Materiality of Sound and Text (Jiří Veltruský meets Bob Wilson)
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| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In the theoretical texts by Jiří Veltruský (1919-1994), one of the most important theatre scholars connected with Prague Linguistic Circle, the text/textual element is a crucial component in the complex interplay of material and immaterial components of the theatre production. In his essays "Dramatic text as Component of Theatre" (first version in Czech 1941, English version 1976) or "Sound Qualities of the Text and Actors Performance" (1991) and posthumous An Approach to the Semiotics of Theatre (2012), the position of the (dramatic) text might seem even overestimated from a contemporary point of view. The dramatic text has lost its prominent position - performance is often considered as an autonomous act of the director and the actors, who create their own theatrical world that also includes the text. But criticism hardly ever discusses the details of this appropriation (such as cuts, rewritings and other textual changes). The prevailing focus is on the materiality of almost any element of theatre performance. The materiality of performance is regarded as one of the key features of contemporary theatre praxis. Re-reading Veltruský's concepts shows that as early as in 1941 he saw the structure of the text as something autonomous; later he approaches its structure through the sound qualities of the text and speech. In this way, the text - however neglected - is still present in the materiality of its sound structure, which is actualized in actors' enunciation. This methodological approach opens interesting ways of applying Veltruský's concepts to contemporary performance analysis - as I will try to demonstrate on Bob Wilson's approach to the dramatic text in some of his recent theatre productions. |
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