Download INTRODUCTION As its title also mentions it, the present paper

INTRODUCTION
As its title also mentions it, the present paper deals with the analysis of theatrical
language. This topic encompasses a synthesis and analysis of theatrical language.
The idea representing the premise is that any valid theatrical performance is in
fact a form of communication, consequently it has to respect and follow a language. Even
the most extreme theatrical experiments, to the extent to which they wish to accomplish
the main function of theatre –which is communication – have to set up a language of their
own. Language is indispensable. Postmodernism, although it endeavored to revolutionize
theatrical language, did nothing else than re-invented it. In the process of the making of
performances, the author only finds new forms for the vocabulary units of the language,
whereas the archetypal essence remains the same.
The purpose of this paper is to offer an all-inclusive image of the elements of
language and the way they evolve during modernism and postmodernism. The two
functions that they have in accomplishing the theatrical communication will be
emphasized in the treatment of the topic. The first function is the denotative one, which
organizes these elements along a narrative structure, which is unfolding in time in the
course of the performance. Each dramatist is in fact a storyteller too. From this
perspective, elements of language can be seen horizontally, in their temporal evolution,
and also vertically, in their simultaneous presence, very similar to a musical creation.
These can be structures in harmony or lacking harmony, according to the art director’s
wish. The second function, the connotative one, structures these elements in a discourse
that is parallel to the narrative one and contains the deeper meanings of the performance.
In this case the language elements are grouped in a non-temporal manner and are
revealed by peculiar accents or key-scenes.
Hopefully, this systematic treatment of theatrical performances, which are fluid
and organic in their essence, will lead to a better comprehension of the lines of force that
make a theatrical performance be a living act.
The present thesis consists of a multi-disciplinary analysis, in which a couple of
disciplines are blended aesthetics, hermeneutics and semiotics, with a view to find an
explanatory basis for theatrical language.
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Nowadays in theatre we are witnessing a series of innovations, dealing with
theatrical language in diverse, abstract and new ways, consequently the necessity of
decoding these languages becomes imperative.
The audience has to learn how to make out the messages contained in the acting
space, as well as playwrights need to know how to facilitate artistic communication.
The present paper wishes to offer possible and practical models of semiotic
research concerning theatrical performances and an analysis of the intricate mechanism
of communication, characteristic of artistic works. This is achieved by studying the way
in which those cognitive and affective processes are structured which can lead to the
comprehension, perception and interpretation of the artistic act.
I wished to express and emphasize the contribution of diverse tendencies,
concepts, theories, doctrines and theatrical schools, as well as the way in which these
elements set up a harmony. Consonant with this, theatrical experiments belonging to
Romanian and foreign authors as well will be analyzed, in an attempt to find connections
and to compare different cultural universes.
The present study endeavors to research the modality in which the scenic image is
built up in the context of the artistic manifestations that have appeared in the course of
time.
The methodology of this research included activities of documentation and data
processing into the research process. Phenomena and characteristics specific to dramatic
art were analyzed, taking into account works ranging from antiquity to the 20th century.
The research method was based equally on instruments of analysis belonging to
descriptive semiotics and on elements of phenomenology.
At the working out of the scientific basis and of investigations, several works of
artists and scientists were used. These are considered to be major contributions to
dramatic art, which marked its destiny.
The methodological support of the paper consists of a large bibliography
containing famous works, with reference value, belonging to the above-mentioned fields,
but it also includes recent studies.
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Content of this thesis: it is structured in three chapters, following step- by-step the
analysis mentioned in the title of the paper.
Chapter I The playwright and the complexity of the dramatic work
1.1.
The dramatic text and the problems of its translation
Dramatic art refers to all works written in a dialogic form meant for being acted
out on stage.
Drama as a genre encompasses several species: tragedy, comedy, drama,
vaudeville, melodrama, tragic comedy, etc., beginning from the Greek ancient plays,
through the Renaissance and up to Classicism, in which tragedy and comedy were the
two pure dramatic species.
Playwrights coordinate, enlarge the subject matter and chisel it from the
viewpoint of their own subjectivity. Then they transmit it, via the printing press, to
readers. In this meaning, authors do a constructive work.
The plot of a dramatic work is given by the events taking place in the play and by
the interaction among several characters that are in conjunction or disjunction with each
other, but also by the turmoil and inner, psychological acts of a character. In classical
theatre, plot may contain a prologue (representing the exposition), the intrigue is
powerful and it is often supported by a causally important event. Events follow one after
another in a gradual manner, along an ascending line, which has its terminal point in the
climax (a moment of maximal tension in interpersonal relations), whereas the
denouement follows rapidly or takes the shape of an epilogue. In modern theatre,
elements of plot may be condensed, dispersed, the event is replaced by symbolic
situations, facts become a series of spiritual or affective states of the characters, whereas
the denouement has a tint of ambiguity and it is often open. Modern structuring of drama
has been given more accuracy, including a couple of elements that help to build up a
play. Playwrights can not make their work be valued directly, in an unmediated manner,
by the audience, as for example novel-writers do. Playwrights are compelled to appeal to
an interpreter.
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Playwrights often make an effort to find the most proper expression in which to
clothe their ideas and sometimes have to fight with themselves until they can decide to
declare themselves satisfied with their own texts.
The science of translation has not only become an autonomous discipline, but it
has also determined experts to lay the basis of diverse directions of research within this
discipline.
Many of these refer to general translation of literary texts, which is why
translators of drama texts find themselves in a disadvantaged position as compared to
translators who translate poetry and narrative fiction. There is a lot of specialized
literature on the translation of poetry and prose, whereas works on the translation
strategies applied to drama texts probably make up less than a tenth of the former.
As compared to the translation of a novel or of a poem, the translation of a play
needs more attention to be paid on non-verbal and non-literary aspects. A play is largely
dependent on additional factors such as movement, gestures, positions, mimics, rhythm
of speech, intonation, music and other effects like sound, lights and scenario. A play is
especially dependent on the immediate impact it has on the audience.
1.2.
The director and the actor
Directors are simultaneously technicians, interpreters and creators, making use of
very significant initial data (the text as a basis to be transposed onto the stage) and have
to control the whole machinery of the performance, in order to be able to turn their
specific art to the best account. Having as its starting point the text of the play and
manifesting itself in a creative manner, directorship obtains the status of an autonomous
art.
The director works in a close artistic communion on the one hand with the
playwright and the audience, and with the actors and the machinery of the performance
on the other hand. He accomplishes the fusion between the two essential aspects of
theatrical art (text and staged performance), he presents the synthesis of this double
existence of drama on the stage.
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It is beyond any doubt that the author (the playwright) is a creative factor of
maximum significance in the theatre, but it is equally obvious that he can not be
considered the only one having this position. Respecting the text, making it the solid
basis of the theatrical performance, the director creates a new, personal work of art,
interpreting the play in a creative manner. He has the freedom to interpret it in a creative
way, to understand its text in his own manner.
The author is always the first to act as a director and anticipates a director’s
activity by giving stage directions within the text, drawing the spatial framework in
which the plot will take place, suggesting the space layout and partially distributing the
characters within the space framework.
Benefiting from this inexhaustible trait of valuable plays when staging them, the
director arrives at his own artistic solution, which is impossible to take for any other
solution, found by another stage director. If the starting point for two different directorial
solutions was the same play (having infinite resources), thus the relative and at the same
time absolute dependence of the director on the text has been asserted once more.
Tackling each playwright and each drama work means for the director not only
identifying the general structural modality of the play, but also an occasion to leave his
own personal mark, his own imprint on it.
Being helped by the director, the actor has to find the inner movements and
turmoil of the playwright, and has to transmit this to the audience in an expressive
manner, making the audience re-create the initial thinking and emotions of the
playwright. Thus the actor gets connected with the playwright, the director and the
audience, becoming a factor of key significance in the whole of the performance. The
special importance of actors is stressed by the fact that they accomplish a living
communication with the audience downstage, which is an essential specific feature of
theatre as an art. The actor chooses a viewpoint concerning his/her part with the help of
the director and in a logical agreement with the play and the whole troupe. The actor
carefully observes how this viewpoint is taking shape during the stage-life of the
character that he/she impersonates, thus adding self-control to directorial supervision.
Excepting some utopist theories, for instance the one conceived by Gordon Craig, who
suggested the replacement of the actor by a non-animated being called by him super5
puppet, all great directors in contemporary theatre set the art of the actor in the center of
theatre.
1.3.
The audience
Theatrical performances have at their basis the text created by the playwright. The
text comes to life on stage being mediated by the actor, in concordance with the
directorial conception and before the very eyes of the audience. Through the actors’ art
the characters conceived by the playwright live their life in front of the audience, getting
involved in events and personal conflicts among each other. A relationship of mutual
influence gets established between the actor and the audience. In theatrical companies it
is a well-known fact that actors can “feel” the audience, and the audience can “live” the
part together with the actor.
The success of a performance is largely dependent on the degree in which it
succeeds in eliciting an active attitude from the audience and it can stimulate and enable
them to pass from the situation of an onlooker to the one of a co-participant in the plot.
Any artistic phenomena, including theatrical performances, have as their
addressee the public.
A theatre without an audience can not communicate, therefore it is a dead theatre.
The mutual impact between the actors and the audience is brought about in
different ways: actors can influence the public by way of stage communication strategies
(relationships between characters), whereas the audience can influence the actors in a
direct manner (due to their presence in the room and their participation in the events
unfolding on the stage).
The higher the degree in which actors insulate themselves from the audience and
live the life of the characters to the full, the higher the probability that they will be able to
win the attention of the audience. And vice versa: the greater the extent to which the actor
tries to charm the audience by external means, the less the audience will be attracted to
the actor’s interpretation.
The direct contact between an actor and his audience compels the former to
reiterate the process of acting out the character with which he/she gets identified at each
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and every performance. However, the actor does not reiterate the same character every
time, but instead he/she activates the process of identification with the character, which
means that a new character comes to life at each performance.
1.4.
From the performance to the review
Theatrical criticism has also assumed a permanent hermeneutic function by giving
the audience codes of understanding dramatic art and theatrical performances,
interpreting aesthetic phenomena in the framework of a system of criteria based on a
well-established aesthetic conception.
An essential element of the critics’ authority is a purely moral one. On the basis of
such moral grounds, critics are capable of passing legitimate and orienting judgments
concerning the value of plays.
The theatre critic can follow the manner in which the play has been staged from
the viewpoint of the intentions of the playwright. It is the director that transposed the
meanings of the dramatic text into the acting of the actors (intonation, power of
expression of looks, face and stage movement) and that set all these in harmony with the
stagecraft (décor and costumes). Directorial conceptions can faithfully follow the
playwright’s intentions or they can represent a peculiarly personal version, a paraphrase
of the initial text, this creating a new text having new psychological, political, aesthetic
meanings.
Reviewers target people who have or have not seen a certain performance and aim
to explain to them the elements that are capable of transforming the written text into a
successful or an unsuccessful performance.
Chapter II. Elements of theatrical language
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2.1. Monologue
The monologue is a situation of communication in which there is no exchange of
replies between the sender and the receiver. It is the sender that has the main part. The
monologue is in fact a big sized (or even ample, in case of tirades) reply, uttered by a
speaker (a simple speaker or a character), which does not compulsorily have a defined or
present addressee. As opposed to the dialogue, monologues have some specific features:
the stress is laid on the speaker, little reference is made to the situation of
communication, they have a unique reference framework, meta-linguistic elements are
missing, rhetorical features (exclamations and rhetorical questions) are frequent in them.
The monologue is most often included in dramatic texts where it is defined as a
compositional structure equivalent to an ample, direct speech act, uttered by a
speaker/character, in the presence or absence of another (maybe collective) character.
The interlocutor can be left aside or a single-sided communication contact is established
with him. The parts of the sender and of the receiver can not be changed into univocal
and single-sided ones, or into a monologue…
2.2. Tirade
In drama, the tirade consists of a long, monologue-like series of sentences, in
which a character develops, in a rhetorical and pathetic manner, a certain idea. It is
addressed to other characters, present on the stage at that moment – as opposed to the
monologue, in which the character is talking alone, on his own. The tirade usually
contains memorable verses, moral judgments in the form of aphorisms and maxims.
Tirades written in prose rely on rhetorical figures and on the cadence of sentences as
well.
Having been cultivated by French Classicism, Romantic drama and having been
rejected by realistic and naturalistic drama, tirades request virtuosity from playwright and
actor as well. In Romanian dramatic literature, well-known tirades can be found in
historical plays written by Alexandru Davila and Barbu Stefanescu Delavrancea.
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In a pejorative meaning, the tirade refers to a declamatory, emphatic lyricism,
without much ideatical and emotional depth.
2.3. Emploie
The elements called “emploi” have a very important role in traditional Chinese
theatrical performances, where they offer, due to their fixed nature, a key to the initial
understanding of the part for both actor and the audience.
Despite the fact that they are more vigorously defined here than even in
commedia dell’arte, they don’t limit or annihilate the scale of possibilities of the actor’s
acting, because they are very numerous, there are dozens of them.
Without trying to be exhaustive, the most important emplois have to be
mentioned, for the sake of giving examples. Feminine parts – a lot less numerous than
male parts, due to conventions of the historical past, when women used to have a very
scanty participation in social life – are all included in the dani category. Old women
belong to lao-dani, very young girls to siao-dani. Girls and virtuous women are included
in cen-dani, female servants and courtesans in bua-dani, whereas daoma-dani represents
the female fighters.
A great part of male emplois are situated within the shen category, the old men
being categorized in lao-shen, the young ones in siao-shen, warriors and soldiers in ushen, and clerks, learned men in ven-shen. All great warrior figures (including army
generals and brigands), also called “big painted faces” are to be found in tzin. Comic
characters (usually wards, servants, merchants), which wear by all means a white spot, as
a distinctive sign, on their cheeks, belong to ciou, whereas episodic parts are mo.
If emploi offers a first suggestion as to the definition of the character, the make-up
leads in the same direction, giving supplementary indications, concerning the moral
nature of the character. A first criterion is the color of the cheek. If it is red, we are facing
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an honest man, if it is white, the character deceitful, yellow color suggests bravery,
whereas gold is the color of deities and ghosts.
Presenting a wide variety of color and ornament, the costumes follow the line of
the emploi, according to the so-called “chart of ranks”, which determines the social
situation of characters and their place in the delineation of the plot. From this perspective,
the shape and color of costumes are not subject to historical accuracy, or linked to the
historical period, but instead they are determined by the emploi that the character is
accomplishing. Gesture is another valuable auxuliary means of the actor. In classical
Chinese theatre, gesture has a plural function, its presence is never unmotivated.
Sometimes it plays the role of words, becoming a mute text, which remains fixed during
all performance, like uttered replies.
Space is not defined with the help of plastic arts in traditional Chinese theatre, as
it is in European theatre. The play-space appears mediated by the actor, by the way the
actor is acting towards non-existent objects. For example, when a character mimes
opening a door and stepping over the threshold, the scene acquires a new feature: we are
in a room.
Time is showed by similar means. The effort of a hero climbing a mountain
indicates the place of the action, but at the same time it suggests the duration of this
action. The passage of time is also suggested by the continuous alternation of spatial
elements.
Music is also indispensable in classic Chinese theatre. It is usually executed by
an orchestra, which is seldom replaced by a chorus. Actors in Chinese theatre do not
benefit from the surprise element, which represents a helpful artistic tool in European
theatre. Emploi is rigorously defined, therefore the recommendation of the actor on the
stage often precedes the uttering of words. In their turn, events are predictable, to the
extent to which the public knows, more often than not, the plot of the given play. Instead
of being able to rely on the décor, the actor has to suggest it, too. In this context, actors
can only conquer the public by their exceptional mastery.
2.4. Aparté
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The function of aparté (also “aside” in English) is to reveal a character’s thoughts
and opinion about the other characters.
Aparté is, beside the dialogue and the monologue, a procedure in drama
technique. There are three categories of aparté, according to the means by which they are
achieved and the way in which this proceeding works in dramatic texts: “aparté”, “partial
aparté” and “apparent”, or “pseudo- aparté”.
Aparté is a speech act, usually small-sized, uttered by a character for themselves.
It is not addressed to a partner or partners present on the stage. Therefore it does not have
an addressee on the stage, but instead, owing to the principle of double assertions in
theatre, it has an extra-stage addressee: the audience.
Partial or dialogic aparté is addressed, deliberately and exclusively, to one of the
partner-characters present on stage. Therefore its functioning is conditioned by the
presence on stage of more than 2 characters and by its not being received by at least one
of these characters. Partial aparté is accompanied by kinetic auxiliaries (a certain spatial
placement of the speaker, who is getting closer to the addressee of the aparté), so that it
can be heard by only the character to whom it is being addressed. Or it can be
accompanied by para-linguistic devices (diminishing voice intensity: the speaker character is speaking in a low voice, is whispering or aside). These are usually mentioned
in brackets.
Aparté offers the opportunity to the playwright to exteriorize the thoughts and
emotional reactions of a character, to specify his/her motivations and clear up his/her
intentions. Thus a kind of complicity is established with the audience, who can find out
the truth about the given character in this way. At the same time, aparté can make the
action that is taking place on the stage be more accurate, can motivate an event or can
serve as a commentary on the action – all these functions proving its dramatic
effectiveness.
Chapter III. Elements of theatrical language
3.1. Verbal elements of theatrical language
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3.1.1. Speech accidents and distortions
In possession of an advanced technique, actors can transmit the artistic image of
the word content to the audience by pronouncing words in an expressive manner. That is
why actors must feel the word, but not only the word, but also syllables, consonants and
vowels, separately each sound, turning them to best account by the way they pronounce
them. The art of living the part requests the sole, deep knowledge of theatrical speech
technique.
Speech accidents and distortions have a double function in theatrical language:
suggesting the kind of language being spoken and showing the character’s traits in whose
speech they occur. The actor, who obviously does not have such organic speech defects,
has to learn them, practice them, in order to be able to make them credible.
3.1.2. Tone
Tone is the basis on which a communication act is built and the first element that
the listener can identify.
According to the tone he uses, a speaker transmits, besides messages formulated
in words, an implied message, by which he reveals his mood (for ex, if he is tired and
reluctant to talk, this thing can be felt in his tone) and also his attitude to his interlocutor
(an irritated, flippant tone shows his reluctance to interact with that person).
In reciting, the actor’s voice has to convey the most modulated tones and it is
obvious that weak, non-distinct, choked voices can convey neither the musical cadence of
the verse, nor its subtle poetic content.
3.1.3. Rhythm
Stage rhythm is the alternation of dramatic accents contained and expressed by
stage action, as well as the relationships among them.
Stage speech is a rhythmic speech. The time necessary for stage speech consists
of the totality of sounds, syllables, words and pauses. The variety with which they are
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pronounced, the alternation of sound values and phonic accents, counter-pointed by
pauses, determine the rhythm of stage speech.
3.2. Para-verbal elements of theatrical language
3.2.1. Prosody
An actor should have an ample voice with a tuneful timbre, and an intelligible
pronunciation, so that listeners can understand it. Correct pronunciation of the sounds that
make up the language that they are speaking is not sufficient, because actors should
convey not consonants and vowels, but ideas instead, in their logical-grammatical
chaining.
Stage uttering stands for one of the basic aspects of an actor’s art, as it is the
principal means of expressing thoughts and feelings. Words should be appropriately
pronounced by artistic movement of lips and should not be yelled.
3.2.2. Gesture
Van Ginneken asserts that “language has its roots in gestures” (Van Ginneken,
1939, 34). Throughout the history of theatre, gestures have been situated on two
coordinates: expressive (external) gestures, associated to an internal psychological
content (emotions, feelings, mental reactions) and gestures of production, as they were
called so by Grotowski, who refused to make a clear distinction between thought and its
bodily expression.
For Grotowski, gestures mean production: deciphering ideograms, while
hieroglyphics are emblems of stage gestures that are impossible to translate. Whereas for
Meyerhold, hieroglyphics-like gestures have to be by all means decipherable.
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The description of gestures, as connected to uttered speech, firstly poses the
question about the degree in which semiotic units are being used (even if all body parts
seem to be involved, the degree in which they participate in gestures can vary).
Gestures in theatre are useful depending on aesthetic points of view: they impose
a meaning that concentrates the depth level of the dramatic text.
3.2.3. Décor
Among elements of décor, some are variable (light, shadow, noises, etc), others
are invariable (furniture, buildings, painted background).
Décor can be an associated element or a constituent of theatrical language. It has a
huge importance, a meaning and an aesthetic value.
Décor, like costumes, contributes to the portrayal of characters. The stage
manager should suggest to the audience the epoch in which the plot takes place,
immediately after the curtain is raised. Furniture and objects that are being used on the
stage can give the audience a hint as to the style in which the whole performance is
conceived. Costumes can be indicative of the social category characters belong to. Each
element of décor must have their specific function within the theatrical performance, so
that they will contribute to the overall artistic emotion the performance produces.
3.2.4. Time
Time is an essential element of dramas. A play is enclosed in a certain interval of
time.
Theatrical performances have two types of time: time of narrative and time of
performance. At first sight, the relationship between these two times would be an
inclusive one: time of narrative is created by theatrical means during the performance.
However, the inter-relation is not as simple as that because time is not physical here, it is
subjectively perceived time, both by actors and audience.
Time of performance is defined by the successive events taking place on the stage
during the play: dialogues, fragments, interference of light14
effects, of soundtrack, etc. Time of narrative is in fact made up of a series of
events that unfold within the plot of a play. Between the two types of times a subjective,
not a mathematical inter-relation is established: a whole human life can pass in the course
of the couple of hours that is the time-span (physical time) of the play.
3.2.5. Plot and situation
As a series of events, plot is an equivocal notion, because it refers to two different
series, which belong, on the one hand, to fictional time, and to the time of performance,
on the other hand. Moreover, the plot is marked by the dynamics of events, as well as by
the pace at which events are unfolding (slow or brisk): plot is a process and the effect of
this process at the same time, it represents a simultaneous transformation and advancing
of events. Plots refer to an internal or external conflict, can individualize or distribute
characters into groups, it can be main or secondary.
Dramatic texts, as opposed to epic ones, do not usually present (or in rare cases)
events and situations mediated by a 3rd person narrator. They are directly acted out by
characters whose gestures and attitudes are not indicated or commented upon by the
playwright, and are achieved by linguistic communication (dialogues create action).
3.3. Visual language in theatre
3.3.1. Visual rhythm and language of volume in stagecraft
Although it is a synthetic art and is an organic part of the theatre phenomenon,
stagecraft has acquired its independence, just like stage direction and art of acting have
become independent with time.
Stage space is dictated, imposed and determined by the following factors: stage
direction, interpretation, the audience. Directors conceive the duration of each scene, the
peculiar way of diction and other details of actors’ acting, whereas stage managers have
the role to optimize the space in which the performance takes place. Stage managers
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establish the territory where the play takes place, where stage forces are going to be
released. The ambition of these “architects” of the world of theatre is to search for the
most appropriate form on the fertile ground of the stage. If the director of the given play
plans the appearance of an actor at a certain moment, the stage manager is obliged to find
the access way for the actor and the visual means that can best highlight the scene of his
appearance.
Stage managers pursue in their projects to reveal meanings through visual images,
which are capable of stirring the audience’s interest every time, even if it is the n th time
that the play has been staged.
3.3.2. Costumes
Costumes are very important elements that help us, members of the audience, to
situate the characters of a play in a certain historical epoch, also to realize their social
status, and to get better acquainted to their life.
Costumes have their own semiotics, a codified plastic language, dependent on the
drawings made up of lines and points that delimit shapes and indicate proportions, of
light and shadow that indicate volumes, on chromatic dominance and, last but not least,
on texture of fabrics that can suggest certain associations.
3.3.3. Light
In the process of communion between actors and audience, stage light-effects can
condition the interaction between the creation and reception of the finished artistic
product but they can also add, in a simultaneous manner, new aesthetic values to the
system of theatrical images. Besides visualizing the space of the performance, light can
be a creative act, by establishing complex and variable connections, in space and time,
with the audience. This facilitates the rational-emotional poise and the unity of the artistic
image. A companion of the actors’ acting, light can also highlight the décor, or give
shape to a space component necessary for the plot, can configure a certain environment.
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It can also reveal, through visual metaphors, deeper meanings of the scenario, can
become a melting pot of various components making up the performance, and it can be a
factor of rhythm and animation in the overall image of the performance.
3.4. Narrative structure and relationships among characters
Exact moments of narrative are imposed as necessary links that achieve cohesion
in dramatic genre, where words signal events in a delayed manner as compared to the
time of the occurrence of the same event.
In this way, it is obvious that the so-called narrative and lyrical “impurities” are
justified in a synthetic genre such as theatre is. Theatre is a synthesis made up of
modalities of existence of words and an artistic synthesis that makes use of systems of
verbal and non-verbal signals. However, a narrative nucleus is to be found in the very
chaining of events that make up the plot. It is a fundamental element of theatre, which
can be external or internal from the viewpoint of characters. It has been often referred to
as “level of depth” and numerous research works on drama have had it in their center.
3.4.1. V. Propp
In his work, “Morphology of the Folktale”, which has become a classic in
formalist narrative theory, Vladimir Propp analyzes the actions of characters in Russian
folktales. Actions are understood as functions of the characters and are defined from the
viewpoint of the meaning they have in the unfolding of the folktale, considered as a
whole. (“What the characters do is truly important, who does it is less important”)
Propp’s model meant the victory of formalism over topic-based analysis. In
Propp’s opinion, a folktale is “a narrative built on a correct succession of functions”, i.e.
a matrix of actions in which the stereotype of predicates and the variation of “agents” is
what matters, agents being the doers of the actions signaled by predicates.
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A triple relationship among characters and their functions can be established:
1. the sphere of action overlaps the character (a = A)
2. a character can be found in more than one sphere of action (a is part of A1, A2,
A3…)
3. there is more than one character in the same sphere of action (A includes a1,
a2, a3…)
3.4.2. A. J. Greimas
Greimas appeals to a simplification, working out a theoretical model in which he
distinguishes between actants (A) and actors or characters (a). The former is seen as
some essential participants in the stage action and with whom six important roles are
associated. The specific roles of the actants are generated by the forces that have been
accumulated in the course of the plot. Actants are not limited to the description of
elementary relations, which exist only between characters, but they also assimilate
categories such as those of groups, non-animated objects, animals, abstract notions or
ideas. The subject is the only exception from the rule. In any of these cases, actants are
nominal or they have the value of nominal derivatives.
Greimas proposes the following actantial model:
D1 = Sender
D2 = Addressee
S = Subject
O = Object
Adj = Ally, associate
Op = Opponent, enemy
The generative grammar of texts, developing the actantial theory conceived by
Greimas, discovered the basic norm of drama syntax. This is a syntagm in which the
action starts from an initial situation, which gets transgressed in the course of the
narrative, to finally reach, after a mediation, a solution that re-establishes the balance of
the disturbed universe.
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3.4.3. C. Bremond
Compared to Propp’s model, C. Bremond introduced a ternary logical structure:
virtuality, actualization and finalization. This openness in front of “narrative possibilities”
is derived from the conception of narrative as a productive process, a system of options, a
generative mechanism.
As opposed to Propp, who considers function to be the invariable element,
Bremond sees characters as being the “engines” of the text. Stills can be re-organized and
can illustrate the psychological or moral evolution of a character. Characters are more
than a simple tool serving the plot. A hero is the purpose and means of any story”.
3.4.4. Characters/ dramatis personae
Characters, as central signs in narrative literary works, focus all major meanings
of literary works. The term comes from personnage (French), through the mediation of
Latin word persona (“theatre mask”, “part”). Typology of characters is complex, it has
evolved along with literature in general. Critical and aesthetic comments having been
made on characters since antiquity and at all great cultural and literary moments of
mankind. Each character has a triple connection: with the playwright, the actor that acts
the part, and with the audience. Playwrights must make their characters live, showing
peculiar dispositions in order to motivate their deeds. Therefore the connection between
playwrights and their characters are powerful. In fact playwrights have to “give life” to a
real, singular character, who has a unique personality.
Through their texts, playwrights react to challenges of the world they live in, they
compare their own life-experience with people living in their environment. Plays have
their roots in this analysis.
Any element of a play has its meaning: choice of language, personality and
actions of characters, dialogues are all means by which playwrights convey their own
thoughts and values.
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3.4.5. Absent characters
In building up the characters, setting them in relationships with each other, in
revealing the inner life of heroes, in explaining the motivation of their actions, making
them act, in establishing links between characters and their environment, in emotionally
conveying an idea, playwrights have nothing else to use than dialogue.
Great playwrights have been strictly economical in creating dialogues, which they
put mostly in the mouth of characters that supported the conflict.
In the harmonious composition of a play, the characters that do not appear on
stage are evoked by the replies being uttered on stage. They are not ornamental elements
in the construction of drama, but are included in the structure of the play. If the given
theatrical form is too tight to enable them to express all that they wish, playwrights are
compelled to insert in the dialogue people and actions for which there is no room on
stage. These absent characters are not situated by playwrights outside the relationships
existent in a play. They are mentioned and depicted by characters who actually appear on
stage, thus absent characters are made part of the dramatic fabric of plays.
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