Experimental Theatre and Semiology of Theatre: The Theatricalization of Voice

Abstract

This paper was prepared originally for the Theatre Colloquium sponsored by the Department of French at the University of Toronto in November 1980; and I should like to begin with a brief remark on the title of the session where it was delivered, a session devoted to "theatre as representation." As the title of my lecture was condensed to "Experimental Theatre and Semiology of Voice," I should explain immediately what the association of notions of re-presentation and semiology will cover here. The issue of my article is precisely, if not removing, then putting into parentheses the "re" of representation. In consequence, my argument will describe semiology as an intertext of a theory of the signifying process, rather than as a theory of signs. This approach derives from the particular kind of theatre with which I am dealing - that of Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk, Robert Wilson, Mabou Mines, II Carrozzone, and Squat - which disarticulates the logocentric domination which, in our culture, governs the relation between the different signifying systems (verbal/visual! auditory), and thus brings the signifying process to light at the expense of our fixation on meaning, as the mode of perception is transformed in and by acting. This theatre permits analysis with respect to its subjective and social determinants: the single perspective gives way to multiple meanings. The spectator-voyeur sees himself faced with his own desire and the basis of that desire, namely its relation to signifying systems. From now on in this theatre it is no longer a question of describing or miming what man does and dramatizing those actions: it is a question not of re-presenting facts and actions, but of dramatizing the formation of the being of man in/by languages. Thus this theatre conducts explorations through acting, stage languages, daily languages and aesthetic languages; by comparing new subjective dispositionswith the social dispositions of the subject put forward by theatre and society.