1. Review of Research
1.1 Before Semiology: Dramaturgical Analysis
Performance analysis obviously does not simply date from the age of structuralism and
semiology. Any spectator who comments on a performance analyses it ipso facto, since
he
selects, names, prioritises and examines one particular element as opposed to another and establishes
links between these elements. When spectators comment on the performance, they do not have to
verbalise the unsayable; they try rather to find a few landmarks. The description most often takes the
form of the narration of a story (plot or fabula) or at least an account of the most
remarkable
stage events which facilitates an understanding of the materials used, a natural segmentation of the
performance and a highlighting of the most powerful or chosen moments in the mise en
scène.
The tradition of dramaturgical analysis goes back to Diderot (De la poésie
dramatique, 1758) and Lessing (La dramatique de Hambourg, 1767) in whose work
we
find remarkable descriptions of acting and stage effects. Brecht therefore only renews a tradition
already established in Germany, that of the Dramaturg (the director's literary and
theatrical
advisor, now known as the dramaturge). He offers dramaturgical analyses on the theatre and
particular
productions of his time which reveal much about the general conception of mise en
scène. In France, this same approach is found in critical theorists such as Roland
Barthes
or Bernard Dort. Their analyses are always based on ideological and aesthetic mechanisms found in
the production. Until the 1960s, this mode of description dominated all others due to its breadth of
vision, its precision and the compromise it managed to find between meticulous observation and
interpretation. Dramaturgical analysis, aware that it is not exhaustive although not necessarily aware
that it also contributes to performance, offers an initial synthetic approach to performance; it
underlines the main structures of a performance while avoiding a fragmented perception of it.
The following chapter shall show that there are numerous other tools at our disposal
with which we might examine a performance; and it is useful to link all these different methods and
increase our sources of information. It is advisable to start by putting forward the possibility of
performance semiology, which is both a well established 'science' and a field of research in the
process of being 'restructured.'
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