Chapter 8

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Chapter 8 Stage Language

• Theatre is more than words drama is a story that
  is lived and relived with each performance, and
  we can watch it live. The theatre appeals as much
  to the eye as to the ear.
• Eugène Ionesco

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Chapter Summary

• Language for the theatre is special and complex.
• It organizes our perceptions of what is taking
  place before us, forcing us into self-discovery
  or radical changes of attitude.
• It communicates meaning and activity to us in
  ways that are verbal and nonverbal.
• Stage language is a way of seeing that engages
  our eyes, ears, and minds.

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Words and Gestures

• In theatre, words connected to gesture
• Theatrical language selected and controlled
• Much more must happen in theatrical dialogue than
  in ordinary life.
• Language carefully arranged by playwright into
  meaningful pattern
• Drama is language under such high pressure of
  feeling the words carry a necessary and immediate
  connotation of gesture.
• George Steiner

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Verbal and Nonverbal Language

• Verbal and nonverbal signs and symbols used to
  enhance meaning
• Signs
• Direct physical relationship to what they
  represent (thunder a sign of rain)
• Symbols
• Arbitrary connection to what they represent
  (American flag represents America)

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Verbal and Nonverbal Language

• Chekhovs The Cherry Orchard
• Orchard a verbal symbol for passing of old life,
  arrival of new social order
• Sound of ax chopping down trees at plays end a
  nonverbal sign representing destruction of
  familys way of life

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Types of Stage Language

• Monologue
• Extended, uninterrupted speech delivered by a
  single character
• Aside
• Brief remark by a character spoken directly to
  the audience
• Not overheard by others onstage
• Soliloquy
• A long speech delivered by a character, usually
  alone onstage, for audience to overhear

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Types of Stage Language Soliloquy in Shakespeare

• Uses soliloquy to take audience into characters
  mind
• How all occasions do inform against me
  soliloquy from Hamlet
• Precise argument reveals Hamlets intelligence.
• Length of speech reveals tendency toward delay.
• Soliloquy shows evolution from inactivity to
  activity.

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Types of Stage Language Sounds in The Cherry
Orchard

• Stage directions for speech delivered by elderly
  valet at end of play indicate various sounds
• Sounds of departure
• Breaking string
• Stroke of an ax
• Sound of string subsides into silence before ax
  stroke is heard
• Illustrates passing of valet, arrival of new,
  aggressive world order

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Types of Stage Language Brechts Gestic Language

• Gest refers to characters overall attitudes.
• Words should follow the gest of the speaker
• Brecht A language is gestic when it . . .
  conveys particular attitudes adopted by the
  speaker towards other men.
• Example (from Caucasian Chalk Circle )
• Grusha reveals humanity by refusing to tug child
  from circle.
• Governors wife reveals grasping quality by
  twice pulling the child from the circle.

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Contemporary Trends in American Theatre Artauds
Theatre of Cruelty

• Antonin Artaud (18961948)
• French playwright and theorist
• Strong influence on 1960s American playwrights
• Rejected conventions of dialogue, plot, character
• Wanted to purge audience of hatred, violence,
  cruelty
• Provoked visceral response using nonverbal
  effects
• Shrill sounds
• Waves of light
• Violent physicalizations
• Unusual theatre spaces and staging

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Contemporary Trends in American Theatre American
Playwrights of 1960s

• After Artaud, rejected stage language of
  conversation that furthered plot, defined
  character, explored social themes
• Set out to assault senses with sounds, violent
  images, nudity, physicalization
• Intended to protest the political, military,
  industrial, and cultural establishment
• Avant-garde performance techniques eventually
  appropriated by commercial theatre

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Contemporary Trends in American Theatre David
Mamet

• Mamets characters are wordsmiths
• Speak in fragments
• Frequently profane
• Use language creatively to hustle other
  characters
• Mamet explores myths of American capitalism
• Characters want to connect, but know only the
  deal.
• Characters experience failure of business as a
  moral model, become alienated from themselves.

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Contemporary Trends in American Theatre Sam
Shepard

• Shows inner workings of modern American family
• Buried Child (1978)
• Themes
• Grown childrens complicated relationships with
  parents
• Quest for identity
• Evaporation of cherished values

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Core Concepts

• Playwrights are among the most important of the
  theatres image makers.
• The writing of plays is their medium for
  imitating human behavior and events.
• Other theatre artists interpret the playwrights
  text in the theatres three-dimensional space,
  giving it shape, sound, color, rhythm, image,
  activity, and human presence.