|
|
|
|
|
|
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 toward a platform where fifteen or twenty persons, wearing painted masks, are riding on horseback, but without horses, are fencing, but without swords, are dying, but are not dead. They were not crazy, explains Albucasim, they were "representing" or "performing" a story. Averroes does not understand, and Albucasim tries to 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 interpret the words "tragedy" and "comedy" as belonging to encomiastic discourse. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Averroes touched twice on the experience of theater, skimming over it without understanding it. Too bad, since he had a good theoretical framework ready to define it. Western civilization, on the contrary, during the Middle Ages, had the real experience of theatrical performance but had not a working theoretical net to throw over it. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Once Peirce wondered what kind of sign could have been defined by a drunkard exposed in a public place by the Salvation Army in order to advertise the advantages of temperance. He did not answer this question. I shall do it now. Tentatively. We are in a better position than Averroes. Even though trying to keep a naive attitude, we cannot eliminate some background knowledge. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
We know Sophocles and Gilbert and Sullivan, King Lear and I Love Lucy, Waiting for Godot and A Chorus Line, Phèdre and No, No Nanette, The Jew of Malta and Cats. 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 platform and 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 objectshe has become a semiotic device; he is now a sign, something that stands to somebody for something else in some respect or capacitya physical presence referring to something absent. What is our drunken man referring to? To a drunken man. But not to the drunk who he is, but to a drunk. The present drunkinsofar as he is the member of a classis referring us back to the class of which he is a member. He stands for the category he belongs to. There is no difference, in principle, between our intoxicated character and the word drunk. |
|
|
|
|
|