Semiotics and Nonsemiotics in Performance

Semiotics and Nonsemiotics in Performance MARVIN CARLSON In the development of his theories of "structuralist" theatre, Michael Kirby has characterized such theatre as "nonsemiotic,'" a somewhat surprising claim at a time when on the one hand more and more theatre theorists are exploring the possibilities of a semiotic approach to theatre, and on the otherI semioticians are increasingly looking to theatre as a particularly rich and challenging area for the exploration of their concerns. With the semiotics of theatre and of performance still in its exploratory stages, this challenge to its general applicabiliry offers an opportunity to explore some of the dimensions and implications of such analysis. The determination of whether a nonsemiotic theatre is possible, and if so, what its characteristics would be, should prove of considerable help in understanding, by contrast, some of the issues involved in the semiotic analysis of theatre. Kirby's fullest development of the bases and procedures of a nonsemiotic performance is found in his essay ofthat name, which introduces and describes his "nonsemiotic" creation, Double Gothic. Were one simply to read the description of this performance, without the accompanying explanation, the use of the term "nonsemiotic" would surely seem odd indeed, since the performance seems to be composed almost entirely of elements that would normally be considered semiotic. In one scene where "The Heroine meets the Helper of the Antagonist," the scene is thus described: "Apparently she has gotten off a train expecting someone to meet her, but nobody is there. Rain threatens; a dog howls. Then a blind woman appears, apparently sent by 'the doctor. .., A parallel scene ends with "thunder and lightning." Surely signification is constant]y involved here, even if these scenes are composed of nothing more than fleeting images. The "doctor" mentioned in this passage subsequently appears, an actress dressed in "a white lab coat and rubber gloves" - clearly signs of that profession. The character relationships, derived from SEMIOTICS AND NONSEMIOTICS IN PERFORMANCE the actantial models of Propp, seem hardly likely to help free the play from semiotics, as Kirby hopes, but rather develop another semiotic element - that of the culturally supported morphology of character relationships from which the "Heroine," "Helper," and "Antagonist" are derived. The "Gothic" elements found everywhere in the play (and in its title) provide further semiotic material, derived from generic expectations, even when the performance plays consciously against those expectations. Upon what grounds, then, can Double Gothic be proposed as an example of "nonsemiotic" performance? To respond to this, one must begin with the working definition of semiotics provided by Kirby near the beginning of his discussion ofthis experimental work: "1 take semiotic analysis to be based upon a model of art~as-communication. In this model , there is a sender, a message (encoded by the sender), and a receiver (who decodes - at least to some degree - the message). Semiotics can be seen to deal primarily with this process of decoding the encoded message.,,2 Of course, the fIrSt thing that will strike anyone who has read much of the work in modem semiotic theory is that this definition is an extremely narrow one. It is essentially a strict application of a highly simplified linguistic communication model, quite unacceptable to semiotic theorists who approach the subject (as most Americans do) from a more general perspective such as that of Peirce, regarding the communication model as only one out of many semiotic possibilities. I shall return presently to the question of whether nonsemiotic performance can be conceived in the light of these broader theoretic perspectives, but for the moment let us remain with the communication model Kirby proposes, considering the implications of a nonsemiotic performance within the terms of this definition. The basic strategy ofDouble Gothic is fairly straightforward. If semiotics can be defined as the sending of a message by means of an intermediate code system understood by sender and receiver, one need only refuse to send a message, leaving the code (here the performance) without a content. This strategy, apparently simple, nevertheless presents a number of possible difficulties, some involving the sender, some the medium, and some the receiver. Kirby is well aware of these, and explains a number of steps taken to overcome...