Download Chapter 8 - School of the Performing Arts

Chapter 8 – Stage Language
Theatre is more than words:
drama is a story that is lived
and relived with each
performance, and we can
watch it live. The theatre
appeals as much to the eye
as to the ear.
—Eugène Ionesco
Chapter Summary
• Language for the theatre is special and complex.
• It organizes our perceptions of what is taking place
before us, forcing us into self-discovery or radical
changes of attitude.
• It communicates meaning and activity to us in ways that
are verbal and nonverbal.
• Stage language is a way of seeing that engages our
eyes, ears, and minds.
Words and Gestures
• In theatre, words connected to gesture
• Theatrical language selected and controlled:
– Much more must happen in theatrical dialogue than in
ordinary life.
• Language carefully arranged by playwright into
meaningful pattern
Drama is language under such high pressure of feeling the
words carry a necessary and immediate connotation of
gesture.
—George Steiner
Verbal and Nonverbal Language
• Verbal and nonverbal signs and symbols used to
enhance meaning
• Signs:
– Direct physical relationship to what they represent
(thunder a sign of rain)
• Symbols:
– Arbitrary connection to what they represent (American
flag represents America)
Verbal and Nonverbal Language
• Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard:
– Orchard a verbal symbol for passing of old life, arrival
of new social order
– Sound of ax chopping down trees at play’s end a
nonverbal sign representing destruction of family’s
way of life
Types of Stage Language
• Monologue:
– Extended, uninterrupted speech delivered by a single
character
• Aside:
– Brief remark by a character spoken directly to the
audience
– Not overheard by others onstage
• Soliloquy:
– A long speech delivered by a character, usually alone
onstage, for audience to overhear
Types of Stage Language:
Soliloquy in Shakespeare
• Uses soliloquy to take audience into character’s mind
• “How all occasions do inform against me” soliloquy from
Hamlet :
– Precise argument reveals Hamlet’s intelligence.
– Length of speech reveals tendency toward delay.
– Soliloquy shows evolution from inactivity to activity.
Types of Stage Language:
Sounds in The Cherry Orchard
• Stage directions for speech delivered by elderly valet at
end of play indicate various sounds:
– Sounds of departure
– Breaking string
– Stroke of an ax
• Sound of string subsides into silence before ax stroke is
heard:
– Illustrates passing of valet, arrival of new, aggressive
world order
Types of Stage Language:
Brecht’s Gestic Language
• “Gest” refers to character’s overall attitudes.
• Words should follow the gest of the speaker:
– Brecht: “A language is gestic when it . . . conveys
particular attitudes adopted by the speaker towards
other men.”
• Example (from Caucasian Chalk Circle ):
– Grusha reveals humanity by refusing to tug child from
circle.
– Governor’s wife reveals “grasping” quality by twice
pulling the child from the circle.
Contemporary Trends in American
Theatre: Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty”
• Antonin Artaud (1896–1948):
– French playwright and theorist
• Strong influence on 1960s American playwrights
• Rejected conventions of dialogue, plot, character
• Wanted to purge audience of hatred, violence, cruelty
• Provoked visceral response using nonverbal effects:
– Shrill sounds
– Waves of light
– Violent physicalizations
– Unusual theatre spaces and staging
Contemporary Trends in American
Theatre: American Playwrights of 1960s
• After Artaud, rejected stage language of conversation
that furthered plot, defined character, explored social
themes
• Set out to assault senses with sounds, violent images,
nudity, physicalization
• Intended to protest the political, military, industrial, and
cultural establishment
• Avant-garde performance techniques eventually
appropriated by commercial theatre
Contemporary Trends in American
Theatre: David Mamet
• Mamet’s characters are “wordsmiths”:
– Speak in fragments
– Frequently profane
– Use language creatively to hustle other characters
• Mamet explores myths of American capitalism:
– Characters want to connect, but know only “the deal.”
– Characters experience failure of business as a moral
model, become alienated from themselves.
Contemporary Trends in American
Theatre: Sam Shepard
• Shows inner workings of modern American family:
– Buried Child (1978)
• Themes:
– Grown children’s complicated relationships with
parents
– Quest for identity
– Evaporation of cherished values
Core Concepts
• Playwrights are among the most important of the
theatre’s “image makers.”
• The writing of plays is their medium for imitating human
behavior and events.
• Other theatre artists interpret the playwright’s text in the
theatre’s three-dimensional space, giving it shape,
sound, color, rhythm, image, activity, and human
presence.