theater is defined as a place with some inherently
voyeuristic aspects for actors and public alike; cf., e.g., Hayman, 1973:15-17:

The actor can enjoy the fact of being observed by other people but without letting
their gaze penetrate to what he thinks of as the weak spots in his private identity
[. ... There is also, probably, an element of voyeurism, as Edmund Bergler has
suggested: the actor is narcissistically peeping at himself through the audience's
approving eyes [. .. The actor is choosing to realise himself by making himself into
an object of other people's observation [. . ..
Obviously, when the territories of performers and public are not explicitly
separated a rather fundamental theatrical rule is broken. This is what happened
in some of the performances studied. Some people feel their "personal space"
(in the proxemic sense) violated. Interestingly, in the second People Show
performance the public's area was as well lit (by daylight) as the performer's
area and all the specific gaze quotes come from 2nd performance respondents:
I.: What did you think of this?
R.: Well, it was rather painful for the spectators, it was very quiet, there was no
music and they looked at us and we looked at them, and it lasted extremely
long, I think that it simply lasted thirty seconds or so in reality but it lasted very
long and one didn't know where one should look and they watched you and
you didn't know if you had to look at them or if you had to look at each other
and you didn't feel at home, that I do know, and it lasted long, that I do know.

The mere mentioning by so many people of gaze phenomena is already remark-

able because, as Argyle (1975:229) has pointed out, although gaze is a familiar
phenomenon when attention is drawn to it, people are normally unaware or little
aware of their own gaze-patterns or those of others. Argyle (1976) and Argyle
and Cook (1976) also stress that the amount and type of gaze vary greatly with
various aspects of situations: there is more gaze if people are further apart, if

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
42 FRANK COPPIETERS

there are no relevant task objects, no interesting background, etc. All of this is
very well illustrated in our data.
(ii) To be on. Grotowski (1968:20) has said that "it is particularly significant
that once a spectator is placed in an illuminated zone, or in other words
becomes visible, he too begins to play a part in the performance." This is what
seems to have happened with quite a few of our spectators, especially when
they were sitting in a circle (as in the Reindeer Werk performances): there is an
interesting switch of attention from audience to performance and back in the
course of which some of the audience feel themselves to be under scrutiny as
performers. Many audience members check their reactions against fellow
members of the audience and "opinion leaders" play a special part in this.
Example:
R.: [. . .] I was, for that matter, looking at you as well, you were sitting watching
so intently, this may have been because of your intended analysis, but X (=a
theater professor) as well, I don't know, I probably did spend a fifth or sixth
of my time keeping an eye on the public [.. .]

(iii) Flooding out. When people expect to take up a position in a well framed
realm and find that no particular frame is immediately applicable or the frame
one thought was applicable no longer seems to be, or when one finds that one
can no longer bind oneself within the frame that does apparently apply, one
can lose command over the formulation of viable response. "Flooding out" is
the most common effort to suppress laughter, sometimes called "breaking (or
cracking) up" (cf. Goffman, 1974:450-59, 378f.).
Example 1:
R.: [. . .] and in the beginning I always felt like laughing
I.: Why?
R.: Well, that I don't know, I had to laugh, eventually that passed away [.. .]

Example 2:
R.: [...] sometimes I had to laugh with it, not because I found it a stupid
performance, but simply because I ...
I.: because you had to?
R.: . . . I cannot really explain it [. . .
[iv] Participation. In an essay on "Embarrassment and Social Organization"
Goffman (1972:97-112) discusses the matter of "role segregation" in his analysis
of the causes of embarrassment.

Each individual has more than one role, but he is saved from role dilemma by
"audience segregation," for, ordinarily, those before whom he plays out one of his
roles will not be the individuals before whom he plays out another, allowing him to
be a different person in each role without discrediting either (108).

The embarrassment reported by our respondents may indeed find a (partial)

explanation in this role dilemma created by participation possibilities (role of
public vs. performer). Added to this there is the phenomenon of stage fright

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION 43

and the problem of identity as it has been analyzed, in a Goffmanesque

framework, by Lyman and Scott (1970). These authors also indicate how
problems of stage fright emerge during "first time" situations and discuss as
instructive examples: losing one's virginity, death, a child's attendance at his
first horror film, viewing pornographic films for the first time (1970:180f.). It
fully applies to some of our performances too: the People Show had for its
productions in Antwerp many more "novices" among its public than another
"new" theater production is likely to attract (remember that there were also
two invited schoolclasses) and one of the performances of Reindeer Werk was
in an art school unfamiliar with this kind of artistic behavior. In any case
"embarrassment" seems to be the main reason why, given the fact that in a
great many accounts some form of participation is either expected, seen as
potential, or desired, so little overt participation behavior actually occurred.
The abundance of embarrassment references may lead to a number of
questions: is it typical for this kind of theater, for this kind of public (mental
attitude? Flemish?, etc.), for this kind of period (the "seventies"?), and so on.
Ideas for such a research program can be found in Coppieters (1976) which
deals with tragic processes in theater performances. As it stands some very
tentative hypotheses can be advanced. Quite a number of respondents attach a
positive evaluation to the embarrassment elements they refer to. Three factors
accounting for this can be distinguished:
(i) Embarrassment is a very obvious "arousal" element which is a central
notion in psychological theories on aesthetics (cf. Berlyne, 1971).
(ii) Embarrassment is an element which is part of the performance (rather
than the drama) and some people especially come to the new theater because
they are performance-minded.
(iii) From many other responses it appears that evaluative judgments are
linked to the duration of an effect and apparently people remember moments
of embarrassment very well. Also, feelings of embarrassment induce the public
to a longer subjective time experience (cf. Susanne Langer; this is Bergson's
"real time" or "duration").
2.3.3. Understanding processes. Many of the accounts contain nice illustrations
of some of the principles of the "Unified Theory of the Literary Text" as
proposed by Benjamin Hrushovski (1976a, b) and in Ben-Porat and Hrushovski
(1974). In that theory it is, among other things, maintained that understanding
proceeds usually through guesses and approximations; it is not a final act and
does not usually exhaust all possible meanings of a text. Understanding is
based on a process of linking elements in the text, whether they are connected
syntactically or not, and combining, readjusting and specifying their semantic
potentials into complex meanings or, usually, chains of meanings. The estab-
lishment of meaning, or understanding, results from a tri-stratal construct. The
three levels are: the level of "sense," a Field of Reference (FR), and the
Regulating Principles (RP), representing the attitude of the speaker or author.
Saying something and understanding it involves "zeroing in" on an FR and on
a specific frame of reference (fr) within this field. A text is not presented in the

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 44 FRANK COPPIETERS

form of one continuous FR. A whole series of fr's may be distinguished, which
are pieces of the text continuous in some respect, in space, in time, or in ideas.
There is a whole range of "shifters" which transfer the reader's attention from
one small fr to another, from one space or time to another. Two contiguous fr's
may be constructed by the reader as belonging to one large FR, e.g., separate
episodes in one person's life, two places in a space continuity, etc. In some
cases such a continuity cannot be established by the reader in the immediate
context and creates two separate sets of FR's, to be linked at a later stage or to
be linked by some larger principle.
In the People Show accounts we find quite a few people venting their feelings
of frustration because they have not seen any way of establishing what they feel
to be an adequate meaning. Due to the nature of discursive talk most comments
are too vague to enable one to decide which level or combination of the levels
of the tri-stratal construct is especially responsible for this, but we can see the
process at work.
Another recurrent trace of a perceptual strategy is that a respondent has
temporarily constructed a pattern, "zeroed in" on a FR or fr but then has to
reject it, sometimes without being able to replace it by something which is felt
to be adequate. In the following quote, for example, the respondent has
difficulties in deciding which kind of theater (categorization, FR) he is con-
fronted with, one of the factors being the lack of information provided during
the "gathering episode," and hence does not know which perceptual strategies
to try out; some of his attempts - felt to be inadequate - are reported:
Well, you don't know with what kind of theater you are confronted. This scene -
in fact it is a bit confusing, I mean you don't know who they are, I mean I had no
idea - I mean they are called "People Show," that is an association which,
certainly in America - they talk of "the people's theater, people's art," and so on,
that usually has a direct socio-political meaning, so when you enter and you expect
something in that direction, some sort of social protest theater or something, and
then you see as first scene a torture scene, which you immediately associate with
what you already expected, with the whole socio-political situation at this moment,
I mean that begins then in a very classical way, like the Living Theater, they also
have such a scene, about Chile and Brazil, and then suddenly that girl comes on,
and she plays so suddenly those tricks around that figure, and then maybe you first
still think that it is the intention to create contrasts, and then the egg is found and
that is unclear - somehow it is born from that man, the tortured, what that means
remains unclear, then the egg is placed at the center by that man and somehow you
then have the impression of, well, that egg, that becomes important, because you
know where it comes from; it has something to do with the first scene; when those
other scenes occur it is no longer so clear what it means [. . .]

The following quote should give the reader an idea of what kind of material has
been obtained. It deals with roughly the same aspects as the previous one. The
respondent uses some of the phenomena treated above as explanatory for the
public's reactions; the FR he has had to reject was "guerilla theater."
[. .. J It was a very confused situation since the very beginning of the show had
raised the surmise that it would be about a kind of guerilla theater. That's why

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION 45

during the entire show it was as if people weren't very sure where they were with it
and then they didn't react strongly which is afterwards, curiously enough, exper-
ienced as surprisingly by some of the players. The day afterwards I met that boxer
here and he said that he did find it a bit odd that the public remained so passive.
But, if they start with putting next to each other all sorts of fragments without any
transition, then it is also difficult to elicit specific reactions from the public. [. . .1
The public's expectation patterns are gradually frustrated. Right after the first
sketch. Continuously different modes are evoked and another symbolism was
involved. So there was no opportunity for the public to let itself be carried away in
some sort of heavenly intoxication or something; all the time they were forced to
engage in a confrontation between what was happening now on the scene and what
could be the reality, and the whole time they had to look for other points of contact.

2.3.4. Memorial experience. Beckerman (1970) has made the distinction be-
tween theatrical and memorial experience.

The memorial experience is not distinct from the theatrical but merely a continua-
tion beyond direct contact with the presentation. The form of action induces the
theatrical experience directly but has an indirect effect upon the memorial experience
[. . .J Once removed from his fellow spectators, he gains a new perspective of the
work. Responses elicited in performance may seem alien in retrospect. The process
of rumination alters the work [. . I Memory plays tricks. We think we saw actions
which were merely described or remembered by the characters, and we fill in the
details of the skech of life shown to us (Beckerman, 1970:157).

Data about the experience as lived were only represented ambiguously and
dubiously by the video-record, my memory, etc. All the material from the
accounts points to the "residue" of the performance in the "memorial
experience" but gives reliable insight, in some instances, into the public's
"theatrical" experience as well.
Many reactions that were liable to yield some insight into the public's
memorial experience were obtained as follows. At one moment in the interview
the respondents were shown a video fragment without the sound (question: Do
you still remember what happened then?) and then they saw the fragment with
the sound. The sound used was the James Brown song "It's a Man's World,"
one of the well-known hits of the sixties, which was - with a slight sound
effect in the beginning added to it - part of the tape material used in the
People Show's production. It was a very distinctive sound element, and the
action tied to it was quite specific.

Careful analysis of the data allowed one to draw the following conclusions:

(i) Memorial experience in general is of a very fragmentary and confused

nature and varies widely in quality (some respondents forget a lot after one
day, others remember minute details after ten days).
(ii) It tends to eliminate those elements to which no meaning has been
attached or at least for which no meaning can afterwards be remembered or
constructed.

(iii) Moments which have really imprinted themselves in one's memorial

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 46 FRANK COPPIETERS

experience can attach themselves to another part of one's theatrical experience.

(iv) If those moments or parts have some formal resemblances respondents
may display systematic confusions.
(v) Auditive performance elements may be transferred to visual aspects
(synaesthesia).
(vi) Expectation patterns and interpretations (or hypotheses) built up in the
course of one's theatrical experience, even though they have to be rejected
afterwards, can still be part of one's memorial experience in its unrejected form
(for a number of reasons some people had expected two of the performers to
dance with each other; though this did not happen they refer to that fragment as
if it did).

I would like to give one extensive example only, an illustration of (i) and (ii)
with some reactions to the "James Brown" question. Two respondents state
that they cannot possibly remember that the sound fragment they were con-
fronted with had been part of the show. One respondent cannot even remember
it when she is confronted with the visual material as well. A few respondents,
on the other hand, have no trouble at all with this question and start giving
comments without awaiting the interviewer's questions. The reason why their
memorial experience is so intact in this respect also appears from their com-
ments. They have been able to establish a meaningful link betwen the music,
the action and the element of sex-appeal (quote 1) or even to integrate the
fragment into the "frame of reference" the respondent had built up (quote 2).

Fragment 6a (no visual material)

R.: That's an easy scene, isn't it, I mean that is when she enters with her fur on,
makes that whole promenade so very sexily, that isn't so hard to forget, I mean
(laughs).
I.: points out that many however cannot call this to mind anymore.
R.: Also the song "It's a Man's World" fits, I mean rather provocatively dressed I
should say, well, I didn't find that hard (laughs).

Fragment 6a
R.: Personally I really found that one of the easiest and also one of the best
moments, in fact. So that is the moment, immediately before the boxing
match, that the woman enters, with her fur, and that in one corner that boxer is
already warming up, I think, and that is, I mean, being mimed by the man with
the vacuum-cleaner with a microphone, you see, just as if, and that contrast:
"It's a Man's World," I mean after him that boxer, and then that woman
entering, that is, I mean to clearly show the difference between the man, who is
extremely virile, and who is extremely aggressive, and then that woman who is
nothing else but in fact a little puppet, yes, who likes to show off and things like
that, so I found that an easy moment, but also a positive moment, maybe, I
don't know.

I.: Was it fascinating, especially because of that contrast, or ...

R.: Yes, and also because one could immediately somehow establish the link, you
see, I mean immediately connect it with the rest of the . .. of the everyday ...

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PERFORMANCE AND PERCEPTION 47

Some other conclusions on aspects of perception in general could be drawn as

well:
(i) One's attitude toward/perception of/relationship with the rest of the
public is an important factor in one's theatrical experience.
(ii) Perceptual processes in the theater are, among other things, a form of
social interaction.
(iii) Inanimate objects can become personified and/or receive such strongly
symbolic loadings that an anxiety about their fate becomes a crux in people's
emotional experience.
(iv) "Environmental" theater goes against people experiencing homo-
geneous group reactions.

3. GENERAL PERSPECTIVES
From the previous section it will have become obvious that the "results" of the
research so far are fragmentary and of a rather rudimentary nature. Much
remains to be done and the empirical data do not yet conform to all the
methodological considerations as formulated in the theory of ethogenics. Dia-
chronic research, for instance, has not yet been carried out. Much longer and
repeated talk periods should be organized, etc. What we need, clearly, are
different series of accounts separated from each other in time and space. A
performance analyst should have a good survey of the theatrical scene so as to
be able to pick out those performances as study objects which one can argue to
be heuristically promising. Some theater groups have the "same" production
on their repertoire for several years, some productions travel all over the
world, and may be performed in "environmental" or "traditional" theater
circumstances. Performances are always different from each other on some
points and therefore it is in principle very difficult to organize empirical
research which could validly be said to test isolated propositions. Instead,
whole pieces or stretches of reality should be tapped and taped, analyzed and
compared to each other. Is it too far-fetched to see the role of this researcher as
somewhat similar to the position of the atomic physicist? He too can no longer
play the role of a detached observer, but is forced to be a participant as he
becomes involved in the world he observes to the extent that he influences the
properties of the observed objects (cf. Capra, 1976; esp. 122f.).
It would be a good thing for performance theory if its results could find some
feedback in the practice of the performance arts. Actors and directors should
hear the voice of the many people who are not writing reviews or staying in the
bar afterwards. Performance analysts, on the other hand, should be interested
in tapping the experience of people who, without being aware of the literature
or the models, are day by day (experimental) social psychologists. The different
stages of an actor working on a role, or of a director on a production, are full
of explicit and implicit hypotheses about how to project social behavior on
stage and what this behavior is like in real life. Performance analysts - preferably
trained in semiotics - should sit in on these sessions, and so should social
psychologists and anthropologists. These are some of the ideas I am working at
in the research projects I am presently engaged in.

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 48 FRANK COPPIETERS

ARGYLE, MICHAEL, 1975. Bodily Communication (London: Methuen).

1976 "Non-Verbal Symbolic Actions: Gaze," in: Life Sentences, R. Harr6, ed., (London:
Wiley).
ARGYLE, MICHAEL and COOK, MARK, 1976. Gaze and Mutual Gaze (Cambridge UP).
AUSTIN, J.L., 1965. How to Do Things with Words (New York: Oxford UP).
BECKERMAN, BERNARD, 1970. Dynamics of Drama (New York: Knopf).
BEN-PORAT, ZIVA, and HRUSHOVSKI, BENJAMIN, 1974. "Structuralist Poetics in Israel," in: Papers
on Poetics and Semiotics, No. 1 (Dept. of Poetics and Comparative Literature, Tel Aviv
University).
BERLYNE, D.E., 1971. Aesthetics and Psychobiology (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts).
BRENNER, MICHAEL; MARSH, PETER; and BRENNER, MARILYN, eds., 1978. The Social Contexts of
Method (London: Croom Helm).
CAPRA, FRITJOF, 1975. The Tao of Physics (New York: Bantam).
COPPIETERS, FRANK, 1976. "A Research Programme for Investigating Tragic Processes in Theater
Performances," Communication and Cognition 9, 77-86.
1977 Towards a Performance Theory of Environmental Theatre (Doctoral Thesis, University of
Antwerp).
CULLER, JONATHAN, 1976. Ferdinand de Saussure (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
GOFFMAN, ERVING, 1972 (1967). Interaction Ritual (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
1974 Frame Analysis (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
GOOSSENS, MARC, 1978. Accounts over Reindeer Werk (Licentiate Thesis, University of Antwerp).
GROTOWSKI, JERZY, 1968. Towards a Poor Theatre (New York: Simon & Schuster).
HARRE, ROM, 1974. "Blueprint for a New Science," in: N. Armistead, ed., Reconstructing Social
Psychology (Harmondsworth: Penguin).
1976 Life Sentences (London: Wiley).
1977 Antwerp Lectures (mimeo).
HARRIE, ROM and SECORD, P.F., 1972. The Explanation of Social Behaviour (Oxford: Blackwell).
HAYMAN, RONALD, 1973. The Set-Up (London: Methuen).
HRUSHOVSKI, BENJAMIN, 1976a. "Poetics, Criticism, Science," PTL 1, iii-xxxv.
1976b "Segmentation and Motivation in the Text Continuum of Literary Prose: The First
Episode of War and Peace," in: Papers on Poetics and Semiotics, No. 5 (The Porter
Institute for Poetics and Semiotics, Tel-Aviv University).
KAHN, ROBERT and CANNELL, CHARLES, 1957. The Dynamics of Interviewing (New York: Wiley).
LYMAN, STANFORD and SCOTT, MARVIN. 1970. A Sociology, of the Absurd (Pacific Palisades:
Goodyear).
MARSH, PETER; ROSSER, ELISABETH: and HARRE, ROM, 1978. The Rules of Disorder (London:
(Routledge & Kegan Paul).
MICHIELSEN, SREET, 1978. Licentiate thesis.
PATTOOR, BART, 1980. Licentiate thesis.
WUYTS, AN, 1978. Accounts over Reindeer Werk (Licentiate Thesis).

This content downloaded from 143.89.105.150 on Mon, 23 May 2016 13:00:43 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms