Theatre as Semiotic Practice

Theatre as Semiotic Practice JOSEPH MELANN ofrelevant articulation, that is to say semiotic organization creating units which are at one and the same time distinct and combinable; and this process of significance distinctly relates to the structuring ofthe imaginary, to the fictional and to the theatre. That which constitutes a sign is not necessarily that which is aiIeady a sign, but rather that which is promoted to the status of sign by new relationships of dependency and by new positions occupied. The semiotic can thus be reduced to positional relationships, to take Saussure's example of chess. And so it can be said of actants that they only indicate positions: the position of subject with respect to object, or that of addresser to addressee. In the same way the intrinsic significance of theatre depends primarily on interdependent positions, correlated with various roles semantically invested by means of different discourses. It is on this plane that the semiotic can be dissociated from the semantic as a distinct mode of significance. Benveniste clearly specifies this distinction when he writes: "The semiotic (sign) must be RECOGNIZED; the semantic (discourse) must be UNDERSTooD.,,6 This distinction is transposed in Greimas's semiolinguistic theory in which narrative structures are defined as "semiotic" and discursive structures as "semantic."7 In fact, as Benveniste points out, contrary to all other systems which have only a unidimensional significance, "The privilege oflanguage is to have at one and the sarne time a significance at the level of signs and a significance at the level of enunciation":8in other words, to be semiotic and semantic. Yet, these two systems can be separated or disconnected, and Benveniste does admit that an autonomous semiotics can exist in the "figurative arts." According to him, "The artist creates his own semiotics: he institutes his oppositions into distinctive features which he himself renders significant by their ordering. He does not receive a repertory of signs recognized as such, nor does he establish one."· Considering these distinctions, one can imagine, in its theatrical expression, the creation of a semiotics as a repertory of signs dissociated from language. As a place offigurativity, theatre has the possibility of dissociating in time and space the semiotic from the semantic. This, at least, is the postulate I should like to propose in order to situate my own argument. The specificity of theatre, or theatricality, can be defined as the possibility of creating a positional semiotics syntactically dissociated from the discourse which semantically invests it. This is the primary reason why theatricality appears to me to be a semiotic practice. Everything cannot be defined as a semiotic practice, but a work is theatrical only insofar as it inscribes this practice in its process of signification. In order to demonstrate this proposition, I shall attempt to isolate such a semiotic practice in Jean Genet's The Maids;'" that is to say, I shall demonstrate the semiotic processes which transform otherwise insignificant units into "recognizable signs." One cannot speak of Genet's theatre without mentioning Jean-Paul Sartre's brilliant Saint Genet: actor and martyr,J' and especially his study of The Maids in the third appendix. We know that this analysis, described by Jean Theatre as Semiotic Practice 19 Cocteau as a cannonade rather than a canonization,>2 was felt by Genet as an invasion of his private person. It reduced him, that is to say the playwright of course, to silence for six years. Nonetheless, his dramatic processes remained constant in The Balcony, The Blacks and The Screens. I choose Genet's Maids to illustrate this semiotic practice because this play seems to me exemplary of Genet's theatre in much the same way as Genet's theatre seems exemplary ofall the specific resources that the stage can marshal in producing signification. "In Genet's plays," writes Sartre, "every character must play the role of a character who plays a role."·3 Subsequent to Sartre's study, this mimetic interplay of mirrors was rendered more explicit in The Balcony by the three Figures: the Bishop, the Judge and the General perched on actors' stilts thus giving an iconic value to these "role signs." Even if one sets aside Sartre's existential...