States, Bert O.

Great Reckonings in Little Rooms: On the Phenomenology of Theater. Berkeley: U. of California P., 1985.

Introduction

In the introduction States opens up the conflict between semiotics and phenomenology. He mentions Semiotics’ lack in analyzing the theatrical event (because in perception the whole is prior to its parts, p. 7). He continues to say that he values semiotic analysis as a complementing phenomenological one rather than contradicting it.

Chapter 1, the world on stage

In the first chapter States claims that objects and things on stage often evade becoming signs. He proposes to use the word image instead of sign. He claims that on stage things are closer to being signified, rather than signifiers: “in theater, image and object, pretence and pretender, sign-vehicle and content, draw unusually close.” (20) In addition, while reiterated signs become clearer and clearer as we use them, stage images retain their mystery and live presence. States shows how the sound of words can transcend their meaning and how stage image resists being mere signification because of the clutter of phenomena. He goes on to use the examples of a working clock and running water for objects that bring a piece of reality into the fiction of theatre, thus breaking the illusion that they are mere signifiers of what they really are (i.e. a clock and running water). According to him, both a child actor and (more so) an animal on stage create a similar effect because they are unpredictable and, at least in the case of the animal, stage reality is not different from life reality. States concludes the chapter by following the use of furniture on stage and how their presence affects audiences.


Chapter 2: the scenic illusion: Shakespeare and Naturalism.

In chapter 2 States compares Shakespeare’s stage space and Naturalism’s stage space, claiming that in theatre space and event are inseparable. He follows the way Shakespeare creates space and image through speech. Shakespeare’s metaphorical speeches require an almost empty stage as metaphorical space where the theatrical world can be imagined. Objects in this theatrical world are there “to be seen through” (62) not as symbols in themselves. In contrast, the realistic stage needs realistic sets (including furniture and props) to create its world and support the dialogue. Thus, instead of metaphor there’s metonymy or synecdoche. (65) Shakespeare’s metaphor enhances the world by similarity or correspondence to bring to existence what’s not visibly there while metonymy and synecdoche are ways of reducing big ideas to small visible things on stage.

Chapter 3, The scenic illusion: expressionism and after.

In this chapter States starts off by showing how Expressionism was and organic development of Naturalism’s ‘truth seeking’ attempt. However, he claims that expressionism was eventually absorbed into naturalism as an extension of its attempt to create a ‘true life’ experience within the dramatic conflict that occurs on stage. Moving on to Brecht’s main conventions of scenic illusion, States, with the help of Roland Barthes’ (a semiotician…) notion of arbitrariness, shows how Brecht’s theories did not always match the experience of what happened on stage. Specifically, the alienation effect relied upon the assumption that acting that comments on itself and does not attempt realistic portrayal of reality will distance the audience and make them think. In fact, States states, we get accustomed to the new reality, our perception closes the distance created and finds a way to “believe” in the Brechtian aesthetics just as it would in realism. Furthermore, the estrangement that Brecht seeks works on the spectator as a whole and does not necessarily affect only their intellect, bypassing their feelings and emotions. By analyzing both Bernard Shaw and Thornton Wilder, States shows how similar results were sought in different contexts by using different scenic illusions and aesthetics.
Following the developments in theatre after naturalism, he claims that “when stage imagery was freed of its servitude in mimetic signification, the one-to-one relationship between the sign and its signification, the theaters of Brecht, Meyerhold, Artaud, Wilder, the Absurdists, and Grotowski, among countless others, became possible.” (101) Other changes theatre went through, as a result of Barthes’ arbitrariness, included the possibility of non-thematic theatre and a shift in the location and understanding of empathy and emotions. The next step takes deconstruction to show how theatre evolved from being a semiological theatre in which every object and event is a pre-defined sign into a phenomenological theatre – a self defining world which is revealed in the process of performance.

Chapter 4, Actor/Text

The fourth chapter deals with the actor’s presence in relation to the text, the character and the world of the play. While the actor may be seen to disappear into the character, s/he is also the embodiment of that character and therefore the character may be seen to become the actor just as well. Moreover, the text, considered to be repeated by the actor, is (in some cases) to be “owned” by the actor to such an extent that it becomes fresh and reveals new meanings that were not there before – in the original written text. “In other words, the poets copy falls into nature in the form of a demonstration. One might say that in becoming Hamlet or Juliet the actor throws himself into the gap between the hypothetical and the real.” (127) “the actor is someone like us who consents to serve as the channel through which the poet’s art can be brought out of the realm of imitation and briefly detained, for our own narcissistic pleasure, in the realm of being.” (128) States goes on to look at the way the actor’s body influences this kind of channeling of the text, claiming that it is not only technique but also culture that affects the way text will come to life onstage. The ideas of the text can only come to existence through the actor’s body “as a thinking body.” (133) The gesture ties between the text and the actor’s body, reveals the actor’s presence and “justifies” the actor’s body and what it expresses. The actor’s expressive body ties character and event and leads the plot. The experience of watching an actor onstage, according to States, takes us away from our selves and into the life of the character within a marked event, unlike a film or a novel that let us remain within our bodies and create, therefore, a more life-like experience. “The intimacy of theatre is not the intimacy of being within its world but of being present at its world’s origination under all the constraints, visible and invisible, of immediate actuality.” (154)

Chapter 5, Actor/Audience

States observes the relationships between actor and audience, asking what (and who) is the actor to the audience and what type of relationships can there be between them. He follows three modes of the actor’s speaking to the audience: self expressive (“I”), collaborative (“you”), and representational (“he”). In the first mode, the actor’s self is present onstage, either his/her own personality or as part of a complete disappearance into the character or both. When discussing the collaborative mode, States claims that there is a big difference between tragedy which resists the collaborative mode and comedy which celebrates it. While tragedy turns to the individual emotions, comedy turns to the collective experience. In addition, modern theatre that often presents the individual facing society also creates the collaborative mode. States analyses the play Offending an Audience as an extreme example of the use of collaborative mode, because of its direct talk to the audience. However, in this play “the you-ness turns out to be a kind of me-ness. The strange thing is that the speakers do not become intimate with the audience in manner but in matter.” (179) In the representational mode the focus is on the subject matter rather than the actors themselves. Through polyphony of images that refer to the subject the audience learns of the subject and the world it presents to the audience. “The actor acts out our ways of referring to the image of the world. Or, translated into the terms of our perception of his art: he does this by becoming in part a thing himself, in part by doing a thing, and in part by sharing it.” (197)
States closes the book with a short phenomenological analysis of the curtain call.