This week we looked at interpreting stages, mainly the stage design and the interaction the actors have within this environment.  It is often described as a void, a space of limitless possibility, “the stage, regardless of its configuration, functions as an optical focal point and creates the impression that we are looking through this lens into a boundless space beyond” (Aronson, 2005, p. 1).  It is a platform for exploration.  For the audience watching said infinite space, we learned about certain stage decisions which contribute to the meaning of the performance we are watching.  These come in the form of proxemics, semiotics and kinesics.

Proxemics regards the distances between those in the auditorium, between actor and actor, actor and audience, even actor to specific items of staging/scenery.  These distances offer clues to relations between two or more parties.

Semiotics regards the interpretation of meaning from the pictures that are conjured up on the stage, what signs we identify, and what it is that these signs signify.

Kinesics originating from kinaesthetic – motion – regards the motion of the performance of the stage, actions such as gesture and facial expression.

All of these contribute to the meaning drama.

It is important to stress that the meaning of the drama is the most important driving factor in creating a performance.  American playwright David Mamet explains that most theatre makers are hindered by their misguided intention of creating realism, an urge to be truthful, but “to be true constrains them to judge their efforts and actions against an inchoate, which is to say an unspecified standard of reality” (1986, p. 130).  Also the question arises what is it we are being true to? The real and the true are not partnered; we can achieve one by neglecting the other.  This misguided view perhaps stems from an inaccurate reading of Stanislavsky’s rule that the artist’s primary objective is to be true to the playwright.  That does not require reality to be re-performed on stage, in fact it is impossible to integrate reality onto the stage as the audience are watching a rehearsed event and the characters are not real themselves.  What Stanislavsky is more likely alluding to by saying that we must be true to the playwright, is that the meaning artists create should be an accurate portrayal of the playwright’s efforts.  “Each facet of every production must be weighed and understood solely on the basis of its interrelationship to the other elements: on its service or lack of service to the meaning” (Mamet, 1986, p. 130).  What theatre should not be, and quite frankly what it will fail to be, is an attempt to re-perform real life.

Works Cited

Aronson, Arnold (2005) Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography, USA: University of Michigan Press.  pp. 1 – 80

Mamet, David (1986) ‘Realism’ in Writing in Restaurants, London: Penguin.  pp. 130-132

This week we looked at the role of the audience in our seminar discussion, in particular their experience of live performance or what is also regarded as liveness.  It is this sense of liveness that separates the theatre environment from television of film.  Liveness is consumed; it is the unique selling point for theatre.

Edinburgh based company, The Audience Business, a company well rehearsed in liveness as a commodity, launched an advertising campaign called You’ll Love It Live (2000).  The campaign consisted of “a press launch, PR stunts and series of posters, including one carrying the slogan ‘Experience the thrill of a live performance.’ Aiming to increase awareness of the live arts among casual and infrequent audiences” (Reason, 2004).  This was an illustration of how live performance is marketed with liveness as is overriding pull factor.

This study highlights the importance of liveness as a factor for creating art.  The example given is that theatre is the best example of this, as it has ‘live actors on stage in front of a live audience’ (Jellicoe, 1967, p, 67).  When you look however at theatre that is recorded and then played to a live audience, such as the National Theatre Live streams to cinema venues around the country, you lose the liveness.  This is because the audience is unable to experience the performance in the same space as the audience.  Theatre doesn’t conventionally perform to camera, it performs to a live audience and the camera cannot pick up every detail expressed on stage that the human eye can.

Therefore some means of exhibiting theatre, what is considered the purest form of live performance, falls under a separate category:  What I will refer to as ‘false liveness’.  This is a term which relates to methods such as NT live stream casts to cinemas, to music artists who use lip-synch technology, rather than their own voice, in what they are selling as a live performance, or in TV sit-coms which have a track they can edit into scenes of applause and laughter, to fabricate a live recording of a performance.

The concept of liveness as a commodity, which may at first sound unappealing because of its capitalist connotations, still is worth consideration.  Theatre is enjoyed because of the live experience; we are able to watch art that has not been synthetically modified.  This debate ties into a previous blog post of mine about the Posthuman, only now our art is also becoming a cyborg of both human input and computer input.

Works Cited

Jellicoe, Ann (1967) Some Unconscious Influences in the Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reason, Matthew (2004) ‘Theatre Audiences and Perceptions of ‘Liveness’ in Performance’, Particip@ions, Vol. 1 (2).