From stagematrix group :
Between pomo (postmodern) and beta (vtheatre) -- post-text theatre.
Visual = director's, not playwright's.
Ritual, movement based -- pre-world spectacle, but Aristotle still stands.
How I plan to use this group:
T-blog [anatolant.spaces.live.com] & virtual theatre [anatolant.vox.com] blogs : first is for teaching/instructions and second -- for theory?
After "first drafts" it should go to stagematrix.com & meyerhold.us Anatoly [cross-post to other places] vtheatre.net/2009
...
Theory * theatre w/anatoly
-- 2007 : research directory pages
Preface -- instead of Hello!
This page is confusing even to me! "Theatre Theory"? There are many theories, Anatoly! "Performance"? This is even more confusing!
I know that students (normal people) do not like the word; "theory" makes them nervious. Well, I do not know how to get around it. If you serious about aqcting, you better accept the fact that there are universal principles of acting. The best book about theatre was written two thousand years ago (Aristotle). Besides, my first master degree is in physics. I like structure, because I am disorganized. I like formulas, because I can memorize them. I like logic, I like when it makes sense, because I am in the sea of nonsense and unknown (the last I welcome). In short, every page is about THEORY. Acting, Directing, Drama, Film...
2005: Seven years ago when I began my webbing, I was ephoric -- what a chance to do everything! New books, plays, theory...
New books became ebooks, textbooks, notes...
Plays? I go from one adaptation for next show I direct, to another... I have no time for playwrighting.
Theatre theory?
All I can do is write a note, a semi-thought here and there...
Besides, my direction in theatre theory becomes less and less academic -- theatre theory, shamanism, virtual theatre.
How to use my "theory" pages?
I do not know.
I can tell you how I use them.
I place a term, definition, quote -- anything -- I would like to think about.
Example:
act A major unit (or structural division) of a dramatic text. Many classical plays are divided into five acts; most modern plays have two, to allow for an intermission. Usually, an act consists of a sequence of smaller action units called scenes. Other popular formats are three-act plays and one-act plays.
scene An action unit within an act. Usually, transition from one scene to another involves a new stage situation and a fresh episode, marked either by a change in time and/or location, or by an empty stage, or by characters entering or going off stage. A French scene (so-called after the practice of 17C French classical drama) is defined purely by a new combination (or 'configuration', Pfister 1984: 5.3.3) of characters. *
Why do we say "one act" and not "one event" play?
"Oedipus" is no bigger that "Zoo Story" -- NTL, they are diffirent in this "event" structure...
But what do we call an event, Mr. Brecht?
"Scene is an action unite with an act"?
Beckett? Act within a scene?
Even the silly "French scene" definition makes me stop -- Exit! How dramatic is this EVENT? Overwritting any monologue?
I don't know -- I place it on my pages to think about.
Well, I am no theorist, I do not understand "purely by a new combination (or 'configuration', Pfister 1984: 5.3.3) of characters" -- I am a drector and move my actors on stage all the time.
Ah, "characters"!
Every time somebody enters -- it's change for all charcters?
What kind of change?
... You see my problems?
Theatre theory problems.
So, I place more terms -- to think about...
How to "read" my theatre theory pages?
I do not think anybody reads them.
If you do -- it's you and your thoughts. Nothing else. Think.
... I didn't think about it, when I made this page...
I needed a place to store links and notes to think about "theory".
...
Anatoly'07
"Not I, not not-I" A condition of double negativity that characterizes the state of actor's self in relation to the role the actor plays. (Glossary) = ID in Method.
A word from Anatoly:
I started all my websites for myself. I do what I did for many years -- write, take notes, write more, collect sources. Only now I do it in public. Even with my actual classes I make pages to help myself and I hope therefore -- my students. I do not collect links, I place them to help myself to do the search and not to "surf" the web. I am looking for "completion" of any subject, rather I place them on things which are of interest to me. Keep it in mind. And remember, you're always welcome to contribute.
2-17-04: This new page (left) has a lot of implications for Method Acting ideas, and, I suspect, for film theory. Maybe, finally, I can bring in the theology (Trinity, Godhead concept). Should Freud's formula be seen as dialectic trio (thesis, antithesis, syntesis)? I will my notes in Theatre Theory directory.
* Transversality describes the key impulse in recent artistic practice in which dance, film, music, theatre, painting, sculpture, performance,
television, text, theatre, video have all contested the boundaries of their
disciplines and their relations with each other in playful and controversial
ways.
Books [ vtheatre.net/books ]
The Twentieth Century Performance Reader, ed. Huxley and Witts (1996),
Reinelt and Roach, CRITICAL THEORIES AND PERFORMANCE.
Mark Fortier THEORY/THEATRE.
Christopher Innes AVANT GARDE THEATRE, 1892-1992
Richard Drain 20TH CENTURY THEATRE: A SOURCEBOOK
...
Narratology
[ ... ]
Narratology is a very well developed field of study. Practitioners define it in several simple ways; for example, 'the science of story,' 'the theory of narrative structure' and such. They are trying to understand the fundamental laws of story structure and comprehension which underlie all forms of story-telling, including the non-fictional (maybe semi-fictional) forms with which we present ourselves to ourselves and to the world.
...
Here are a few titles in the field:
-- NARRATOLOGY, a reader edited by Susana Onega and Jose Angel Landa, Longman, 1996
-- Ball, Mieke, NARRATOLOGY: INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF NARRATIVE, Univ. of Toronto Press, 1985.
-- Prince, Gerald, NARRATOLOGY: THE FORM AND FUNCTIONING OF NARRATIVE, Mouton, 1982
-- Brooks, Peter, READING FOR THE PLOT: DESIGN AND INTENTION IN NARRATIVE, Knopf, 1984
There is lots more. In fact there is plenty on the net. Just go to a good multiple-search engine such as www.dogpile.com and plug in Narratology.
... [ script.vtheatre.net/theses ]
...
Performance studies is a tricky subject. But I have to rush; they say that the engines' robots search the web and index everything -- sometimes I see my pages listed in very ugly way.
...
Actually, I'm thinking about Internet and Web as a new performance media. This website experience isn't fully understood by me. You, viewers, have much more active role -- is it more of a ritual (participation)? Hyper-interactive element.
@1999-2004 thr w/anatoly *
* Dictionary/Glossary : A play is a multimedial form designed to be staged in a public performance. A play is 'multimedial' in the sense that it uses both auditory and visual media: a play's audience has to use their eyes as well as their ears (a novel, in contrast, is a 'monomedial' form). * [Extending Pfister's definition, we will say that a play is a multimedial narrative form because it presents a story (a sequence of action units). Note that, on this view, there are two main narrative forms: epic narratives (i.e., novels and short stories) and dramatic narratives.]
...
The level of nonfictional communication is the outermost level designating the pragmatic (communicational) space in which an author (dramatist, playwright) writes the text of a play. This text is used by a director, in collaboration with a producer, actors, composers, etc., to stage a performance. In a sense, the playwright is the 'primary' author, while the director and his/her collaborators as 'secondary authors'. Addressees on this level are either the readers of the play's text or the members of the audience in an actual performance. The level is 'nonfictional' because all agents involved are real persons.
The level of fictional mediation is an intermediate level which is activated in 'epic drama' (D2.2, D6) only, i.e., mainly in plays that use a narrator figure who acts as the teller, historian or commentator (e.g., Shakespeare's Pericles, Shaffer's Amadeus). Since narrators are fictional addressers, their counterparts are fictional addressees or -- narratologically speaking -- 'narratees'.
The level of fictional action is the level on which the characters communicate with each other. As has been recognized in speech-act theory (Austin 1962, Searle 1974), talking constitutes a special kind of act -- a speech act. Hence a distinction can be made between 'verbal action' (speeches, dialogues, etc.) and 'nonverbal action' (mime, gesture, movement, etc.).
...
An absolute drama is a type of drama that does not employ a level of fictional mediation; a play that makes no use of narrator figures, chorus characters, story-internal stage managers, or any other 'epic' elements (to be specified in more detail below). The audience witnesses the action of the play as if it happened 'absolutely', i.e., as if it existed independently of either author, or narrator, or, in fact, the spectators themselves. Example: Hamlet, and many others. For Pfister, this is the prototypical form of drama.
An epic drama, in contrast, is one that makes use of 'epic devices' such as those listed above, mainly a narrator or teller figure. It is 'epic' in the sense that, just like in prose fiction, there is a visible and/or audible narrator figure whose presence creates a distinct level of communication (the intermediate level shown in D2.1) complete with addressee, setting, and time line. Example: Shakespeare, Pericles (Gower is a heterodiegetic narrator, N3.1.5); Shaffer, Amadeus (Salieri is a homodiegetic narrator). Epic drama is closely related to Brecht's conception of an 'epic theater' (D6.1).
A person is a real-life person; anyone occupying a place on the level of nonfictional communication. Authors, directors, actors, and spectators are persons.
A character is not a real-life person but only a "paper being" (Barthes 1975 [1966]), a being created by an author and existing only within a fictional text, usually on the level of action. Example: the character Hamlet in the play by Shakespeare.
An actor is the person who, in a performance, impersonates a character.
Figure Also a type of being created by a fictional text. Often the term is used just as a variation of 'character'; however, some theorists use it with specific reference to the narrator (on the level of fictional mediation). For instance, Gower is a 'narrator figure' in Shakespeare's Pericles.
* Marvin Carlmore THEORIES OF THE THEATRE 0801481546 ;
John Russell Brown's OXFORD ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE
THEATRE; and Oscar Brockett's HISTORY OF THE THEATER.
THE MODERN THEATRE: READINGS AND DOCUMENTS, edited by
Daniel Seltzer. A current version of a similar collection is MODERN THEORIES
OF DRAMA: A SELECTION OF WRITINGS ON DRAMA AND
THEATRE 1850-1990, edited by George W. Brandt.
Mary C. Henderson's THEATER IN AMERICA: 200 YEARS
OF PLAYS, PLAYERS, AND PRODUCTIONs.
Theatre/Theory/Theatre : The Major Critical Texts from Aristotle and Zeami to Soyinka and Havel by Daniel Gerould 1557835276
* Dictionary/Glossary : A play is a multimedial form designed to be staged in a public performance. A play is 'multimedial' in the sense that it uses both auditory and visual media: a play's audience has to use their eyes as well as their ears (a novel, in contrast, is a 'monomedial' form). * [Extending Pfister's definition, we will say that a play is a multimedial narrative form because it presents a story (a sequence of action units). Note that, on this view, there are two main narrative forms: epic narratives (i.e., novels and short stories) and dramatic narratives.]
