Editing Acting (section)

==Semiotics==
[[File:Brehms Tierleben - allgemeine Kunde des Tierreichs (1911-1921) (20226745749).jpg|thumb|right|[[Antonin Artaud]] compared the effect of an actor's performance on an audience in his "[[Theatre of Cruelty]]" with the way in which a [[Snake charming|snake charmer]] affects snakes.]]
The [[semiotics]] of acting involves a study of the ways in which aspects of a performance come to operate for its audience as [[Sign (semiotics)|sign]]s. This process largely involves the production of meaning, whereby elements of an actor's performance acquire significance, both within the broader context of the dramatic action and in the relations each establishes with the real world.

Following the ideas proposed by the [[Surrealism|Surrealist]] theorist [[Antonin Artaud]], however, it may also be possible to understand communication with an audience that occurs 'beneath' significance and meaning (which the semiotician [[Félix Guattari]] described as a process involving the transmission of "a-signifying signs"). In his ''[[The Theatre and its Double]]'' (1938), Artaud compared this interaction to the way in which a [[Snake charming|snake charmer]] communicates with a snake, a process which he identified as "[[mimesis]]"—the same term that [[Aristotle]] in his ''[[Poetics (Aristotle)|Poetics]]'' ({{circa|335 BCE}}) used to describe the [[Mode (literature)|mode]] in which [[drama]] communicates its story, by virtue of its embodiment by the actor enacting it, as distinct from "[[diegesis]]", or the way in which a [[Narration|narrator]] may describe it. These "vibrations" passing from the actor to the audience may not necessarily precipitate into significant elements as such (that is, consciously perceived "meanings"), but rather may operate by means of the circulation of "[[Affect (philosophy)|affect]]s".

The approach to acting adopted by other [[theatre practitioners]] involve varying degrees of concern with the semiotics of acting. [[Konstantin Stanislavski]], for example, addresses the ways in which an actor, building on what he calls the "experiencing" of a role, should also shape and adjust a performance in order to support the overall significance of the drama—a process that he calls establishing the "perspective of the role". The semiotics of acting plays a far more central role in [[Bertolt Brecht]]'s [[epic theatre]], in which an actor is concerned to bring out clearly the socio historical significance of behaviour and action by means of specific performance choices—a process that he describes as establishing the "[[Not / But|not/but]]" element in a performed physical "''[[gestus]]''" within context of the play's overall "''[[Fabel]]''". [[Eugenio Barba]] argues that actors ought not to concern themselves with the significance of their performance behaviour; this aspect is the responsibility, he claims, of the [[theatre director|director]], who weaves the signifying elements of an actor's performance into the director's [[Dramaturgy|dramaturgical]] "montage".

The theatre semiotician [[Patrice Pavis]], alluding to the contrast between [[Stanislavski's system|Stanislavski's 'system']] and Brecht's [[Demonstration (acting)|demonstrating]] performer—and, beyond that, to [[Denis Diderot]]'s foundational essay on the art of acting, ''[[Paradox of the Actor]]'' ({{circa|1770}}–78)—argues that:
{{blockquote|Acting was long seen in terms of the actor's sincerity or hypocrisy—should he believe in what he is saying and be moved by it, or should he distance himself and convey his role in a detached manner? The answer varies according to how one sees the effect to be produced in the audience and the social function of theatre.<ref name=pavis7>Pavis (1998, 7).</ref>}}

Elements of a semiotics of acting include the actor's gestures, facial expressions, intonation and other vocal qualities, rhythm, and the ways in which these aspects of an individual performance relate to the drama and the theatrical event (or film, television programme, or radio broadcast, each of which involves different semiotic systems) considered as a whole.<ref name="pavis7"/> A semiotics of acting recognises that all forms of acting involve [[Dramatic convention|conventions]] and [[Code (semiotics)|codes]] by means of which performance behaviour acquires significance—including those approaches, such as Stanislvaski's or the closely related [[method acting]] developed in the United States, that offer themselves as "a natural kind of acting that can do without conventions and be received as self-evident and universal."<ref name=pavis7/> Pavis goes on to argue that:
{{blockquote|Any acting is based on a codified system (even if the audience does not see it as such) of behaviour and actions that are considered to be believable and realistic or artificial and theatrical. To advocate the natural, the spontaneous, and the instinctive is only to attempt to produce natural effects, governed by an [[Ideology|ideological]] code that determines, at a particular historical time, and for a given audience, what is natural and believable and what is [[Declamation|declamatory]] and theatrical.<ref name=pavis7/>}}
The conventions that govern acting in general are related to structured forms of [[Play (activity)|play]], which involve, in each specific experience, "[[Game|rules of the game]]."<ref name=pavis8-9>Pavis (1998, 8-9).</ref> This aspect was first explored by [[Johan Huizinga]] (in ''[[Homo Ludens]]'', 1938) and [[Roger Caillois]] (in ''[[Man, Play and Games]]'', 1958).<ref>Pavis (1998, 8).</ref> Caillois, for example, distinguishes four aspects of play relevant to acting: ''[[mimesis]]'' ([[simulation]]), ''[[agon]]'' ([[Conflict (narrative)|conflict]] or competition), ''[[Alea (Greek soldier)|alea]]'' ([[Indeterminism|chance]]), and ''ilinx'' ([[vertigo]], or "vertiginous psychological situations" involving the spectator's [[Identification (literature)|identification]] or [[catharsis]]).<ref name=pavis8-9/> This connection with play as an activity was first proposed by Aristotle in his ''Poetics'', in which he defines the desire to imitate in play as an essential part of being human and our first means of [[Child development|learning as children]]:
{{blockquote|For it is an instinct of human beings, from childhood, to engage in [[mimesis]] (indeed, this distinguishes them from other animals: man is the most mimetic of all, and it is through mimesis that he develops his earliest understanding); and equally natural that everyone enjoys mimetic objects. (IV, 1448b)<ref>Halliwell (1995, 37).</ref>}}
This connection with play also informed the words used in English (as was the analogous case in many other European languages) for [[drama]]: the word "[[Play (theatre)|play]]" or "game" (translating the [[Old English|Anglo-Saxon]] ''plèga'' or [[Latin]] ''ludus'') was the standard term used until [[William Shakespeare]]'s time for a dramatic entertainment—just as its creator was a "play-maker" rather than a "dramatist", the person acting was known as a "player", and, when in the [[Elizabethan era]] specific buildings for acting were built, they were known as "play-houses" rather than "[[Theater (building)|theatres]]."<ref>Wickham (1959, 32—41; 1969, 133; 1981, 68—69). The sense of the creator of plays as a "maker" rather than a "writer" is preserved in the word "[[playwright]]." [[The Theatre]], one of the first purpose-built playhouses in London, was "a self-conscious [[latin]]ism to describe one particular playhouse" rather than a term for the buildings in general (1967, 133). The word 'dramatist' "was at that time still unknown in the English language" (1981, 68).</ref>