Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The World on Stage

First thought: what the f?
Within the first sentence: "'...all that is on the stage is a sign.'" And I'm sorry, but of course! If not a sign then what? And what defines a "sign"? Something that inspires more thought? As in if I saw a tree on stage it would be a sign of nature, or outdoors? That seems pretty obvious to me. 

This reading hurts my brain with words like "phenomenologically", which is defined as: A philosophy or method of inquiry based on the premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness and not of anything independent of human consciousness. (By thefreedictionary.com). The word itself is intense, and its definition even more so. "The premise that reality consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in human consciousness..."---so reality is whats happening according to how we understand it...
To apply phenomenologically to the theater... the definition could simply be changed to: "The premise that THEATER consists of objects and events as they are perceived or understood in the audience's consciousness...". 
And then the other side of the phenomenologist, the semiotician. The definition of semiotics is : "The theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics." (Again, freedictionary.com). 
Throughout the reading there are references to the definition of "art". And what I really got from that was that art is and can be anything if you use the right lens. When I say lens I mean if you use the right... perspective if you will. Anything can be art if you look at it in a different way then you normally would. Take modern art for instance; a single red dot on a blank canvas. You could totally see a red dot anywhere in your regular day to day life, like a left over dry erase mark on a white board, and you wouldn't think anything of it...but once you are in an art gallary looking at a huge white canvas with one small dot and you're in this place of thinking that what you're seeing is something different, that dot becomes "art". 
I'm not sure I'm understanding the reading too well, but I'm trying to break it down as much as I can. On page 22, State's says "...we grow away, perceptually, from the contents of reality (habit being a great deadener) and that art is a way of bringing us home via an 'unfamiliar' route." This I think is the best definition of art. And it can be applied to the stage so well. You may see a classroom every day, but once portrayed in an "unfamiliar route" on a stage you see it differently and it therefor becomes art!
The difference between image and sign...thats tricky as well. I believe that one can't be without the other. There are differences, yes, but its easier to describe one with the other in my opinion. Like Macbeth's dagger is and image and a sign in my opinion. It is an image of a dagger and a sign of death. 
Images that distract the audience from the stage: the clock, fire, water; the child, and the animal. To me these images distract the audience from the stage because of their signs. The clock is a symbol of time, and when I see a clock on stage I think about real time, not the stage time. Fire is a symbol of uncontrolled chaos to me, fire is unreliable and therefor makes me think of what could go wrong, distracting me from the stage. Water...well that doesn't really distract me other then thinking about how to deal with water on stage (how to clean if it gets spilled, how do you keep things dry...etc). The child, exactly the way State's says: "Who has ever seen a child on stage with out thinking, 'How well he acts, for a child!'...'Do they understand the play?'" pg 31. And the animal is just totally unpredictable. 
I think what it comes down to is the semiotician, the phenomenologist; and signs, images. All of which are important to the lens we see theater through. 

-Megan Covey

2 comments:

ubik said...

Wow. For all your vituperation, you really seem to understand what the article is about. When we're met with these new terms and whole new branches of philosophy it's always hard to imagine their immediate practical application. But you did an admirable job of restating States in your own words (and free dictionary's) One trap to avoid is this notion that everything is art. Since the gist of phenomenology is that the whole wide world is in one's head and is being mediated by the senses, it's important to recognize that art is primarily about the artist's intentions and secondarily about context. In other words no artist=no art. If you decide the red dot is art then so be it, that is about your intention. But on the other hand all soup cans are not Warhols. He had nothing to do with their production and they are out of the Warhol context.

Semiotics is another layer to this mess I've heaped on you guys. It is the language of images. I think you get it with your take on the dagger. What is signified is something different from the sign. the sign:dagger points to or signifies death.

From daniel chandler's site: semiotics for beginners he says:
Saussure offered a 'dyadic' or two-part model of the sign. He defined a sign as being composed of:
a 'signifier' (signifiant) - the form which the sign takes; and the 'signified' (signifié) - the concept it represents. For more on that see:

http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/sem02.html

So yeah congratulations you survived semiotics and phenomenology, next stop Moskoff.

Al

Outside The Box said...

I really just felt like what he was saying was sort of...I don't want to say no brainer because he used intense linguistics but it just seemed so silly to me that once I broke it down I was like "duh!!".
You bring up the good point about art though- that it's about the ARTISTS intentions...not the viewers. But I just feel like sometimes anything COULD be art.
While reading the part of the article about the different journey home I totally thought of this intense time I was home last year. I was visiting home (Oakland) and I was riding the bus to downtown Berkeley, which is something I did for four years every morning to go to school. But this bus ride was different, I was seeing things differently because I hadn't taken that ride in almost 7 months. The ride from Alcatraz and Adeline to downtown Berkeley was something I saw EVERY day of high school. But taking it last year I saw things that I had never noticed before, and to me, that was art.
Thats where I get the everything COULD be art part...but yeah, thanks for your comment about my writing :)