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Theatre Semiotics
Signs of Life
Published by: Indiana University Press
- eBook
- 9780253115171
- Published: February 1990
$20.75
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Theatre semioticians have to date concerned themselves primarily with the semiotics of the literary dramatic text, the semiotics of the physical enactment of this text, or the relationship between the two. Theatre Semiotics offers a broader, differently oriented analysis, balancing consideration of the ways theatrical signs are produced with the ways they are received and creatively interpreted by a public. The theatre experience is here regarded not simply as the physical realization of a written text on a stage but as a complex social event whose semiotics involves not only play and performance but the entire experience of attending theatre.
Each section of the study works from a different but related perspective. The first discusses how audiences develop interpretive strategies from sources both within and outside the production system of the event itself, and some of the implications of this process for producers of theatre and for audience participation. The second section deals with the semiotics of space and its relationship to interpretation of the theatre event. The concern here is not with the performance on stage but with other space involved in the performance event, such as theatre architecture and performance outside traditional theatre spaces. The final section deals more directly with the creative contribution of the audience.
As its title suggests, Theatre Semiotics is primarily semiotic in orientation, but it draws upon related work in reception theory, hermeneutics, and phenomenology in order to provide clearer understanding of the dynamics of the total theatre event.
Introduction
Part One: The Rules of the Game
Semiotics and Nonsemiotics in Performance
Theatre Audiences and the Reading of Performance
The Semiotics of Character Names in the Drama
Part Two: The Playing Field
The Semiotics of Theatre Structures
The Old Vic: A Semiotic Analysis
The Iconic Stage
Part Three: Audience Improvisation
Psychic Polyphony
Local Semiosis and Theatrical Interpretation
Index
Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He is the founding editor of the journal Western European Stages and the author of over two hundred scholarly articles and fourteen books in the areas of theatre history, theatre theory, dramatic literature, and performance studies. His work has been translated into fourteen languages.