Reading Notes- "The World on Stage" -Keith

Like the title says... some reading notes. For States' "The World on Stage".

Different perspectives-
1. approach theater semioticically
Definition: semiotics-study of signs/symbols as elements of communicative behavior
-"all that is on the stage is a sign" -Prague linguists
-things "conceptually referring to" the greater "world" outside of the performance
-bridge between the stage and its fictional analogue of the world
2. approach theater phenomenologically
Definition: phenomena- circumstance/fact observed (ie 'the phenomena of nature')
-signs "achieve their vitality... not by signifying the world but by being part of it"
-not what it represents, but why its there?
-"pursuit of the essence of things"

Author (States)'s perspective
3. defined by VICTOR SHKLOVSKY
-"Art exists that one may recover the sensation of life; it exists to make one feel things"
-things important "as they are percieved and not as they are known"
-"the object is not important" just associations to the object
-similar to PHENOMENOLOGICAL views
-DE FAMILIARIZATION- "removing things from a world in which they have become inconspicuous and seeing them anew"

SIGN vs IMAGE
1. Sign
-Correlative terms: signifier and signified
-of no value unless it repeats itself
-the material of the sign is totally indifferent to the object it signifies
2. Image
-Any likeness, or representation, made out of materials of the medium (gesture, language, decor, sound, light)
-emphasis on empathetic response
-unique and unreproducible
-the physical image and its object... resemble each other

NEITHER SIGN or IMAGE
-"things that resist being either sign or image"
-"stage images do not always or entirely surrender their objective nature to the sign/image function"
1. working Clock
-astronomical time would clash with theatrical time
-awareness that theatrical time is being measured by a real clock
-SELF-GIVENNESS onstage>obeying its own laws of nature
2. Fire/Running water
-mildly distracting in the sense of being interesting
-retains a certain primal strangeness>something indisputably real leaks out of the illusion
3. Child actor
-"how well he acts, for a child!" / "Do they understand the play?"
-success depended heavily on the audience's "double vision" (seeing both child and character?)
-DOUBLE VISION- disparity between the actors and their roles" -Shapiro
-innocent child vs characters that "flirt with the audience"
-Kids did comedy/satire (genre's most closely linked to the audience's immediate world) instead of tragedies/serious plays (depended on a suspension of disbelief)
4. Stage animals
-trained or tranquilized, but cannot be depended upon
-No good behavior, only behavior
-BISOCIATION- intersection between two independent and self-contained phenomenal chains- natural animal behavior and culturally programmed human behavior
-can claim dog as the likeness of a dog (acts well by acting as it normally does)

Other
-Moliere playing Moliere (an exception to the aesthetic rule that the image is not the thing)
-Zoos> dingo- dog playing a dog from Australia

LAW OF COMPLEMENTARITY:
to the extent that something on stage arouses awareness of its external (or workday) significance, its internal (or illusionary) significance is reduced