Acting: The Quintessence of Theatricality

• Published in: SubStance Vol. 31; no. 2/3; pp. 110 - 124
• Main Author: Rozik, Eli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Baltimore University of Wisconsin Press 01.01.2002; Johns Hopkins University Press
• Subjects: Acting; Actors; Drama; Graphics; Indexicality; Language; Natural language; Necessary conditions; Performing artists; Referents; Semiotic signs; Semiotics; Signs; Theater; Theater semiotics; Theatrical costumes; Theatricality and the Body
• DOI: 10.1353/sub.2002.0039
• ISSN: 0049-2426; 1527-2095

The conclusions should be, therefore, not that theatrical signs are changeable or versatile, but that the same referent can be represented and evoked by different signs. [...]since his examples contradict the principle of similarity on the material level as suggested above, we may claim that these are cases of theatrical convention, which is not foreign to theater and can be explained within the same theory (see Rozik, 1992, 104-25). In this sense, the human actor reflects a principle, which is not general on stage, but derives from the sui-generisquality of the human body as a medium of signs. Since by definition a character cannot be on stage, the ultimate implication is that the necessary and sufficient condition of theater is the use of a text, in the wide sense of any object on stage, enacting a fictional entity. Tension resides in the coexistence of elements in the same human body serving as both producer of signs and material medium of images—the latter being what makes their communication possible. [...]this tension lies within the single behavior of the actor, which may be conceived in terms of indexality and self-reference, if examined from the viewpoint of production of signs, or in terms of iconicity and deflected reference, if examined from the viewpoint of text. [...]the immediateexperience of the body of the actor as a producer of signs, although typical, is not the sufficient and necessary condition for acting—i.e., theater. Since inscribing a description on matter is real action, indicated by acts or indexes of action, the human body that engages in inscribing a text on itself is not beyond semiotic scrutiny.