2009 :
Spectator -> Audience -> Public
PLAYING with Spectator Name your game "Give and Take" -- same as before. ...
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I wrote that "mise-en-scene" is "film directing without camera" -- and I suspect that I'm missing something, thinking that the secondary motion in theatre is missing (camera).
I am like a chained monkey with this topic of spectator! I have SPECTATOR page almost in every subject directory! Well, our experience in arts always starts with being a spectator.
Studying directing, acting, drama? No! We study spectator, our public! Spectator is the beginning of THEATRE, he is the creator of the show... You don't believe me? But of course! There is not a single decent book on the subject! I mean, theory of it (not the textbooks on theatre appreciation). I am sure somebody will write this book one day. The new Virtual Theatre will make this old secret too visible. You, the spectator is about to be in control of the spectacle... I see, you do not know it yet. Well, you are in control of ANY show. Peter Brook calls it dead theatre, when public is not the theatre. What do you think you paying for? To see, to watch? No! To write, to act, to direct! Stanislavsky: In the creative process there is the father, the author of the play; the mother, the actor pregnant with the part; and the child, the role to be born. Return to this page after each cycle of directing in order to remember that you MUST re-examine everything from the Spectator's perspective. Script Analysis cycle, Blocking, Mise-en-Scene, Working with Actors and so on.
PART IV. Directing Public or "Directed by Public"? How to take directing from THEM... SummaryOh, not again! I wrote enough about Spectator!QuestionsEvaluation of Directing:
Interpretation/Concept: Visual Elements: Aesthetics: Ensemble: Acting:Names of Principle Actors and Characters:Supporting Actors & Characters: Evaluating the Designs:Scene Designer/Set:Costumes: Makeup: Lighting: Sound: NotesI keep making the pages "spectator" in every directory, because actor and director have different relationships with the public. Playwrights have their own. I keep saying in class that that actors are the agressive spectators, who couldn't sit still and jump on stage... but DIRECTOR is the altimate spectator, who jumps on stage too, but at end leaves the stage... because his job is done and the spectacle has it own life. As much as the actor adjusts himself with the role so much the role is adjusted to the actor. -- Koun
Tell me and I will forget
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Action is in THEM!
The mise en scène is an abstract theoretical concept of the performance, a totality, (an undifferentiated whole) perceived as a system or ensemble of signs working together to produce meaning; an organized ensemble of signs.
The metatext or performance text is an unwritten text comprising the various choices of a mise en scène that the director has consciously or unconsciously made during the rehearsal process, choices that are apprarent in the final product (Pavis 2003, 8).
The performance is the whole material thing that you take in visually and audibly; the mise en scène is its abstract substance, the organizing principles and system of options.
Etymology: Latin, from spectare to watch * Date: circa 1586 * one who looks on or watches *Aha! Do you understand now why I say "subjective time" and "dramatic space"?
The show doesn't exist outside of the spectator's mind and heart -- and only then it's "dramatic"! On stage? The moment my spectator notices it -- the show is over! No, the true show is not in "physical" time and space. The real machine of theatre is out there, the public!
Before directing a new show I go on this empty stage and look at the house -- so big! So focused on me! Those stranger will become ONE...
I go upstage and look back again -- the silent power machine is here already. The empty seats -- I see their eyes, they give life to everything on stage. The potential energy of theatre is behind the theatre walls.
Director is a professional spectator!
Book of Spectator
Before the preview night I say to actors -- Now you will have the real director. They look at me. "The audience," I say.
The missing part of Theatre Theory -- SpectatorShip (see Doubles and Spectator in 200X Files).
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As always, the silent majority is ignored. The spectator doesn't act, direct or write. We are so busy on stage that we forgot to write a book about him -- the black hole, the place where the light is born....Theatre Space asks for darkness. Only once I went to see Shakespeare in the Central Park. The nature is too distractive, even the night sky is too much! How can I create a new world without blocking out the existing one? I need walls and celling!
I do not direct "happennings"!
SHOWS (Picture is missing : On your right is a typical floor plan ... of a church. Do you see the three familiar zones -- house, stage and back stage (including wings)?
That's where Theatre was for almost one thousand years, known as "Dark Ages"! Yes, our indoor procenium stage was developed at that time. (Usually, we look at the Greeks, although the Romans understood them better and made a stadium out of the open-air theatres). Drama can't be developed further outdoors, it asked for its own architecture, not just a place under the sun.
The real backstage is missing even in Shakespearian times. In my view, the real spectators didn't exist till now. Yes, those 5% of Americans, who went to theatre at least one time, are the spectators... because they went to theatre!
Before it was a place for news, social interaction, near square-street entertainment...
See Spectatorship Concept at Spectatorship directory (also see the Mirror Effect). More in POV -- the phenomena of watching. Also, Self Files at Tripod ("deep theory" directory)
PS. The best is to present Spectatorship through the phenomena of watching film. Here is our spectator is really naked, here he is at WORK. Busy, busy! Putting together shots and cuts, angles and themes... Working like a machine!
No, my friends, the screen is not flat -- there is an anourmous machine behind it, much bigger than in any theatrical production. Just look at the list of credits!
There are no bad spectators, only bad movies. Nature doesn't creat "bad" public (there is no "bad" weather, too -- FYI).
Stanislavsky said that actor must die in his character, director -- in his actors, writer -- in his characters... We all must die in our public!
We die in order for spectacle to be born.
The last, the final performer of this phenomena is you, the spectator.
Should I say -- First?
I should. ....
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C (Spectator)
How to "move" spectator from one point of drama to another? Use the film directing techniques!
The formula: director > text > designers > actors > spectator (both ends are the same)
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