Chapter 8 – Stage Language

1. 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

2. 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.

3. 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

4. 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)

5. Verbal and Nonverbal Language • Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard: • Orchard a verbal symbol for passing of old life, arrival of new social order • Sound of ax chopping down trees at play’s end a nonverbal sign representing destruction of family’s way of life

6. 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

7. Types of Stage Language: Soliloquy in Shakespeare • Uses soliloquy to take audience into character’s mind • “How all occasions do inform against me” soliloquy from Hamlet : • Precise argument reveals Hamlet’s intelligence. • Length of speech reveals tendency toward delay. • Soliloquy shows evolution from inactivity to activity.

8. 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

9. Types of Stage Language: Brecht’s Gestic Language • “Gest” refers to character’s 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. • Governor’s wife reveals “grasping” quality by twice pulling the child from the circle.

10. Contemporary Trends in American Theatre: Artaud’s “Theatre of Cruelty” • Antonin Artaud (1896–1948): • 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

11. 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

12. Contemporary Trends in American Theatre: David Mamet • Mamet’s 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.

13. Contemporary Trends in American Theatre: Sam Shepard • Shows inner workings of modern American family: • Buried Child (1978) • Themes: • Grown children’s complicated relationships with parents • Quest for identity • Evaporation of cherished values

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