Semiotic arts of theatre
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Michael J Sidnell
His research interests include theory of theatre and performance, modernist literature, and W. B. Yeats. His publications include
Yeats's Poetry And Poetics (1996); ‘Authorizations of the performative: Whose performances of what, and for whom?’ (1999); ‘Aesthetic prejudice in modern drama’ (2001); ‘Mac(k)intosh the noun’ (2002) and ‘Beckett's sacrifice of archaic theatre on the altar of modernism’ (2007).
Abstract
Sidnell's argument turns on sets of relations between the terms ‘semiotic,’ ‘theatre,’ and ‘art.’ He proposes that while theatre and other arts became ever more self-consciously semiotic, semiotic analysis became progressively more remote from the arts from which it took its objects of study, and tautological in its expression. The tentative approaches of semiotics to the arts were vitiated by the science of aesthetics and its focus on supposedly autonomous artworks, which obscured semiotic art as praxis. Three remedial steps are proposed: a review, from a semiotic point of view, of the concept of the autonomous artwork; the abandonment of the concept of the ‘performance text’; and attention to the making of signs rather than their interpretation. The final section is concerned with the recognition of semiotic art in the theatre by such premodern theorists as Robortello, Castelvetro, and Shakespeare, and in the work of such modern practitioners as Evreinov, Meyerhold, and Laban, which takes into account psycho-semiotic and biosemiotic origins of theatrical practice. Finally, Sidnell raises the central question of qualitative judgements of the execution of theatrical signs — their grace, beauty, effectiveness.
About the author
His research interests include theory of theatre and performance, modernist literature, and W. B. Yeats. His publications include Yeats's Poetry And Poetics (1996); ‘Authorizations of the performative: Whose performances of what, and for whom?’ (1999); ‘Aesthetic prejudice in modern drama’ (2001); ‘Mac(k)intosh the noun’ (2002) and ‘Beckett's sacrifice of archaic theatre on the altar of modernism’ (2007).
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction Theatrical semiosphere: Toward the semiotics of theatre today
- Semiotic arts of theatre
- Prague's experimental stage: Laboratory of theatre and semiotics
- A historical outlook on theatrical ostension and its links with other terms of the semiotics of drama and theatre
- Semiotics of nonsemiotic performance
- The end of theatre semiotics? A symptom of an epistemological shift
- Intercultural theory, postcolonial theory, and semiotics: The road not (yet) taken
- Dreams and phantasms: Towards an ethnoscenological reading of the intercultural theatrical event
- The homogeneous nature of the theatre medium
- The semiotics of curtain calls
- Actor-puppet-video projection-spectator-fantasmagorie technologique: Towards a theory for a new theatre genre
- Vital signs
- Présentation
- Paul Ricœur, habitant de ce monde. Les affleurements de la conception peircienne de l'objet du signe et du pragmatisme
- Ricœur and Saussure: On meaning and time
- Discernements et malentendus
- Sémiotique et herméneutique : Le texte et l'action
- Ricœur et la sémiotique : Une rencontre « improbable » ?
- Le parcours du sens : Ricœur et Benveniste
- De la narration à l'action : Inversion du cheminement mimétique ricœurien
- La philosophie face à l'univers des signes : Positions et propositions de Paul Ricœur sur la sémiotique et la sémiologie
Articles in the same Issue
- Introduction Theatrical semiosphere: Toward the semiotics of theatre today
- Semiotic arts of theatre
- Prague's experimental stage: Laboratory of theatre and semiotics
- A historical outlook on theatrical ostension and its links with other terms of the semiotics of drama and theatre
- Semiotics of nonsemiotic performance
- The end of theatre semiotics? A symptom of an epistemological shift
- Intercultural theory, postcolonial theory, and semiotics: The road not (yet) taken
- Dreams and phantasms: Towards an ethnoscenological reading of the intercultural theatrical event
- The homogeneous nature of the theatre medium
- The semiotics of curtain calls
- Actor-puppet-video projection-spectator-fantasmagorie technologique: Towards a theory for a new theatre genre
- Vital signs
- Présentation
- Paul Ricœur, habitant de ce monde. Les affleurements de la conception peircienne de l'objet du signe et du pragmatisme
- Ricœur and Saussure: On meaning and time
- Discernements et malentendus
- Sémiotique et herméneutique : Le texte et l'action
- Ricœur et la sémiotique : Une rencontre « improbable » ?
- Le parcours du sens : Ricœur et Benveniste
- De la narration à l'action : Inversion du cheminement mimétique ricœurien
- La philosophie face à l'univers des signes : Positions et propositions de Paul Ricœur sur la sémiotique et la sémiologie
