Nonsemiotic Performance

Nonsemiotic Performance MICHAEL KIRBY By talking about one of my recent plays, I intend to demonstrate two important theoretical points. The first is that, in spite of the recent widespread interest in the semiotics of performance, semiotics does not necessarily apply to all performance; there are presentations that may be referred to as "nonsemiotic." With the second point - a much less controversial one - I shall emphasize and give examples of the way in which structural theory, derived from the analysis of many works, may itself be "recycled" to become the creative source and practical foundation of a particular production. I 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. Since I am about to say that! do not consciously send messages in my plays, I do not want to ignore or overlook the possibility that messages may be sent unconsciously. There are several significant points here. First, the intention of sending a particular message controls, to a ·great extent, the nonconscious material. A continuum exists from fully conscious to completely nonconscious, and the message that is consciously sent tends to "pull" nonconscious material. A psychotic artist might be an exception, but in most cases the intuitive, nonrational, and unconscious message supports and expands the conscious message rather than contradicting it. The message the artist is aware of having acts as a centralizing element, attracting nonconscious material to it. It does not follow from the acceptance of nonconscious messages that they contradict or, indeed, are any different from conscious ones. If, on the other hand, the artist abandons the attempt to send messages, this kind ofcontinuum loses its foeus. Second, communication must be distinguished as rigorously as possible from interpretation. A "received" message has not necessarily been sent; many messages are merely projected or read into the work. In A Theory ofSemiotics, 106 MICHAEL KIRBY Umberto Eco attempts to deal with the problem of inference. He explains that certain acts of inference "must be recognized as semiotic acts," but only when they are "'culturally recognized and systematically coded.· ..' This places the emphasis on a culturally established code and distinguishes private, personal, idiosyncratic interpretation from semiotic analysis. Semiotics, then, is not the exegesis of meaning, but the demonstration of how meaning derives from a particular code; unless the code itself is clear, we have only interpretation. Third, the director ofthe play is himself an analyst, aware ofmany, ifnot all, of the codes for deCiphering unconscious messages. Since the creation of a performance is not, in most cases, a spontaneous act, but involves rebearsals, the sender of the message also becomes its receiver, studying the "semiotic object" over and over. This means that nonconscious messages may be screened and controlled in a way that is not true, for example, with the spontaneous behavior of everyday life. A fourth and final point about unconscious messages - a point derived in a way from the second, which relates all communication to a culturally established code while attempting to differentiate communication and interpretation - is that a play, or any work of art, may have several interpretations without having a "correct" one; contradictory "messages" may be equally correct. Particularly for those who believe art must have a message - those who have been brought up to believe that art-as-communication is the only possible model - it is very difficult not to see a message in any work, even if none is intended. (If a message does not appear, the experience is rejected andlor the work denigrated.) Thus the techniques of message-encoding may be used and decoding expected, or even sought, without a message actually having been sent. In the light ofthese theoretical points, let us look at my play Double Gothic. Double Gothic was performed in a very specific and rather unusual structure. We hung six large, black scrims parallel to one another three feet apart. This arrangement created five parallel corridors three feet wide in which the actors could perform. Three lights...