Reading Notes for The World on Stage

The World on Stage Pg. 19 Reading

-“All that is on the stage is a sign”→ anything onstage is an illusion in a world separate from our own
-Sign and significations onstage
-signs bring more vitality to the world of theater especially by being “of it”
--illusionary vs. referential character
-when we put semiotics aside, we undervalue that things are what they are, but it can also represent other things
-Peter Handke: “in the theater light is a brightness pretending to be other brightness, a chair is a chair pretending to be another chair and so on”
--perspective is what really matters in theater because it’s what affects how things are portrayed
-people who work in the creative areas of theater are like “workers in the same field harvesting different kinds of crops
-Victor Shklovsky → the purpose of are it to impart the sensation of things as they are perceived and not as the are known→ art is a way of experiencing the artfulness of an object: the obect is not important
-Phenomenological attitude: art perceived as an act of removing things from a world in which they have become inconspicuous and seeing them anew
-things being concealed then revealed as though they were there all along
-phenomenological philosophy is a continual desymbolization of the world
-image vs. sign
-the word sign is a sign in itself, a sign of the semiotic attitude
-when we have the signifier and the signified
-there has to be a signified to be a signifier
-everything onstage is a sign of something
-the image is unique whearas the sign is not, the sign has no value until it repeats itself
-ex. A stop sign or a mens room sign, simple and stands for something it’s not
-repetition has a very big impact on what we see onstage and the impact of it, implication also has an impact on what we see and what we take away from it
-reading vs. watching a performance
-another example: a clock onstage, a working clock would be a distraction, etc
-watching children play roles onstage, we are able to suspend our idea of reality
-stage animals, child actors vs. adult actors
-intersection of 2 independent and self-contained phenomenal chains
-we accept what we are given onstage,
- with a dog onstage we may see the dog as a dog or as an image of a dog
-Theater→Theatron→”to see”→a way to see things objectively
-in early 19th century French theater, serious plays were not “furnished” but comedies had a lot of scenic elements
-Montigny invented blocking as we know it, forcing actors to move around household items like chairs and tables
-between 1850 and 1870, having real furniture onstage lost its shock value
-realism was a shock for the theatrical world
-chairs have been a staple property of the theater since Aristophanes: the chair as necessary vs. the chair as a collaborator on stage
-“what happens, when it happens is art” and “Art itself is nature”