I'm not saying that performances are fanfic; I'm saying they're part of the source text.
Ah, but only if you've actually seen it being performed, surely?
But the play exists in fullness only when we consider it being performed.
Even then it doesn't exist in absolute fullness because there are always an infinite number of potential different performances - and the richer and more complex the play, the less possible it is for any single performance to dig out all the possible interpretations contained within the script.
So I'd resist the notion that what the actors bring to the performance isn't in the "text." It's not in the script, but theatre is always by its nature collaborative.
Yes, of course. On the contrary, what actors bring is essential to the text - you can do without everything else in theatre but not without the actors. However, I assumed when you referred to the "text" of R&G you meant the script, because when discussing it in the abstract, that's the only text there is - individual performances create such different texts that it's hard to make generalisations, especially as I don't suppose either of us has seen more than a fraction of those performances. And I don't think the "performance" constructed inside a reader's head is part of the text and more than the "peformance" constructed when they read a novel is - but I seem to remember a post of your where you differed on this view, so I don't know how productive it would be to pursue this further (on the grounds of irreconcilable differences of opinion).
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Date: 2007-04-14 01:58 pm (UTC)Ah, but only if you've actually seen it being performed, surely?
But the play exists in fullness only when we consider it being performed.
Even then it doesn't exist in absolute fullness because there are always an infinite number of potential different performances - and the richer and more complex the play, the less possible it is for any single performance to dig out all the possible interpretations contained within the script.
So I'd resist the notion that what the actors bring to the performance isn't in the "text." It's not in the script, but theatre is always by its nature collaborative.
Yes, of course. On the contrary, what actors bring is essential to the text - you can do without everything else in theatre but not without the actors. However, I assumed when you referred to the "text" of R&G you meant the script, because when discussing it in the abstract, that's the only text there is - individual performances create such different texts that it's hard to make generalisations, especially as I don't suppose either of us has seen more than a fraction of those performances. And I don't think the "performance" constructed inside a reader's head is part of the text and more than the "peformance" constructed when they read a novel is - but I seem to remember a post of your where you differed on this view, so I don't know how productive it would be to pursue this further (on the grounds of irreconcilable differences of opinion).