Semiotics of Theatrical Performance
Author(s): Umberto Eco
Source: The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 21, No. 1, Theatre and Social Action Issue (Mar., 1977),
pp. 107-117
Published by: The MIT Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1145112 .
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According to Jorge LuisBorges, AbulgualidMohammedIbnAhmed IbnMohammahd
Ibn Rushd, better known as Averroes, was thinking-something like one
thousand years ago, more or less-about a difficult question concerning Aristotle's
Poetics. As you probably know, Averroes was a specialist on Aristotle, mainlyon the
Poetics. As a matter of fact, Western civilization had lost this book and had rediscovered
it only through the mediation of Arab philosophers. Averroes did not know
about theatre. Because of the Muslimtaboo on representation, he had never seen a
theatrical performance. At least, Borges, in his short story The Quest of Averroes,
imagines our philosopher wondering about two incomprehensible words he had
found in Aristotle, namely "tragedy"and "comedy."A nice problem,since Aristotle's
Poetics is nothing else but a complex definitionof those two words, or at least of the
firstof them.
The novel of Borges is long and fanciful. Let me only quote two episodes. Inthe
firstone, Averroes is disturbed by some noise coming fromdownstairs.Onthe patioa
group of boys are playing. One of them says, "Iam the Muezzin,"and climbs on the
shoulders of another ore, who is pretending to be a minaret.Others are representing
the crowd of believers. Averroes only glances at this scene and comes back to his
book, trying to understand what the hell "comedy"means.
Semiotics of Theatrical Performance
by Umberto Eco
In the second episode, Averroes and the Koranist Farach are talking with the
merchant Albucasim, who has just come back from remote countries. Albucasim is
telling a strange story about something he has seen in Sin Kalan(Canton):a wooden
house with a great salon full of balconies and chairs, crowded with people looking
towards a platformwhere fifteen or twenty persons, wearingpainted masks, are riding
on horseback, but without horses, are fencing, but withoutswords, are dying, but are
not dead. They were not crazy, explains Albucasim, they were "representing"or
"performing"a story. Averroes does not understand, and Albucasimtriesto explain it:
"Imagine,"he says, "that someone shows a story instead of telling it.""Did they
speak?" asks Farach. "Yes, they did,"answers Albucasim. And Farach remarks,"In
such a case they did not need so many persons. Only one teller can tell everything,
even if it is very complex." Averroes approves. At the end of the story, Averroes
decides to interpretthe words "tragedy"and "comedy"as belonging to encomiastic
discourse.
Averroes touched twice upon the experience of theatre, skimmingover it without
understanding it. Too bad, since he did have a good theoretical frameworkready to
define it. Western civilization, on the contrary, during the MiddleAges, had the real
experience of theatrical performance but had not a working theoretical net to throw
over it.
I
108 THEDRAMAREVIEW/T73
We now have the chance to have both, but sometimes we areas blindas Averroes
was. There are various kinds of blindness: there is blindness by absence and a
blindness by excess of light.Averroes had no theatre at all;we have too much of it. If
you look at the firstbibliographicalitems on semiotics of theatre (the bibliographyin
VS 11 has listed 80 of them) you might be overwhelmed by the abundance of witty
remarks,of skillful analyses of avant-garde pieces, but you might lack an essential
definition.
Semiotics can be conceived of either as a unifiedtheoretical approachto the great
varietyof systems of signification and communication, and in this sense itconstitutes
a metalinguistic discourse dealing with any of its objects by means of homogeneous
categories, or it can be conceived as a description of those various systems insisting
on their mutualdifferences, theirspecific structuralproperties,their idiosyncrasiesfrom
verballanguage to gestures, fromvisual images to body positions, from musical
sounds to fashions. Itshows a wide range of "languages" ruled by differentconventions
and laws. Itcan investigate those variousdomains either at the elementary level
of their consecutive units (such as words, color spots, physical formants of sounds,
geometrical or topological shapes) or at the more complex level of texts and
discourses-that is, narrativestructures, figures of speech and so on.
What,then, are the specific object and the startinglevel of a semiotics of theatre,
since theatre is, among the various arts, the one in which the whole of human
experience is co-involved, the very place in which complete "son et lumiere"events
take place, in which human bodies, artifacts, music, literaryexpressions (and therefore
literature, painting, music, architecture and so on) are in play at the same
moment?Tadeusz Kowzan,one of the leading theatresemioticians of the present time
(the author of Literature et spectacle, Mouton, 1975) has isolated thirteen sign
systems* at work in a theatrical performance:words, voice inflection, facial mimicry,
gesture, body movement, makeup, headdress, costume, accessory, stage design,
lighting, music, and noise. Everyone of these systems has a logic in itself,and Iam not
sure that the list is complete. Kowzan, like many others, has rightlypointed out that
the object of theatrical semiotics is the performance, or the mise-en-scbne, not the
literarytext. But other authors have considered the text as the "deep structure"of the
performance,tryingto find in itall the seminal elements of the mise-en-scene. Others
(from Souriau to the Greimas' school) have studied the elementary structure of
dramaticaction, or les situations dramatiques, therefore merging research in theatre
with research of narrative structures-the forerunner of this approach has been,
without any doubt, Aristotle. I could continue to list many researchers and different
approaches, but you might get the impression that the semiotics of theatre is nothing
but an arithmeticsum of the semiotic analyses of other forms of communication.
*Seep. 87 in T72 for complete chart of Kowzan'sthirteensign systems.
SEMIOTICSOFTHEATRICALPERFORMANCE109
Howeverthe firstduty of a new (or old) theory is not only to isolate its own object
but also to do it in a more essential way than before. Whatwe ask a theory for, is to
give us back an old object illuminatedby a new light in orderto realizethatonly from
that point of view the object can be really understood. Is semiotics able to do that? I
am not sure of it. Semiotics is a very young discipline, only two thousand years old,
and it has a terrifictask to perform, since nearly everything seems to fall under its
headings.
One of its main temptations is to start straight away from the most complex
phenomena, instead of rediscovering the most basic features of a given "language."
Among the various semiotic disciplines, only their older sister (or mother?), linguistics,
has demonstrated enough wisdom and prudence to avoid, at its firststeps, the
analysis of texts. Itstartedwith phonemes, words and phrases (andonly now is trying
to elaborate a transphrastic linguistics, or a theory of texts). But if you look, for
instance, at the various attempts in the semiotics of literature, of painting or of
architecture, you may detect a sort of "parvenu"complex. Itseems that many literary
semioticians would feel ashamed to study LittleRed RidingHood instead of Paradise
Lost; it seems that many visual semioticians would consider themselves scientific
freshmen ifthey studied how one perceives a square ora triangle,and feel themselves
compelled to skip away directly towards "scenographies of tableaux" and sophisticated
analyses of Poussin or Raphael. I fought strenuously against certain semioticians
of architecturewho maintainedthatPalladio'svillasarearchitecturewhile public
urinals, log cabins and dog's beds are not-refusing to understand that if there is a
"language"of architecture it basically arose when the first man nailed a stick in the
ground to shape a space (the space aroundthe stick vs. the space farfromthe stick) or
when a neolithic builder put a horizontalstick upon two verticalones to produce the
first element of that "architecture"we now admire in Stonehenge as well as in the
Parthenon. The main problemof linguistics is to understandwhy"mama"and "papa"
and not (or at least, not immediately)what they mean or why and how we understand
such an incipitas "riverrunpast Eveand Adam's,fromswerve of shore to bend of bay,
brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculationback to HowthCastle and Environs."
The same is true with a semiotics of theatrical performance. In order to try to
formulateit,we should begin with a positively naive attitude,assuming thatwe do not
know what Molieredid, who Samuel Beckett was, how Stanislavsky made somebody
feel himself to be an apple or how BertoltBrecht made an apple appearto be a piece of
criticism of capitalist society.
Let me start with an example proposed (without thinking of theatre) by the
founding father of Americansemiotics, C. S. Peirce. He once wondered what kindof
sign could have been defined by a drunkardexposed ina public place bythe Salvation
Army in order to advertise the advantages of temperance. He did not answer this
question. Ishall do it now. Tentatively.We are ina betterposition thanAverroes.Even
though trying to keep a naive attitude, we cannot eliminate some background
knowledge. We have read not only Aristotle but also Francis Ferguson, Etienne
I
I
110 THE DRAMAREVIEW/T73
Souriau, Peter Szondi, Umberto Eco and Woody Allen. We know Sophocles, Gilbert
and Sullivan, and KingLear,ILove Lucy and Enattendant Godot and A Chorus Line,
Phbdre and No, No Nanette, Murderin the Cathedraland Let MyPeople Come and
The Jew of Maltaand Oh Calcutta!.Therefore we immediately suspect that in that
sudden epiphany of intoxication lies the basic mystery of (theatrical)performance.
As soon as he has been put on the platformand shown to the audience, the
drunken man has lost his original nature of "real"body among real bodies. He is no
more a world object among world objects-he has become a semiotic device; he is
now a sign. A sign, according to Peirce, is something that stands to somebody for
something else in some respect or capacity-a physical presence referringback to
something absent. Whatis our drunkenman referringbackto? To a drunkenman.But
not to the drunkwho he is, but to a drunk.The present drunk-insofar as he is the
member of a class-is referring us back to the class of which he is a member. He
stands forthe category he belongs to. There is no difference, in principle,between our
intoxicated character and the word "drunk."
Apparently this drunkstands for the equivalent expression, "Thereis a drunken
man,"butthings are not that simple. The physical presence of the humanbody along
with its characteristics could stand either for the phrase, "Thereis a drunkenman in
this precise place and in this precise moment,"or forthe one"Once upon a timethere
was a drunkenman";it could also mean, "Thereare many drunkenmen inthe world."
As a matterof fact, in the example Iam giving, and according to Peirce's suggestion,
the thirdalternativeis the case. To interpretthis physical presence in one orin another
sense is a matter of convention, and a more sophisticated theatrical performance
would establish this convention by means of other semiotic media-for instance,
words. But at the point we are, ourtipsy-sign is open to any interpretation:He stands
for allthe existing drunkenmen in our realworldand inevery possible world.He is an
open expression (or sign-vehicle) referringback to an open range of possible con-
tents.
Nevertheless, there is a way in which this presence is differentfromthe presence
of a word or of a picture.Ithas not been activelyproduced (as one produces a wordor
draws an image)-it has been picked up among the existing physical bodies and ithas
been shown or ostended. It is the result of a particularmode of sign production.
Ostension has been studied by medieval logicians, by Wittgenstein, by contemporary
theorists of theatre (for instance, the Czech, IvoOsolsobe). Ostension is one of the
variousways of signifying, consisting in de-realizing a given object inorderto makeit
stand for an entire class. Butostension is, atthe same time, the most basic instance of
performance.
You ask me, "Howshould I be dressed for the partythis evening?"IfI answer by
showing my tie framed by myjacket and say, "Likethis, more or less," I amsignifying
by ostension. Mytie does not mean myactualtie butyour possible tie (whichcan be of
a different stuff and color) and I am "performing"by representing to you the you of
this evening. I am prescribing to you how you should look this evening. Withthis
simple gesture Iam doing something that is theatre at its best, since Inot only tell you
SEMIOTICSOFTHEATRICALPERFORMANCE 111
something, but I am offering to you a model, giving you an order or a suggestion,
outlining a utopia or a feasible project.Iam not only picturinga given behavior,Iam in
fact eliciting a behavior, emphasizing a duty, mirroringyour future. InJakobsonian
terms, my message is at the same time a referential, a phatic, an imperative, an
emotive-and (provided I move gracefully) it is esthetic. By picturingyour futureway
of dressing (through my present one) I have, however, added the verbal expression
"moreor less." Myperformance,which was eminentlyvisual and behavioral,has been
accompanied by a verbal metalinguistic message establishing some criteriaof pertinence.
"Moreof less" signified "makingan abstractionfromthe particularstuff, color
and size of my tie." It was a ratherimportantdevice; it helped you to de-realize the
object that was standing for something else. Itwas reducingthe pertinentfeatures of
the vehicle I used to signify "tie"to you, in order to make it able to signify all the
possible ties you can thinkof.
The same happens with our intoxicated man. It is not necessary that he have a
specific face, a specific eye color, a moustache or a beard, a jacket or a sweater. Itis,
however, necessary (or at least I think so) that his nose be red or violet; his eyes
dimmed by a liquidobtuseness; his hair,his moustache or his beard ruffledand dirty;
his clothes splashed with mud, sagging and worn-out. I am thinking of the typical
Bowery character butwhen Ithinkof him, Iam readyto makeabstractionsfrommany
features, providedthat some essential characteristics are conserved and emphasized.
The list of these characteristics is established by a social code, a sort of iconographic
convention. The very moment oursargeant of the SalvationArmyhas chosen the right
drunk, he has made recourse to a socialized knowledge. His choice has been
semiotically oriented. He has been looking for the rightmanjust as one looks forthe
rightword.
Nevertheless, there is something that distinguishes our drunkardfrom a word.A
word is a sign, but itdoes not conceal its sign-quality. We conventionally accept that
through words someone speaks about reality, but we do not confuse words with
things (except in cases of mental illness). When speaking, we are conscious that
something impalpable (flatus vocis) stands for something presumably palpable
(except in cases of lying). But not every sign-system follows the same rules as the
others. Inthe case of our elementary model of mise-en-scbne, the drunkis a sign, but
he is a sign that pretends not to be such. The drunkardis playing a double game: In
order to be accepted as a sign, he has to be recognized as a "real"spatio-temporal
event, a real human body. In theatre, there is a "square semiosis." With words, a
phonic object stands for other objects made withdifferentstuff. Inthe mise-en-scene
an object, first recognized as a realobject, is then assumed as a sign in orderto refer
back to another object (orto a class of objects) whose constitutive stuffis the same as
that of the representing object.
Istress this point because it makes evident a crucialsemiotic question:that is, the
difference between so-called naturaland artificialsigns. Everybodyagrees on the fact
I
112 THE DRAMAREVIEW/T73
that words or pictures are signs insofar as they are intentionallyproduced by human
beings in order to communicate. But many semioticians wonder whether medical
symptoms, animalimprintsor unintentionalbody movements areto be considered as
signs. Undoubtedly the trace of a cat's paw on the ground means that an animal
(namely a cat) has passed there. Undoubtedly ifIstagger, it"means"thatIhavedrunk
a little more than is due. But can one consider those events as signs? Is there a
difference between signification by means of intentionaland artificialdevices ruledby
a convention (such as words or roadsignals) and signification as inferredfromnatural
and unintentional events such as symptoms and imprints?
The semiotic approach of Peirce is, in my view, the most powerful because it
proposes a unified set of definitions able to take into account both species of signs.
Both are instances of something standing for something else on the basis of previous
learning (or convention), and I agree with Charles Morriswhen he says that,
something is a sign only because it is interpreted as a sign of
something by some interpreter.... Semiotic then is not concerned
withthe study of a particularkindof object butwithordinaryobjects
insofar (and only insofar) as they participate in semiosis.
I thinkthat this is a paramountdefinitionof the semiosis of mise-en-scene, since it is
hardto distinguish, in suth a framework,artificialsigns from naturalones. Whatis a
Chinese pot upon a table in a set design? A naturalobject? An artificialdevice? Is it
representing something else?
Our drunk is representing drunkenness. His red nose has been selected as a
naturalunintentionalevent able to intentionally(the intentionbelongs to the Salvation
Army,not to him) represent the devastating effects of intemperance. But what about
his teeth? There is no specific convention establishing that an average drunkenman
lacks his incisors or has a set of black teeth. But if our intoxicated man possesses
those characteristics, this would work very well. Insofaras the man becomes a sign,
those of his characteristics that are not pertinent to the purposes of representation
also acquire a sort of vicarious representative importance. The very moment the
audience accepts the convention of the mise-en-scbne, every element of that portion
of the world that has been framed (put upon the platform)becomes significant. Iam
thinking of the sociopsychological frameanalysis proposed by ErvingGoffman in his
latest book. Goffman imagines two situations, both concerning a mirrorand a lady.
Firstsituation:The mirroris ina beauty parlorand the lady,instead of using itto adjust
her hairdressing, inspects the quality of its frame. That seems irregular.Second
situation:The mirroris exhibited in the shop of an antiquaryand the lady, instead of
considering the quality of the frame, mirrorsherself and adjusts her hair.That seems
irregular.The difference in the mode of framing has changed the meaning of the
actions of the characters in play. The contextual frame has changed the meaning of
I
the mirror'scarved frame-that is, the frameas situation has given a differentsemiotic
purportto the frame as object. In both cases, however, there is a framing, an ideal
platformingor staging, that imposes and prescribes the semiotic pertinence both of
the objects and of the actions, even though they are not intentionalbehaviornornon-
artificialitems.
I should, however, stress that, until now, I have incorrectly put together natural
and unintentional signs. I have done it on purpose because it is a kind of confusion
frequently made by many semioticians. But we should disambiguate it.
On one hand, Ican produce a false naturalevent, as when Ipurposely produce a
false imprintin orderto fool somebody. Ican produce a false symptom by paintingred
spots on my face to pretend I have measles.
On the other hand, Ican produce unintentionallywhat usually is conceived to be
intentional (the most typical examples are psychoanalytic slips of the tongue orthose
common errors that everybody makes when speaking a foreign language), but Ialso
can produce intentionally what is usually believed to be unintentional.For instance,
his pronunciationshows that a manis, let me say, a Frenchmanspeaking English.The
choice of English words is an intentional act, the way of pronouncing them, even
though semiotically important(it means: "Iam a Frenchman") is unintentional.But
what about a fictional character purposefully emitting French-likephonemes in order
to mean "Iam French,"while he is perfectly all-American-maybe a CIAagent trying
to get political information by talking with a French Communist (and without
knowing-obviously-that he could get the same information by reading the daily
I'Humanit6)? Is there a difference between an actor who, to pretend having been
whipped, draws red lines on his shoulders and anotherone (a more professional actor
more religiously following the principles of realism) who really wounds himself in
order to get really bleeding traces?
I have no clear and definite responses forthese questions. Ionly wanted to make
clear to what an extent the elementary problems of dramaticfiction are strictlylinked
with the basic problems of general semiotics.
I think (and I have elaborated this point elsewhere) that the elementary mechanisms
of human interaction and the elementary mechanisms of dramaticfiction are
the same. This is not a witty idea of mine: from Goffman to Bateson and from the
current researches in ethnomethodology to the experiences of a Palo Alto group
(thinkalso of EricBerne's behavioralgames models in Games People Play) everyday
life is viewed as an instance of theatrical performance. This finally explains why
esthetics and criticism have always suspected that theatrical performances were
instances of everyday life. Itis not theatre that is able to imitatelife;itis social lifethat
is designed as a continuous performanceand, because of this, there is a linkbetween
theatre and life.
Let me outline an elementary matrixconsidering eight possible types of interaction
inemittingand receivingunintentionalbehavioras signs. Letme list under"E"the
intention of the emitter ("+"meaning that the behavior is intentional and "-" that it is
not), under "A" the intentionality or the unintentionality of the reaction of the
Iaddressee and under "I"the intention that the addressee attributes (or does not
attribute)to the emitter
E A I
1 + + +
2 + +
3 + - (+)
4 + ()
5 - + +
6 - + -
7 - (+)
8 (-)
Case number 1: An actor hobbles along, pretending to be a lame person. The
addressee understands that he is doing it voluntarily.
Case 2: I simulate a limp in order to make the addressee believe that I am lame,
and the addressee consciously receives this piece of information,believingthat mybehavioris
unintentional.This represents the typical case of successful simulation.
Cases 3 and 4: Inorderto get ridof a boringvisitor,Idrumon the desk withmyfingers
to express nervous tension. The addressee receives this as a subliminalstimulus that
irritateshim; he is unable to attributeto me either intentionalityor unintentionality,
although later he might (or might not) realize what happened and attributeplus or
minus intentionalityto my act.
Cases 5 and 6: Being bored bythe same visitor,Iunintentionallydrumwithmyfingers.
The visitor realizes the situation and attributes plus or minus intention to me.
Case 6 is also the one of the patientemittingan involuntaryslip of the tongue duringa
conversation with his psychoanalyst, who understands the sign and recognizes thatit
was not intentionallyemitted.
Cases 7 and 8 are variations of cases 3 and 5, with a different misunderstanding
strategy.
In fact one can get from this matrixall the basic plots of Western comedy and
tragedy, from Menanderto Pirandello, or from Chaplin to Antonioni. But the matrix
could be furthercomplicated byaddingto itafourthitem;that is, the intentionthatthe
emitterwishes thatthe addressee attributeto him."Itell you p so that you believe that I
am lying and that, in fact, Imeant q while p is reallythe case." Rememberthe Jewish
story reportedby Lacan:"Whyare you telling methatyou aregoing to Krakowso that
Ibelieve that you are going to Lenberg,while as a matterof fact you are reallygoing to
Krakowand, bytelling itexplicitly,you aretryingto conceal it?"The new matrixwould
have sixteen rows. (Recently an Italianscholar, Paola Gulli, has applied this matrixto
SEMIOTICSOFTHEATRICALPERFORMANCE
the well-known "nothing"uttered by Cordelia, examining the different interplayof
interpretationsand misunderstandings taking place between Cordelia and KingLear,
Cordelia and France, KingLearand Kentand so on. Butin an unpublished manuscript
on rhetoric, Paolo Valesio has furthercomplicated this analysis by interpretingthe
"nothing"of Cordelia as awittyrhetoricaldevice aimed notto convince Learbutrather
to informFrance about her mental disposition and rhetoricalability.)
Coming back to our poor tipsy guinea pig (who, I believe, is rathertired from
having been kept standing upon his platformfor an untenable amount of time), his
presence could be reconsidered in the light of the above matrix.Inany case, we could
concentrate in this bare presence the whole set of problems discussed by Austin and
Searle apropos of speech acts, and all the questions raised by the logic of natural
languages or epistemic and doxastic logic apropos of allthose expressions such as, "I
want you to believe, I believe that you believe, Iamasserting that, Iam promisingthat,
I am announcing that, and so on." In the very presence of that drunken man, we are
witnessing the crucial antinomy that has haunted the history of western thought for
two thousand years. It is known as the "liarparadox"-someone asserts that all he is
telling is false.
In the same way, should the drunken man open his devastated mouth and utter
something like"Ilove liquor"or"Don'ttrust alcohol" ... Well,we ought to face atthat
precise moment the linguistic and logical set of problems concerning the difference
between the sujet de I'enonciation and the sujet de I'enonce. Who is speaking, qui
parle? That intoxicated individual?The class he is representing?The SalvationArmy?
Luis Prieto has recently pointed out that in theatre (as well as in cinema) words
are not transparent sign-vehicles referring back to their content (and through it to
things). They aresign-vehicles referringbackto other sign-vehicles, namely,to a class
of sign-vehicles. They are phonic objects taken as objects and ostended as such. The
statement "Ilove liquor"does not meanthatthe subject of the utteranceloves liquorit
means that there is somewhere somebody who loves liquor and who says that. In
theatre and cinema, verbal performances refer back to verbal performances about
which the mise-en-scbne is speaking.
Ina certainsense every dramaticperformance(be iton the stage oron the screen)
is composed bytwo speech acts. The firstone is performedbythe actorwho is making
a performativestatement-"I am acting."By this implicitstatement the actortells the
truthsince he announces that from that moment on he will lie.
The second one is represented by a pseudo-statement where the subject of the
statement is alreadythe character, notthe actor. Logicallyspeaking, those statements
are referentially opaque. When I say, "Paul has said that Mary will come," I am
responsible for the truthof the proposition, "Paulhas said p," not withthe truthof p.
The same happens in a dramatic performance:Because of the first performativeact,
everything following it becomes referentiallyopaque. Through the decision of the
performer("Iam another man") we enter the possible world of performance,a world
of lies in which we are entitled to celebrate the suspension of disbelief.
I
115
116 THE DRAMA REVIEW/T73
There is a difference between a narrativetext and a theatrical performance. In a
narrative,the author is supposed to tell the truthwhen he is speaking as subject of the
act of utterance, and his discourse is recognized as referentiallyopaque only when he
speaks about what Julien Sorel or David Copperfield have said. But what about a
literary text in which Thomas Mann says "I"and the "I"is not Thomas Mann but
Serenus Zeitblom telling what AdrianLeverkuhnhas said? At this moment, narrative
becomes very similarto theatre. The authorimplicitlybegins his discourse by saying
performatively,"Iam Serenus." (As in the case of the drunk,itis not necessary that he
assume allthe propertiesof Serenus. Itis enough that he reproduce certain pertinent
features, namely certain stylistic devices able to connote him as a typical German
humanist, a cultivated and old-fashioned middle-bourgeois.)
Once this is said-once the methodological standpointthat both fiction and living
reportage are instances of mise-en-scbne-it remains to ask, "Howdoes a character
speak who acts as an element of a mise-en-scene?" Do his words have a univocal
meaning? Do they mean one thing only and nothing else?
In 1938, the Soviet folklorist Bogatyrev, in a fundamental paper on signs in
theatre, pointed out that signs in theatre are not signs of an object but signs of a sign
of an object. He meant that, beyond their immediate denotation, all the objects,
behaviors and words used in theatre have an additional connotative power. For
instance, Bogatyrev suggested that an actor playing a starving man can eat some
bread as bread-the actor connoting the idea of starvation,butthe breadeaten by him
being denotatively bread. But under other circumstances, the fact of eating bread
could mean that this starving man eats only a poor food, and therefore the piece of
bread not only denotes the class of all possible pieces of bread,butalso connotes the
idea of poverty.
However, our drunken man does something more than connote drunkenness. In
doing so, he is certainly realizinga figure of speech, a metonymy, since he stands for
the cause of his physical devastation; he also realizes an antonomasia, since he,
individuallytaken, stands for his whole category-he is the drunken man par excellence.
But (according to the example of Peirce) he is also realizing an irony by
antonymy. He, the drunk,the victim of alcoholism, stands ironicallyfor his contrary;
he celebrates the advantages of temperance. He implicitlysays, "Iam so, but Ishould
not be like this, and you should not become likeme."Or,at another level,"Doyou see
how beautiful I am? Do you realize what a kind of glorious sample of humanityIam
representing here?" But in order to get the irony, we need the rightframing:in this
case, the standards of the Salvation Armysurrounding him.
Since we have approached the rhetorical level, we are obliged to face the
ideological one. Ourdrunkenman is no longer a bare presence. He is not even a mere
figure of speech. He has become an ideological abstraction:temperance vs. intemperance,
virtuevs. vice. Whohas said thatto drinkis bad?Whohas said thatthe spectacle
of intoxication has to be interpretedas an ironicalwarningand not as an invitationto
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the most orgiastic freedom? Obviously, the social context. The fact thatthe drunkhas
been exposed under the standards of the Salvation Army obliges the audience to
associate his presence to a whole system of values.
Whatwould have happened ifthe drunkhad been exposed underthe standardof a
revolutionarymovement? Would he still have signified "vice"or rather"the responsibilityof
the system,""the results of a bad administration,""thewhole starvingworld"?
Once we haveaccepted thatthe drunkis also a figureof speech, we mustbegin to look
at him also as an ideological statement. A semiotics of the mise-en-scbne is constitutively
a semiotics of the production of ideologies.
Allthese things, this complex rhetoricalmachinery,are, moreover,made possible
by the fact that we are not only looking at a human body endowed with some
characteristics-we are looking at a human body standing and moving within a
physical space. The body could not stagger if there were not an environing space to
give it orientation-up and down, right and left, to stand up, to lie down. Were the
bodies two or more, space would establish the possibility of associating a given
meaning to their mutualdistances. Inthis way we see how the problems of the miseen-scene
refer back to the problems of many other semiotic phenomena, such as
proxemics (the semiotics of spatial distances) or kinesics (the semiotics of gestures
and body movements). And we realize that the same semiotic parameters can be
applied to the semiotics of theatre,of cinema, of architecture,of painting,of sculpture.
Fromthe idiosyncratic character of the theatricalphenomenon we have arrivedat
the general problems of semiotics. Nevertheless, theatre has additional features
distinguishing itfromother forms of artand strictlylinkingitwith everydayconversational
interaction-for instance, the audience looking at the drunk can laugh, can
insult him and he can react to people's reaction.Theatricalmessages areshaped also
by the feedback produced from their destination point.
So the semiotics of theatrical performance has shown, during our short and
introductory analysis, its own proprium, its distinguishing and peculiar features. A
human body, along with its conventionally recognizable properties,surrounded by or
supplied with a set of objects, inserted withina physical space, stands for something
else to a reacting audience. In order to do so, it has been framed within a sort of
performativesituation that establishes that it has to be taken as a sign. From this
moment on, the curtain is raised. From this moment on, anything can happenOedipus
listens to Krapp'slast tape, Godot meets LaCantatriceChauve,Tartuffedies
on the grave of Juliet, el Cid Campeador throws a cream cake inthe face of LaDame
aux camelias.
But the theatricalperformance has begun before-when Averroeswas peeping at
the boy who was saying, "Iam the Muezzin."
Umberto Eco, born 1932 in Alessandria (Italy), is professor of Semiotics at the Universityof
Bologna. Among his works,ATheoryof Semiotics: Bloomington,IndianaUniversityPress, 1976.