Transcript Gypsy`s Form Design

Gypsy's Form Design
Advanced English
Midterm Report: Gypsy’s Form Design
李時雍
台灣文學研究所一年級 9549505
[email protected]
Framework of Report
1. Introduction
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Gypsy as a popular culture text
Musical as a genre of theatre
2. Form Analysis
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illuminated placard
Vaudeville
musical; lines……
framework
3. Constitution of Contents
4. Conclusion
1.Introduction
 Gypsy as a popular culture text
 in order to interact and be accepted by
most audiences, rely on various
established forms or elements
 classicalism vs. modern theatre
 popular culture vs. vanguardism
1.Introduction
 Musical as a genre of theatre
 music is a kind of linear art(in terms of
the progress time)
 the composers usually use repeatable
form, including songs, melodies, lyrics,
to recall or emphasize audience’s
memory
 music as an important narrator
 music languege vs. speaking languege
1.Introduction
 In Gypsy, there are numerous
established patterns and forms, which
according to their artistic tradition or
common consensus
 we can use the methods of narrative
study, particularly in Structuralism, to
re-read this play, possibly can explain
some basic elements
2.Form Analysis
 illuminated placard
 not only indicate where roles are and what they
will follow to do in those places, but the placards
create a theatric order, let the audiences always
can keep pace with play even when missing
something carelessly
 as an invisible centeral line, each time’s
changing can be a hint of passing time or
shifting places, create a montage purpose to
curtail those unnecessary plots, ex: A1S5; A2S5
2.Form Analysis
 Vaudeville
 These rehearsal or presentational settings constitute
one another of this play’s main forms
 if we absorb that the musical itself in a drama is also
a role of narrator, when it speaks in the different
context of situation, it represents definitely various
meanings
 Roland Barthes divides denotation and connotation,
the meaning which produces in denotation, will be
the signifier in connotation, and to proceed to the
secondary meaning
 each vaudevilles as a denotation, be performed by
June, Louise or Rose, in act 1, act 2 and before the
end, will represent arresting comparability, displaying
a collapsing progress of roles’ position and
relationship
2.Form Analysis
 musical; lines
 ex: May We Entertain You
 ex: “I had a dream .....”
 ex: “Hello, everybody! My name is June/
Louise/ Rose. What’s yours?”
2.Form Analysis
 framework
 act 1 vs. act 2
 June vs. Louise
 In popular culture text, audiences’
“expectation views” cohering with play more,
there are more pleasure in it; that is to say,
when audiences watch a musical, they are
expected to experience what they already
know about plots.
 To experience and compare the plots with
their expectation views is a key point here
3.Constitution of Contents
 each role and his symbol of concept
always occurs with binary other
(Vladimir Propp)
 June and Louise
 the role June and Louise in the play must
be discussed depending on each other,
Louise’s plot is just like June’s variation,
according to the similar melody, but
represent two kinds of reactions and
results
3.Constitution of Contents
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Rose and Herbie
 If Gypsy is a symbol of Rose’s hardily traveling life, Herbie
must be the one who is the symbol of a stable homeland,
where can support and providing a place for people to
anchor
 Rose repeatedly says: “what does everybody walk out? ”
but actually, she’s the only one who always moves around
in the States, in opera houses, different stages, as if she is
a gypsy that Rose’s father used to say to her.
 To put her hopeless dream on her two daughters, and
disobeys their true will; it’s not “everybody walk out”.
 It’s “Rose eternal walks out”, of marriage, of Herbie’s
sincereness, Rose’s the one who just like what Arthur
Rimbaud describes “La vie est d’ailleurs”, a gypsy woman.
3.Constitution of Contents
 another relationship
 we do not just make a content analysis
here, but also depend on the concept of
narrator study and popular culture text.
 We try to categorize all of the roles and find
out the most basic elements of role models.
 It is a inner form of play, corresponding to
the outer theatrical forms we discussed in
Part Two
4.Conclusion
 content analysis will link to the social
situation when those plays are created
 if we shift our focus to the forms and
elements analysis, those sub-genre of
musical have their inner logic.
 To discuss the form of musical itself is
certainly more reasonable than other
gernes of plays
4.Conclusion
 set a stage scene on the stage is one method to break
through what Aristotte said about the Three Unites
rule, time and place can shift flexibly in a restrictive
boundary of stage space
 Typical theatre study provides us to with the following:
 1. how a play’s narration constitutes and why roles act
like that?
 2. What is the logic of the play?
 3. Compare to other plays.
 4. Is there any overflow possibility, etc. through close
reading on Gypsy, we perhaps get close to these aims,
but more comparison should be thought about to
depict more accurate theatrical model.
Reference Material
 姚一葦著，《戲劇原理》（台北：書林，2004）
 約翰．史都瑞（John Storey）著，李根芳、周素鳳譯，《文
化理論與通俗文化導論》（Cultural Theory and Popular
Culture: An Introduction(Third Edition)）（台北：巨流，
2003）。
 阿瑟．阿薩．伯杰（Arthur Asa Berger）著，姚媛譯，《通
俗文化、媒介和日常生活中的敘事》（Narratives in Popular
Culture, Media, and Everyday Life）（南京：南京大學出
版社：2000）。