Transcript C. Dente, Intersemiotic complexity: the word of drama.

C. Dente, Intersemiotic complexity: the word of
drama.
The dramatic text is also literature, not just
literature.
The words drama and theatre identify two
distinct semantic areas.
Drama → written text. Form of fiction designed
for stage representation according to specific
dramatic conventions
Theatre → aspects of the performance,
transaction between performer and audience.
Difficult relationship between reality and dramatic
illusion: behind each dramatic text there is a
performance, or an idea of performance.
A dramatic text is not encoded once and for all, it
is renewable each time it is staged.
The dramatic text can fulfil its communicative
function when it is performed: the printed word is
no longer virtual dialogue, but becomes real
dialogue on stage.
Movements and gestures highlight the deep
meaning which the dialogue implies.
A scene is engendered by a line, a word or an
image.
The word, in its turn, is followed by the image.
Different codes make up a network of different
interacting textualities, whose final aim is to
construct audience reception.
Different textualities account for:
-outcome of the writing process
-outcome of the reading process
-current textual interpretation
-outcome of rehearsal process
-transposition into non-verbal codes
-outcome of reception processes, both
diachronically and synchronically.
Thus, the interpretation of a dramatic text
through its analysis and its staging turns out to be
the coordination of an essentially intertextual
work.
Result:
Either reproduction of a given performance and
interpretation
Or realization of different and very distant
productions
Dramatic language:
-external axis of communication (productionaudience transaction);
-internal axis of communication (fictional context
of communication among characters on stage).
Both axis are ruled by the conventions of a given
cultural paradigm.
Most frequent and evident convention:
as-if convention, i.e. fictional action perceived as
if it were real, occurring in the here and now on
stage, and the audience were witnesses of this
action.
Result:
the dramatic dialogue could be studied using the
instruments for the analysis of natural dialogue.
In the here and now of the stage, the story unfolds
before the audience.
The audience is unaware of what the story is about,
and the characters cannot give information they
would not exchange in a real context.
Therefore, one has to accept the idea that a dramatic
text is an act of transcription, as well as a mimesis of
interaction.
The text imitates the complex interactional relation
among people, with different types of strategies
which help construe the dialogical form.
The author cannot confine and constrict his
characters.