ENGL E310F Creativity in Everyday and Literary English (Term 2)

Lecture

Text and Performance (II):

Performance Analysis of Dramatic Text

9.1 Textual analysis vs. performance analysis

- In textual analysis of dramatic texts:

 We apply conversation analysis (CA) to the script of a play, which is an
example of a stylistic analysis of a dramatic text.
 The analysis is confined largely to textual features  inherency approach
 It is primarily an analysis of text independent of performance.
- While it is possible to look at dramatic texts independently of performance,
plays are intended to be performed.
- Therefore, the literary value/literary creativity of dramatic texts needs to take
into account not only the texts itself but also:
 1) the verbal text of a play (e.g. how words are uttered, intonation, pitch,
volume, etc.); and
 2) other aspects of staging (e.g. characters’ actions and activities,
costumes, scenery, lighting, etc.).
- Such ‘performing art’ affects how a play is received and understood.
- What follows is that this lecture will focus on another approach to the analysis
of dramatic texts  performance analysis (which adopts a contextual approach)

9.2 Performance analysis

- The French theatre studies researcher Patrice Pavis (1992) sees the production
and staging of a play as what he calls ‘mise-en-scene’.
- The mise-en-scene of a play brings together different signifying systems of the
play. These signifying systems, which collectively make the meanings of the play,
include:
 the text itself, costumes, lighting, characters’ actions, activities, facial
expressions and gestures, etc.
- According to Pavis and to his ideas of mise-en-scene of a play, performance
analysis of dramatic texts suggests that:
 Scripted texts provide only the starting point of a play as a work of art.

E310F Creativity in Everyday and Literary English (2023) by Danny Leung Term 2 Lecture 9 1
  Performance involves the creative input of director and actors.
 The text only acquires full meaning in performance.
 A script may have a fixed meaning which will, however, change with
different mise-en-scene. In other words, the interpretation of a play is likely
to shift:
 with different productions and staging;
 over time; and
 in different social or cultural contexts.
- In this way, performance analysis of dramatic texts is a contextual approach to
the study of play.

9.3 Semiotics

- Definition of semiotics:
- Semiotics is the study of the social production of meaning from sign systems.
Rooted in Saussure’s ideas of structuralism, semiotics is concerned with in what
ways linguistic signs are means whereby meanings are both generated and
exchanged. Its objects of study are thus the different sign systems and codes at
work in society and the actual messages and texts produced thereby.
- Put it simple, semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign.
- Examples of such human sign system which give rise to meanings in society:
 Written text
 Verbal language
 Sign language
 Symbols, logos, emoticons, emojis
 Architecture
 Furniture
 Clothing
 Images
 Musical sounds
- The ways that different sign systems are combined to make meanings:
 Books  written text + images
 TV commercials  verbal language + clothing + musical sounds
 Online communication  written text + emoticons + emojis

E310F Creativity in Everyday and Literary English (2023) by Danny Leung Term 2 Lecture 9 2
9.4 Semiotics and performance analysis

- Questions: In what ways is semiotics related to the performance analysis of

dramatic texts?
- Answer: Theatrical performances rely on different SIGNS by means of which
meanings are generated and exchanged.
- Elam (2002), a theatre semiotician, suggests that dramatic performances are
seen as carefully contrived ‘performance texts’ in which different sign systems
work together to create meaning.
- The semiotics of drama tends to be highly complex, thus worth investigating,
because of the following multiplicity:
 1) Multiple sign systems can be identified (Kowzan, 1968):
 word, tone, mime (facial expression), gesture, movement, make-up,
hair-style, costume, props, setting, lighting music and sound effects
 2) Within each category, multiple variables can be identified, e.g. gesture
(Aston & Savona, 1991):
 arms open (declaration of love); arms clinging (pleading); baring of
breast (death wish); seizing a sword (death wish intensified)
- Pavis (1985) devised a ‘questionnaire’, which serves as a checklist for the study
of performance of plays.
- Some categories of this questionnaire are:
 text in performance; lighting system; stage properties; audience; actors’
performances and scenography
 Scenography includes:
 spatial forms
 relationship between audience space and acting space
 system of colours and their connotations
 principles of organisation of space

9.5 Performance analysis of Shakespeare

- In this section, we will look at how Maria Thomas (2006) provides a

performance analysis of extracts from different productions of the same
scripted play, Shakespeare’s Richard II.
- Thomas has identified a range of performance elements that contribute to the
meaning and literary value of the play.
- Her underlying assumptions of the performance analysis of plays are:
 1) the text is open;

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  2) the same script may work differently in different productions; and
 3) within the same production, interest and emphasis may vary between
different performances.
- Adopting a semiotic analysis of performance, Thomas is interested in in what
ways and to what extent the different SIGNS/variables besides the scripted text
(which is also a sign/variable) create meaning of a play.
- These signs/variables besides the text which come into play are:
 physical matters such as casting, gesture, or intonation;
 technical layers of lighting costume or other design; and
 contextual aspects such as location, time of day, or cultural expectations.

- Task: Read the extract and discuss the different meanings created in the three
film productions of the play.
- Historical background of the play ‘Tragedy of King Richard II’:
 The play was popular in its earliest performances in 1590s’ London, during
the last few years of the reign of Elizabeth I.
 It was written in the History Play genre, which provided Shakespeare with
his very first playwright success.
 It is entirely in verse, sometimes rhyming.
 Most audiences at that time were illiterate, so they went to ‘hear’ the play.
- Background of Richard II:
 Richard II is facing the deposition of his reigning monarch because he turns
out to be bad for the country and he is a childless monarch.
 He is forced to abdicate by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke.
- Both Richard II and Henry Bolingbroke are in a dilemma because it is an
unthinkable act to depose a monarch who is supposed to be the God’s anointed
ruler.
- The three film productions of Richard II:
 1989 English Shakespeare Company, Michael Bogdanov Director
 1995 Royal National Theatre, Deborah Warner Director
 2003 Globe Theatre Company, Mark Rylance Director
- When reading the extract, focus on the following three specific areas:
 1) What happens to the crown
 2) Relationship between Richard and Bolingbroke
 3) Delivery of some obscure and complex dialogue

1 RICHARD [to an attendant] Give me the crown.

Here, cousin, seize the crown. Here [to Bolingbroke] cousin -
On this side my hand, on that side thine.

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 Now is this golden crown like a deep well
That owes two buckets, filling one another,
The emptier ever dancing in the air,
The other down, unseen, and full of water.
That bucket down and full of tears am I,
Drinking my griefs, whilst you mount up on high.
2 BOLINGBROKE I thought you had been willing to resign.
3 RICHARD My crown I am, but still my griefs are mine.
You may my glories and my state depose,
But not my griefs. Still am I king of those.
4 BOLINGBROKE Part of your cares you give me with your crown.
5 RICHARD Your cares set up do not pluck my cares down.
My care is loss of care by old care done;
Your care is gain of care by new care won.
The cares I give, I have, though given away;
They tend the crown, yet still with me they stay.
6 BOLINGBROKE Are you contented to resign the crown?
7 RICHARD Ay, no; no, ay; for I must nothing be,
Therefore no no, for I resign to thee.

(Richard II, IV, i, lines 171-92; Greenblatt, 1997, p. 997)

- Analysis:
- 1989 English Shakespeare Company, Michael Bogdanov Director
- The interpretations of King Richard:
 ‘a clean-shaven, curly-locked dandy, using his outstanding control of
language as a last resort for his sense of himself and his kingship’
- The emotional focus was on Richard, attempting a last revenge on the plain-
speaking Bolingbroke by being so much more clever, and so much more at home
with courtly language.
- The crown is invested with as much significance as possible: golden in the
darkness.
- Neither Richard nor Bolingbroke was depicted entirely sympathetically.
- 1995 Royal National Theatre, Deborah Warner Director
- The interpretations of King Richard:
 ‘Effeminate … exhausted… assertive in defeat … playing a game … speaks
mesmorizingly, almost chanting as he takes the crown’
- The overall orientation and production was from a more traditionally female
paradigm. In this way, the drama was to heighten the family aspect and to
downplay the state politics.
- This production gave us a more appealing Richard by foregrounding a childhood
relationship between Richard and Bolingbroke.
- The closeness of this bond at times produced tears from both actors. The
overriding impression was of a family grief rather than a political coup.
- This production also made speeches which were used to be obscured and
dazzling in the Shakespearean English more explicit and vivid.

E310F Creativity in Everyday and Literary English (2023) by Danny Leung Term 2 Lecture 9 5
- 2003 Globe Theatre Company, Mark Rylance Director
- The interpretations of King Richard:
 ‘Playful, conspiratorial, comic, an actor-king, with [a] need to make
beautiful speeches and manipulate moments of pageantry’
- This production used Richard’s star status and characteristic playfulness,
combined with an intimate relationship with the audience, to produce a scene
where sympathetic laughter helped Richard face up to his inherited tragedy.
- Richard’s speeches are long and poetic while those of his enemies very short
and awkwardly expedient.
- This production focused less on the relationship between Richard and
Bolingbroke but more on the star and his audience.
- Richard II was seen as an actor-king.

9.6 Conclusion: one script many performances

- “Performance (‘the playing of texts on stage’) is the ideal way of investigating

their richness, both in terms of their original purpose as performed scripts, and
ultimately, in illuminating the range of meanings they might contain” (Thomas,
2006, p. 181).
- The following table illustrates the comparison between textual analysis and
performance analysis of dramatic texts:

Textual analysis Performance analysis

Interaction Between readers and the text Between audience, actors
and the mise-en-scene
Meaning Meaning resides in the text Meaning is produced in a
and literary value can be particular context and in
deduced from this interaction between actors
and audience
Interpretation Perhaps depending on Depending on the production
readers engaging with a and the cultural and linguistic
virtual performance contexts

Reference:

Goodman, S. & O’Halloran, K. (eds) (2006) The art of English: Literary creativity. Palgrave Macmillan in
collaboration with the Open University Press

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