The Field of Drama

98 Pages·2000·6.156 MB·English

by  Martin Esslin

Of
HOW THE

SIGNS OF

DRAMA
CREATE
MEANING
ON STAGE

& SCREEN

M A R TI N

E S S L I N

methuen
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! The Field of Drama
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Martin Esslin joined the BBC in 1940 and was head of
Drama (Radio) from 1963-1977. Currently he lives one half
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of each year in California, where he is professor of drama at
Stanford University, and the other half in London. He is
\ author of books on Pinter, Brecht and Artaud, and of a
seminal book on modern drama, The Theatre of the Absurd.
He has published two collections of essays: Brief Chronicles:
. t Essays on Modem Drama and Mediations: Essays on Brecht,
Beckett and the Media. His critical articles have appeared
t, regularly in Plays and Players, Encounter, and many other
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Particularly by German-speaking dramatists.
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MARTIN ESSLIN
also by Martin Esslin
The Field of Drama

Brecht: A Choice of Evils
Mediations: Essays on Brecht, Beckett and the Media
Pinter the Playwright
HOW THE SIGNS OF DRAMA
CREATE MEANING ON STAGE AND SCREEN
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Contents
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Preface
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1 Introduction
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j II The Field of Drama
fr > III The Nature of Drama 22
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First published in Great Britain in 1987
by Methuen Drama, IV The Signs of Drama: Icon, Index, Symbol 43
... , *?. of Reed Consumer Books Ltd, V The Signs of Drama: The Frame 52
chelin House, 8r Fulham Road, London SW3 6RB VI The Signs of Drama: The Actor 56
anadn dA duicsktriaibnudt,e Md einlb tohuer nUen, iSteindg Satpaoteres aonf dA Tmoerroicnat o i VII The Signs of Drama: Visuals and Design 72
by Routledge, a division of VIII The Signs of Drama: The Words 79
Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc, IX The Signs of Drama: Music and Sound 88
29 West 35th Street, NYIOOOI X The Signs of Stage and Screen
91
Copyright © 1987 by Martin Esslin XI Structure as Signifier 106
XII The Performers and the Audience 128
First published in paperback in 1988 j XIII The Audience’s Competence:
Reprinted 1990,1991,i992}
i993j 1994 (twice) Social Conventions and Personal Meanings 139
I Printed anti bound in Great Britain by XIV A Hierarchy of Meanings 154
Cox & Wyntan Ltd, Reading, Berkshire Bibliography 179
Index ■\
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data 187 I
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Esslin, Martin
l he field of drama : how the signs of
drama createmeaning on stageand^creen. i
Drama. Semiotic aspects
I. Title !;
808.2
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ISBN 0-4I3^926(m
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! All the world’s a stage
Shakespeare
El gran teatro del mundo
Calderon
Die Bretter, die die Welt bedeuten
[The boards that signify the world]
Schiller
Wie machen wirs, dass alles frisch und neu ;
Und mit Bedeutung auch gefallig sei? :
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[What can we do that all be fresh and new
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And with significance be pleasing too?] !
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Goethe
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Preface
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There is no shortage of books on the nature and technique of
! drama. Yet I have always been struck by the narrowness of their
scope: they tend to concentrate entirely on stage drama, when,
! i i in fact, the overwhelming majority of dramatic material, the
largest proportion of the actual experience of drama for the vast
millions of its public, is derived from drama in the cinema and,
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above all, in television.
The specialists, whether theoreticians of classical tragedy or
highly sophisticated film critics - there is as yet hardly any
serious criticism of drama on television - regard their respective
! areas as strictly separate. Yet the ordinary member of the public
; does not make these rigid distinctions. That great and highly
intelligent actress Elisabeth Bergner once told me that she had
at last persuaded Albert Einstein, who was a great friend and
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admirer of hers, to accompany her to the theatre. After the
performance she asked him what he had thought of the play.
But the great man refused to give an opinion. He knew too little
about the finer points of performance. ‘You see’, he said, ‘I
hardly ever go to the cinema!’.
To look at the whole ‘field of drama’ seems to me to be a
useful undertaking, precisely because only by starting from an
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overview of all the aspects of dramatic performance can we
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arrive at a clear differentiation of those features that each of the
separate media - stage, film and television - can claim as
! specifically their own, as against the much larger number of
aspects they have in common.
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Preface
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I have also always thought it absurd that the rigid separation
What struck me as unfortunate, however, from the outset,
of stage drama from the cinematic media in higher education
was the obscure language and excessively abstract way in which
has led to the creation of separate theatre and film departments
the, in many cases, outstandingly brilliant exponents of semi­
in most universities and colleges, often hardly communicating
otics presented their findings. It almost seemed as though the
with each other when each could gready profit from sharing
very practicality and down-to-earth concreteness of what they
their insights into what, basically, are closely related and some­
were basically engaged in had led them to try and make it
times identical areas of theory and practice, which could much
appear as ‘scientific’ and ‘philosophical’ as possible. Of course,
more effectively be covered in a unified performing arts depart­
a scholarly subject needs a precise vocabulary. But all too often,
ment.
in reading these very involved texts, I for one was forced to
Moreover, in recent times, important new ideas have been
translate them back into practical terms only to realise that
applied to the analysis of drama, the way in which it achieves its
a very simple fact had been clothed in the most involved
effects and conveys its meaning. This semiotic approach is,
language.
basically, exttemely simple and practical. It asks: how is it
I well remember a conference on the semiotics of drama I
done? and tries to supply the most down-to-earth answers, by
attended to which one of the most distinguished directors of one
examining the signs that are used to achieve the desired com- of the world’s leading theatres had been invited. The assembled
munication.
scholars delivered themselves of their respective, highly intelli­
There is, of course, nothing radically new here, except that
j gent and theoretically brilliant papers, and then, eagerly asked
e enterprise is systematic and methodical rather than ad-hoc
the famous practitioner whether he had found some insights for
an impressionistic. When I first came across the beginnings of
his own work. They were deeply disappointed when he told
the new scholarly literature on the semiology and semiotics of the
! them that he had found it all wholly useless and impenetrable.
T and 1 fdt rather ^ M°liere’s M. Jourdain who
That, I think, is really unfortunate. For a semiotic approach,
lifp ^ t0 discover that he had been talking ‘prose’ all his
provided it is expressed in intelligible language, could be of
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Dreckf»lVi4»m^ pract*ca* work as a director of drama these were
great help to directors, designers, actors and other practitioners
the innn ^ questions that had always occupied me in making of drama on stage and screen. It could, even at the most basic
a (WtTeraK e ?raCtkal choices which constitute the work of level, lead them to think more clearly about what they are doing
should heJt 3t °f costume should this character wear? intuitively and by instinct.
speech whar T Stand wbile speaicin8 these lines? if I cut this Hence the present attempt to provide an overview of the field
Pee what element of meaning will be lost>
of drama, seen in the light of semiotics but in the widest
ing tiieu^f a f"** performance as an enterprise involv-
possible general frame of reference, in a form that might be
clarify the role eafh of signs and sign-systems and to accessible both to the practical workers in that field and to the
ultimate meaning of dements ^ in creatinS ^ general public of drama in all its forms.
serviceable and Linf t per^°irmance thus clearly is an extremely I have tried to avoid, as much as that is possible, the prolifera­
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and the member of die t0? .both for *** practitioner of drama tion of obscure vocabulary and pseudo-scientific jargon that
of what he has Keen P ° Wh° WantS t0 be critically aware screens so much valuable insight from the non-specialists. And
seemg and experiencing. I have always made my experience as a practical director,
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12 Preface
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dramaturg and critic the final arbiter in enunciating any princi­
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ples or conclusions. That - the constant testing of the theory
against actual results - seems to me the real use of a genuinely
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Introduction
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To make the book as accessible as possible to practical workers
and students in drama, I have tried to restrict the number of
r foot-notes and needless polemics with the specialist literature,
but, on the other hand, to provide a fairly full bibliography of
the whole field. i
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This book started as a series of lectures I was asked to give at
Drama, there can be no doubt about it, has become immensely
the University of California, Santa Barbara, and I am greatly
important in our time. More human beings than ever before see
indebted to Professor H. Porter Abbott and Professor Paul
more drama than ever before and are more directly influenced,
Hemadi whose initiative and help made it possible.
conditioned, programmed by drama than ever before. Drama
I am also grateful to my students who attended a graduate
has become one of the principal vehicles of information, one of
seminar I gave in the semiotics of drama at Stanford and whose j
the prevailing methods of ‘thinking’ about life and its situa­
cntical contributions to the discussion did much to clarify some tions.
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of my ideas.
Our time has witnessed a veritable explosion of drama
My friend Archana Horsting contributed valuable comments
through the photographic and electronic mass media. Where,
and ideas. Mr Peter Luddington, of Grant & Cutler Ltd.,
; previously, stage drama, live theatre, was the only method for
on on, enabled me to obtain books on the subject in a number 1 the communication of dramatic performance, today dramatic
a??ua®es ~ ^ere are few bookshops left in the world capable performance can reach its audiences in a multitude of ways:
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giving such truly scholarly bibliographical assistance. through the cinema, television, videotape, radio, cassette-
And my special thanks
are due to Mr Nicholas Hern of recordings. Consequently not only has the audience for drama
Methuen’s, as editor of rar
e expertise and patience. increased by truly astronomical progression as compared to
Martin Esslin previous ages, the actual quantity of dramatic performances
Winchelsea, Sussex
produced has gone up in equal proportion.
August 1986 !
Hence the immensely increased importance of drama in the
m -■ ••• life and culture of our time: never before has drama been so )
! pervasive in the lives of the large masses of people. Gone are the
days when experience of a dramatic performance was either a
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rare feast-day occurrence; or restricted to the social elites of
courts; or accessible only to the more affluent classes in the
! larger cities. Drama has become one of the principal means of i
communication of ideas and, even more importantly, modes of
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14 Introduction
■ Introduction 15
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human behaviour in our civilisation: drama provides some of
b’:/ the principal role models by which individuals form their upon an audience. The famous rules about the unities of time,
place and action derive from the assumption that, for example,
f identity and ideals, sets patterns of communal behaviour, forms !
people sitting in a theatre would find it difficult to believe that
values and aspirations, and has become pan of the collective !
the stage could represent different locations within the span of a
fantasy life of the masses - with the adventures of the heroes of I
single play, lasting an hour; and that, similarly, they would find
television series, the comic characters of situation comedy, the
it impossible to credit an action unfolding itself within that hour
powerful demi-gods of the cinema taking the place occupied by
as comprising events occurring over months or years, that, in
the heroes of the popular culture, folklore and myth of previous j
fact, the most they could accept would be the compression of
ages. |
the events of a single day into that hour.
More than ever, therefore, there is a need for us to under- j
Our own experience has shown that these assumptions by
stand what drama can and cannot express, how it formulates 1
Aristotle, which dominated the practice of drama in so many
and transmits its messages, what techniques it employs to j
places for such long periods are incorrect, at least as far as
convey them to its audience and how that audience can and does
present-day audiences are concerned, although it may, indeed,
grasp, ingest and understand the meaning of these messages -
well be that they were wholly valid for spectators in Aristotle’s
explicit or implicit, consciously understood or subliminally j
own time. We must never forget that human capacities can
absorbed.
change through time: human beings may learn to adjust them­
hat is why it should be worthwhile to attempt to look, in the
selves to new ways of perception, to increase their speed of
g t of the fundamental technological changes of the last hun-
reaction, and gain practice in accepting new ways of seeing and
e years and their impact on dramatic performance in its experiencing both reality and art. Children growing up now-
m of dmand kS ^ mCdia of lransmission> uP°n ^ whole adays who see several hours of drama on television each day must
be infinitely more effectively conditioned to accept and under­
mW. hat arethe means by which drama achieves its impact? I stand dramatic conventions than earlier populations who may
*c 0 these are employed, in common, by all the various have had far fewer opportunities to experience dramatic per­
ji ^ And which are specific to one or several among formance.
what ways do the effects of the different dramatic Yet, if Aristotle’s approach was based on practical considera­
3 audiences varY> and why? And - how do they tions, dramatic criticism has, in the course of time, also fre­
a y m uence, how can they learn from, each other? quently succumbed to the temptations of becoming all too
w e ve7. beginnings of theoretical thinking about the abstract, of slavishly following authorities of the past (above all !
woL effects the questi°n °f h°w drama : Aristotle’s Poetics themselves, having become hardened into

rigid dogma), excessively divorced from the practice of the art
. t een approached in a severely practical
wmoarnkn earh: riftode S P°etics (the most influential theoretical j and, even more dangerously, of growing excessively theoreti­
sinn* ™ r, f31113 m *ts w^°^e long history) derives its conclu- cal. More attention, for example, was, at one time, devoted to
the analysis of, say, the characters of Shakespeare, as though
’ f C 3Ve °^ten assumed the authority of unbreakable
ofch’r considerations of what kinds of actions, what kinds |uey were real people, than to the more mundane problem of
rs would exercise the most powerful emotional effect ow Shakespeare actually delineated character. This, ultimately,
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Introduction
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amounted, and still amounts, to a concentration on the content
of drama (important though that clearly is) rather than on the I time and place of the action, the events which form its ‘plot’ are
delineated, a semiotic approach can shed valuable light on the
| . meansand methods by which drama conveys its contents. Yet the *
' process of how an audience comes to apprehend the basic
dichotomy between content and form is a false one, because I
outline of the dramatic action, the very ground from which the
form determines content and content form and a change of form
complex and multifarious higher levels of meaning of the per­
alters the content, and a change of content requires a different
formance will ultimately arise for the audience.
form to express it. And so, to neglect a closer analysis of the
There has been a great upsurge of interest and research in the
often very mundane methods by which meaning is conveyed in
semiotics of theatre in recent years and much valuable work has
drama is to inhibit an understanding in depth of the essential !
been done by a number of semioticians, above all in France,
considerations upon which truly insightful - and constructive- I
Germany and Italy. The present study proposes to make use of
criticism must be based. j
their results, but to maintain, at the same time, a certain critical
All the elements of a dramatic performance - the language of j
distance from their methods and aims.
the dialogue, the setting, the gestures, costumes, make-up and !
voice-inflections of the actors, as well as a multitude of other I
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signs - each m their own way contribute to the creation of the I The semiotics of drama in its present form originated at the
meaning’ of the performance. A dramatic performance must, I
beginning of this century - from the work of the Russian
at the most basic level, be regarded as essentially a process by I formalist critics who began to develop ways of looking at the
w c information about the actions that are to be mimetically j formal aspects of works of literature by close analysis of how
reproduced is conveyed to the audience. Each element of the j they are actually producing their effects; followers of this
pe ormance can be regarded as a sign that stands for an ingre- tendency, largely in Prague in the 1930s, began to apply this
Se°acdonVer’a 1 bfa scene>an incident, a moment method to drama. They were, at the same time, also inspired by
the work of the two great pioneers of the new approach that has
exnlltp S^CC ^ges attempts have been made to ! been the basis of the current development of semiotics: Ferdi­
In rhp ^stemadze our understanding of how signs work, j nand de Saussure (1857-1913), the father of modem linguis­
crearinn f k j?ntury dlese efforts have been intensified in the j tics, (whose ‘Course in General Linguistics’ was reconstructed
reanon of the isapUne 0f Semiotics, the branch of knowledge j from their lecture notes and posthumously published by some
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betwppn ! TS 311(1 how signs are used in communication of his pupils in 1916), and the great American philosopher »
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between human beings to convey Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914).
methodsPoaching the dramatic media with some 0o1f tuhiwe Saussure treated language as a system of signs - and both he
open un d i S ^ Semiotics has made available we can and Peirce then extended the idea by pointing out that, in fact,
language is just one, among many, systems of signs - pictures,
apDroarli t °wn“t0"earthj highly practical and concrete
drama Rv ° C- Vnderstan<^ng and critical appreciation of gestures, manners, movements, and a whole host of others -
and that, to understand how human beings communicate about
veys the, by what means, what signs, drama con-
built ud niJ? ^formation through which the dramatic fiction is the world and themselves, an analysis of all these different
systems of signs would be useful and productive. That field of
5 ce y piece, and through which the characters, the
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