Semiotic Society of America, Annual Meeting
Philadelphia, PA -- October 21-23, 1994

Patrice Pavis, in his landmark work, Languages of the Stage, bemoans the
fact that an analysis of the contemporary theatre predicated upon the
Saussurian model has become an impossible task. Pavis asserts that:
 

The avant-garde theatre has brought about a crisis in the semiotic and
the referential relationship of the sign with the world. It has lost all
confidence in a mimetic reproduction of reality by the theatre, without
having invented a semiological system and an autonomous theatrical
language capable of taking its place (Pavis, 185).
 

Pavis argues that the concepts of language, sign, and signifier are all
currently in a state of flux. He ends his book with a manifesto
renouncing classical semiology and calling for the development of a new
form of analysis that will be appropriate for the postmodern avant-garde
theater.

This paper traces the aesthetic elements that precipitated this crisis;
specifically the subversive techniques and theories of Meyerhold and
Artaud which undermined the classical semiological approach to acting
and thus contributed to the crisis of the current postmodern theatre.

Naturalistic acting--initially championed by the Duke of Saxe Meinengin
in the mid-19th century and perfected by Stanislavsky and
Nemrovich-Danchenko at the Moscow Art Theatre at the beginning of this
century--. sought to represent human behavior in an illusionistic manner
so that the audience was encouraged to believe the action being
portrayed was analogous to everyday experience. The entire focus of the
Stanislavsky acting system was--and continues to be in the derivative
American Method --an attempt to synthesize actor and character so that
attention is not drawn to the craft of the performer, but to the part
being enacted. Exercises in maintaining public solitude, creating the
imaginary circle, and in object concentration are intended to
psychologically reinforce the actor’s ability to live "truthfully" under
imaginary circumstances so that the illusion of reality is not broken
for the spectator.

In the naturalistic theater, sets, costumes, props, lights and sound are
used to reinforce the illusion of objective, observable reality. Keir
Elam refers to this type of theater as Iconism (Elam, 25). Iconistic
theatre lends itself well to classical semiology. The text and
performance can be decoded separately or in conjunction, production
elements can be noted and straightforward assessments of functionality
and effectiveness can be gauged. In the Iconistic theatre, symbolic
elements are almost always textual and not performative. The dramatic
text, particularly in its narrative form, exists at the top of a
hierarchical structure and all elements of production serve to elucidate
the written word.

In 1897, Paul Fort opened the Théâtre d’Art and the symbolist movement
was launched. This mode of performance--created in opposition to the
dominant paradigm of naturalism--represented the birth of the theatrical
avant-garde. In symbolist theater, meaning is no longer centered in the
text and illustrated by the actors and production elements. Now it is
the director who creates an independent mise en scène combining the
visual arts and poetry to form a personal vision. With symbolism came
ambiguity of meaning and greater connotation in sign creation. Elam
refers to this type of representation as schematic. Schematic
theater--in opposition to iconic theater--is diagrammatic or
metaphorical and only a very general structural similitude exists
between the sign and object (Elam, 24).

Symbolist theater moved the figurative elements of the text into
performance--filtered through the aesthetic of the director--and thereby
undermined the validity of naturalistic acting techniques. One of
Stanislavksy’s protégés, Vsevolod Meyerhold, struggled to develop a
method of acting that would lend itself to this new type of performance.
Meyerhold, drawing upon circus techniques and commedia dell’arte sought
to create a system of performative hieroglyphs that could be used by
actors in a regulated manner and decoded by the audience. The result was
a system he called Biomechanics.

According to Meyerhold, "movement is the most powerful means of
theatrical expression." He believed that all other theatrical
elements--dialogue, costume and sets--the fundamental iconistic signs of
naturalistic theatre--were secondary to the actor's physical presence on
the stage and to the pantomimed movements of the skilled performer.
Meyerhold's system of Biomechanics sought to train actors to become
acrobats, dancers, mimes and illustrators so that the actor's body would
become "a word equivalent; the main transmitter of an invigorating shock
and a poetic force" (Leach, 56).

Influenced deeply by the non-verbal quality of Japanese Noh theatre and
Chinese classical theatre, Meyerhold believed that Western theatre
needed to establish a series of clearly discernible and decipherable
hieroglyphic signs. Each hieroglyph would have its own particular
meaning and would replace emphasis upon text. Meyerhold developed a
series of biomechanical acting exercises for his students that he later
incorporated successfully into productions. Biomechanics dispensed with
the psychological overtones of the system and embraced a performative,
theatrical outlook. Actors were intended to be illustrative performers;
highly skilled, entertaining, and imaginative.

Meyerhold, borrowing heavily from the Russian Formalists and
particularly from Vladimir Propp, developed the notion that character
was little more than an action-function and that there were only a
limited number of "types." The goal of the actor--in conjunction with
the director--was to identify his or her action type and assume an
easily interpreted, or decoded, means for representation. Meyerhold
embraced two means for delineating action-function; the first was the
assumption of the facial mask and the second was the utilization of the
Formalist notion of "deformation and estrangement." The twin goals of
estrangement and masks were to reveal social rather than personal
meaning. The actor does not psychologically embody the character
portrayed but rather illustrates the social type. For each scene, the
actor--through proficiency of craft--assumes a specific facial mask that
reflects on both character and action. In keeping with the Formalist
notion of estrangement and the illustrative acting method, Meyerhold s
ought to render actor from character and to prevent identification and
psychological assumption. He achieved this by encouraging cross-gender
casting, and by consciously avoiding giving actors roles for which they
were apparently well suited .

Meyerhold's aesthetic strategy--which was later adapted and popularized
by Bertolt Brecht-- was predicated upon foregrounding the means of
representation in order to maintain a critical distance between the
spectator and performance. This strategy forces the spectator into an
active role--the audience members become practicing semioticians who
must analyze the encoded performance (Aston and Savona, 92). This is a
radical shift away from the iconistic quality of naturalistic theatre.
Theatre is no longer a mirror in which the audience sees an
illusionistic representation of itself. Rather, the performance becomes
an event that is startling, challenging and alienating. The actor is a
technician whose craft is one of precision and competence in execution.
The audience is forced to critically analyze the performance and to
glean meaning from a variety of sign systems--both iconic and schematic.

Meyerhold's career as an actor and director began in 1890 and lasted
until 1940 when he was murdered by Stalin's secret police. It spanned
the birth of classical semiotics and continued through the articulation
of the Prague School. While the semioticians developed their notions of
sign systems, Meyerhold was crafting a practical schematic semioliogy of
performance that ultimately undercut the comfort and accessibility of
iconistic sign interpretation. Meyerhold greatly enriched the theatre by
increasing the complexity and multivalent quality of performance, but in
doing so ironically threatened the entire project of theatrical
semiotics. By challenging the foundations of the iconistic theatre,
Meyerhold insisted on the development of a new means of interpretat
ion--hieroglyphs and a new means of performance--foregrounding that
undermined the audience's shared ability to decode the theatrical event.
 

Keir Elam considers Meyerhold's system of biomechanics to be an ideolect
that represents a kinesic style. An ideolect is a subcode that is
associated with a personal aesthetic or the style of a particular artist
(Elam, 55). Ideolects complicate the process of code breaking because
the spectator must be trained to recognize and decode the inherently
idiosyncratic nature of an individual's style. The ideolects of Chekhov
or Strindberg--what we now refer to as the Chekhovian or Strindbergian
styles--are relatively easy to decode because both are outgrowths of
Naturalism. Beginning with Meyerhold and particularly with later artists
who emulated him, however, the process of decoding becomes ever more
challenging because these artists are self-consciously anti-paradi
gmatic.

Schematic signs, which by definition contain multivalent meanings,
become even more opaque when compounded by ideolects of the playwright,
director and actors. Meyerhold and, later, the German Expressionists,
took classical texts and contemporary works and imposed upon them a
series of ideolects that affected textual organization, the physical
stage space, the mode of interpretation, and the manner of enactment.
The results were productions that were hailed as theatrically brilliant,
but jarring, unsettling and difficult to comprehend.

This process of unraveling and diminished accessibility was accelerated
by Antonin Artaud and the score of theatre practitioners from Jerzy
Grotowski to Peter Brook and Robert Wilson who embraced and championed
his ideas. Artaud rejected the ideolects of Meyerhold, the schematic
theatre of the expressionists and the epic theatre of Brecht because he
believed that they were merely reactions against the prevailing
paradigm. Artaud, in contrast, sought to destroy it by rethinking the
entire enterprise of theatrical representation.

In Symbolist theatre, the text is mediated by the director; additional
levels of meaning--or rather semiotic layering is added. In Meyerhold
and later Brecht, the text is foregrounded by performative elements that
draw attention to the theatrical event as an artifice. Antonin Artaud,
however, took the process a gigantic step forward by negating the text.
The text is no longer a secondary or even a tertiary element. Theatre,
according to Artaud must be a language in space and movement--a language
of symbols and signs that exists in performance without having to pass
through or be mitigated by words. Words are simply a variation of human
noise--just as screams, grunts, moans, sighs, cries, yelps are also
vocal expressions. These expressions are combined with gestures, signs,
dance, other movement, lights, colors, and costumes to form ideograms
that convey meaning directly to the unconscious receptors of the
audience.

Artaud theorized that all conventional Western theatre--from Aeschylus
to Brecht--was based upon rational discourse--that an agon--an
argument--was the basis for all dramatic representation. Artaud rejected
this as a perversion of the original intent of theatre in the
pre-classical period--when theatre was a religious and mystical
experience. He insisted that in the violent and irrational times in
which we live (in Artaud’s case between the two world wars) that such
rational discourse was an obscene artificial construct full of
"falsehood and illusion" that was "an outlet for our worst instincts."
The so-called masterpieces of the past, according to Artaud, were also
irrelevant to our present condition and "veneration for what has already
been created petrifies us and deadens our responses."

Artaud was an early member of the Surrealist movement and though he
eventually parted ways with the group, he remained a firm proponent of
much of its philosophy. He sought to create a new form of theater that
would be immediate and direct; that would be understandable to all; that
would deal with irrational states of being and understanding. Artaud
proposed that new acting and directing techniques be invented that would
create a direct link between the unconscious minds of the actors and the
unconscious mind of the spectator. The role of the audience at such a
performance would be radically new. The audience would experience a
performance as a ritual event; as a group, they would surrender
themselves and live through a transformative religious and mystical exp
erience.

Artaud proposed the creation of a Theatre of Cruelty that would draw on
the collective myths and dreams of all men and women rooted in our
darkest fantasies of eroticism, violence, murder, and even cannibalism.
The performers would sacrifice themselves by enacting these events on a
visceral level. Because the performance would be irrational and would
impinge directly upon the senses and unconscious, this would truly be
theatre for the people--all people regardless of their economic status
or educational level. The effect of such a performance would be
purgative and cathartic. The spectators would be bonded together because
they would have experienced and survived collectively all the terrors of
life and death. This experience would be akin to a tribal communion; a
religious ceremony that would magically induce peace of mind. The
audience would experience this darkness at such a heightened level that
upon leaving the theatre, they would be drained of any desire to enact
such brutality in real life. The Theatre of Cruelty would therefore cure
society of the evil currently pervading it.

Artaud set forth a radical notion of how the actor should prepare and
perform. The actor, according to Artaud "is an athlete of the heart."
(Artaud, 133), who must "tap and radiate certain powers" (Artaud,134).
These powers are located in the organs and must be liberated so that the
actor becomes a mystical specter "from which affective powers radiate"
The actor must become a healer; a mystical shaman who must unlock his or
her own secret powers and display them to an audience. The secret of
acting is breathing correctly from various parts of the body and the
ability to scream and cry out at will so as "to take hold" of the
audience and force it to confront its own fears and desires.

From a semiological perspective, Artaud's theories are extremely
contradictory. Artaud asks, nay demands, that the audience surrenders
itself to the performance; that it not be allowed to rationalize or
intellectualize the stage event. Instead of decoding the performance,
the audience is expected to physically experience it. The contradiction
lies in the fact that in order to create such an experience, the
director and actors must be master semioticians capable of creating
signs that will be received without mitigation.

It is no coincidence that after the Second World War, when Artaud’s
ideas were widely disseminated and embraced, a great deal of emphasis in
theatre research included anthropological and psychological analysis.
Artists attempted to create pieces that would transcend linguistic and
cultural limitations; presentations, that while working on a non-verbal
level, would have universal meaning. Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook,
Julian Beck, Joseph Chaikin, Richard Foreman, Joanne Akalitis and Robert
Wilson, and countless other avante-garde directors have sought to put
Artaud’s theories into practice. These directors are the creators of the
current post-modern avant-garde.

The problem with the current avant-garde theatre, however, is its over
dependence upon the cognitive level of the receiving audience. Specific
meaning is elusive and even metaphoric interpretation is dependent upon
cultural experience. Perhaps the best example of this is an imagistic
art piece by Joseph Szajna entitled Replika. Szajna, a Polish survivor
of Auschwitz and Buchenwald created a non-verbal theatre piece that
investigates the horrors of the death-camps. Replika has been performed
around the world--from Tokyo to Caracas. In each city, however, the
piece has been interpreted in radically different ways. In New York and
in Tel Aviv, the audiences understood and decoded the deathcamp
symbolism. In Mexico City and Caracas, however, the entire point of the
piece was reduced to a statement about totalitarianism. Many post-modern
critics look at this inherent failing as a major success­They insist
that Replika should be interpreted by each audience in a manner that is
culturally relevant.

This is the crisis of the post-modern avant-garde that Patrice Pavis is
concerned with. There can no longer be specificity in meaning; no
rational discourse, and no didactic message if the intention of the
author is irrelevant and meaning is solely derived in the reception of
it. Theatre can no longer be an arena where the great social issues of
the day can be debated. The enterprise under these circumstances is
reduced to a purely physical, visceral and sensual experience. It is no
mere coincidence that many post-modern theatre pieces are now being
mounted in fine art museums such as the Guggenheim. This bellwether
change in theatre aesthetics, initiated by Meyerhold, championed by
Artaud and completed by his successors, threatens to undermine 2,500
years of theatre history. I concur with Pavis that a new paradigm must
emerge--either in semiotics or in theatre creation that will rectify
this current disjunction between intention and meaning.

WORKS CITED

Artaud, Antonin The Theater and its Double. Translated by Mary Caroline
Richards. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1958.

Aston, Elaine and Savano, George Theatre As Sign-System. New York:
Routledge, 1991.

Elam, Keir The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. New York: Methuen 1980

Leach, Robert Directors in Perspective: Vsevolod Meyerhold. New York
Cambridge University Press, 1989.

Pavis, Patrice Languages of the Stage New York: Performing Arts Journal,
1982.