On the level: a dramaturgical approach to the comics character

Abstract

ABSTRACT For decades, artists and theorists have written of the ‘performative’ nature of comics with the panel as a ‘stage,’ and the design process itself as ‘acting.’ The approaches vary from passing analogies to book-length efforts. While ‘acting’ gets a great deal of attention, its substrate, the dramatic character, has gone chronically undertheorized. This article develops a dramaturgical methodology of characterisation based on the work of the late Earle Gister to analyse the function of character in graphic novels. The exercise reveals common and distinct conceptual modes or levels of function that may be understood in dramaturgical terms. The orchestration of these levels undergirds narrative complexity and may even expose the unresolved anxieties of the artist.