Theatre Theory Reader (Ukázka, strana 99)

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tical antinomy constantly occurs in the development of literature. On the one hand, literature develops through a continuous divergence away from everyday language; on the other hand, at the same time it attempts to move closer to it. The same can also be observed in painting, in music and especially in theatre, where the antinomy manifests itself particularly distinctly. What matters is for the signs of art to be predominant in relation to the extra-aesthetic signs. But in the case of something like the puppet theatre, which the audience perceives against the background of the theatre of live actors, that is, where in the process of perception a tension arises between two kinds of art, the signs intrinsic to the art we are perceiving at the given moment must predominate. But the actual process of the divergence and convergence of these two kinds of theatre is one that is absolutely normal.

When it comes to the perception of puppet theatre, it is with its children’s audiences that its signs predominate, and therefore puppet theatre achieves maximum expressiveness with this audience. When adult audiences perceive puppet theatre, not infrequently the signs of the theatre of live actors dominate, with the result that this audience is incapable of understanding all of the puppet theatre’s means of expression. Often, for example, this audience fails to understand serious scenes. On more than one occasion it resembles that Russian peasant girl who could not understand the signs of the religious instrumental music in a Catholic service as something serious and took it as a deformation, as something comical.

WORKS CITED Krejčí, Karel (1937) “Jazyková karikatura v dramatické literatuře” [Linguistic Caricature in Dramatic Literature], Sborník Matice slovenskej, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 387–405.

Zich, Otakar (2015 [1923]) “Puppet Theatre”, Theatralia, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 505–13.

Znosko-Borovsky, E. A. (1925) Russkii teatr nachala XX veka [Russian Theatre at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century], Prague: Plamia.

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THEATRICAL SIGNS PETR BOGATYREV

[“Divadelní znaky” was published in 1938 in Slovo a slovesnost, vol. 4, no. 3, pp. 138–49.

The English translation by Bruce Kochis was published under the title “Semiotics in the Folk Theatre” in Matejka, Ladislav and Titunik, Irwin R. (eds) (1976) Semiotics of Art: Prague School Contributions, Cambridge, Massachusetts: The M.I.T. Press, pp. 33–50.]

An item of clothing is simultaneously a thing and a sign – more exactly, it is the vehicle of a structure of signs. An item of clothing characterizes membership in a certain class, nationality, religion, and so on; it indicates the wearer’s financial situation, his age, and so on. Similarly, a house is not only a thing, but also a sign of its owner’s nationality, financial circumstances, religion, and so on (see Bogatyrev 2016 [1936]; see Bogatyrev 1937).

What exactly is a theatre costume or a set representing a house? When used on the stage, both a theatre costume and a set representing a house are often signs that point to one of the signs of the costume or the house of a certain character in the play. Let me emphasize this: a sign of a sign and not a sign of a thing.1 A theatre costume and a set representing a house can sometimes denote several signs. For instance, a theatre costume can denote a wealthy Chinaman, thus indicating both a sign of the nationality of the character and a sign of his financial situation. Boris Godunov’s costume indicates that he is a monarch and, simultaneously, his Russian nationality. When Pushkin’s “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish” is produced in the theatre, the first dwelling, a hut, is a sign of the extreme poverty of the old man and old woman; the second is a sign that the old woman is a member of the aristocracy; the third is a sign of the old woman’s becoming the tsarina. But the stage settings for all these structures indicate the Russian nationality of their owners. Similar signs of signs on the stage are the commanding gestures of the actor playing a tsar or king, the unsteady tread of an actor representing an old man, and so on.

1

The term sign of a sign here means something different than Jakobson’s “sign of a sign” in his article “The Statue in Pushkin’s Poetic Mythology” (1975 [1937]), where “sign of a sign” means that a sign from one kind of art is transferred into another art: for example a sculpture described in literature.

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However, neither a theatre costume nor a set representing a house nor the gestures of actors have as many constitutive signs as a real house or a real item of clothing would have. On the stage, costumes and scenery are usually limited to one, two or three signs. The theatre only uses those signs of costumes and structures that are necessary for the given dramatic situation.

I should like to make the point here that theatre costumes and theatre sets, like other theatrical signs (declamation, gestures, and so on), do not always have a representational function. We are familiar with the costume of an actor as an actor’s costume sui generis; we are familiar with stage signs (the curtain, forestage, and so forth) that are only signs of the stage sui generis, representing nothing more than the stage. But on the stage we find not only signs of the sign of a thing but also signs of the thing itself: for instance, on the stage the actor playing the role of a hungry person can indicate that he is eating bread sui generis, and not bread as a sign of, for example, poverty. Of course cases in which signs of signs are represented on the stage are more frequent than cases involving the representation of the signs of things.

On the stage use is made not only of costumes and scenery, of theatre props, that are only one sign or the sum of several signs and not a thing sui generis, but also real things. But even these real objects are not viewed by the audience as real things, but only as signs of signs, or signs of things. If, for example, an actor playing the role of a millionaire wears a diamond ring, the audience will regard it as a sign of his great wealth and not care whether or not the diamond is real or a fake. A royal ermine robe in the theatre is a sign of regal dignity regardless of whether it is made from a real stoat’s fur or rabbit skin. On the stage expensive red wine can be represented by real wine or by raspberry soda.

It is interesting that on the stage a real thing, for example, a real diamond, is often only a sign of a sign of a thing (for example, a sign of the wealth of a character) but not a sign of the thing itself. On the other hand in a theatre performance the most schematic sign of the most primitive scenery can denote the thing itself.

For example, Among the Altais, in the yurt that serves as a stage there stands a birch, eternally in leaf, that has nine notches. Symbolically, the notches denote the levels of the celestial world, into which the shaman gradually enters. When, in performing the ceremony, he steps up along these notches, in the eyes of those present he ascends from one level of heaven to the next, acting out a separate scene in each heaven. (Kharuzina 1927: 67)

Thus, each notch denotes not only heaven as a whole but also one of its separate divisions: first heaven, second heaven, third heaven, and so on.

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