Title: Theatre graphics and graphic theatre : Zich's semantics in posters and publicity
Source document: Theatralia. 2020, vol. 23, iss. 1, pp. 105-129
Extent
105-129
-
ISSN1803-845X (print)2336-4548 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/TY2020-1-9
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/142553
Type: Article
Language
License: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
The essay employs the concept of the 'semantic image' as articulated by Czech aesthetician Otakar Zich in his book The Aesthetics of Dramatic Art in order to outline how theatre publicity relates to theatre production and performance. Theatre graphics, posters, and other promotional materials contain images that substitute or compensate for what is not to be seen and heard onstage in form of 'technical images'; thus, these graphics condition the 'representational images' of dramatic locations.1 Publicity images can be also used to manipulate imagery associations related to actors as well as dramatic characters in order to facilitate their desired reception. This article focuses on the posters produced for Prague's National Theatre opera production of Tramvestie (2019) and two stagings of Peter Shaffer's Equus (1973, 2007) along with Alphonse Mucha's posters for Sarah Bernhardt.
Note
These early-stage findings were presented at the conference Perspektivy teatrologie 3 organised by the Theatre Research Society (Czechia) in Brno on May 2019. The paper is a part of doctoral candidature at the Department of Aesthetics (Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University), under the supervision of Professor Petr Osolsobě. I also want to gratefully acknowledge comments by Tomáš Kačer, Svitlana Shurma, Daniel Sampey, and Markéta Kulhánková, as well as the courtesy of Michael Diamond and Drew Hodges, who provided the licenses for the respective images.
References
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[28] OSOLSOBĚ, Ivo. 2007. Principia parodica totiž Posbírané papíry převážně o divadle [Principa Parodica, or Collected Papers Mainly about Theatre]. Prague: Akademie múzických umění v Praze, 2007.
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[31] PROCHÁZKA, Miroslav. 1994. Komparativní sémiotika Jiřího Veltruského [Jiří Veltruský's Comparative Semiotics]. In Jiří Veltruský. Příspěvky k teorii divadla [Contributions to the Theory of Theatre]. Prague: Divadelní ústav, 1994: 5–14.
[32] RUGGIERI, Vezia et al. 2017. Psycho-Physiological Hypothesis about Visual Mental Images Projection. Academy of Social Science Journal 2 (2017): 9: 969–979.
[33] SCHAFFER, Peter. 1974. Equus: A Play. New York: Avon Books, 1974.
[34] SHAW, George B. 1907. Dramatic Opinions and Essays 2. London: Archibald Constable & Co, 1907.
[35] SMYTH, Patricia. 2010. Beyond the Picture-Frame Stage: Late Nineteenth-Century Pictorial Theatre Posters. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 37 (2010): 2: 4–27.
[36] SUS, Oleg. 1992. Geneze sémantiky hudby a básnictví v moderní české estetice (Dvě studie o Otakaru Zichovi) [Origins of the Semantics of Music and Literature in Modern Czech Aesthetics]. Brno: Filozofická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity, 1992.
[37] THAGARD, Paul. 2005. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science. 2nd ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005.
[38] VELTRUSKÝ, Jiří. 1992. Sémiologie a avantgardní divadlo [Semiology and Anvant-garde Theatre]. Svět a divadlo 1 (1992): 145–155.
[39] VYGOTSKY, Lev S. 1971. Psychology of Art. Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press, 1971.
[40] ZICH, Otakar, 1921. Estetická příprava mysli [The Aesthetic Preparation of the Mind]. Česká mysl 17 (1921): 181–204.
[41] ZICH, Otakar. 1931. Estetika dramatického umění [The Aesthetics of Dramatic Art]. 1st ed. Prague: Melantrich, 1931.
[42] ZICH, Otakar. 1986. Estetika dramatického umění: teoretická dramaturgie [The Aesthetics of Dramatic Art: A Theoretical Dramaturgy]. 2nd ed. Prague: Panorama, 1986.
[2] BACHMANN-MEDICK, Doris. 2006. Cultural Turns: New Orientations in the Study of Culture. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2006.
[3] BALME, Christopher. 1997. Interpreting the Pictorial Record: Theatre Iconography and the Referential Dilemma. Theatre Research International 22 (1997): 3: 190–201. | DOI 10.1017/S0307883300017004
[4] BRATTON, Jacky. 2003. New Readings in Theatre History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
[5] BUTLER, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990.
[6] CARLSON, Marvin. 2010. Space and Theatre History. In Charlotte M. Canning and Thomas Postlewait (eds.). Representing the Past: Essays in Performance Historiography. Iowa: University of Iowa Press, 2010: 195–214.
[7] CORBIN, Pamela. 2012. She's Old Enough to be a Beautiful Young Boy: Sarah Bernhardt, Breeches Roles and the Poetics of Aging. Women & Performance: a Journal of Feminist Theory 22 (2012): 1: 47–66. | DOI 10.1080/0740770X.2012.685836
[8] CRAIG, Edward Gordon. 2009. On the Art of the Theatre. Ed. by Frank Chamberlain. New York: Routledge, 2009.
[9] DIAMOND, Michael. 2012. Theatre Posters and How they Bring the Past to Life. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 39 (2012): 1: 61–76.
[10] GUNERATNE, Anthony. 2008. Shakespeare, Film Studies, and the Visual Cultures of Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
[11] GOMBRICH, Ernst. 1960. Art and Illusion. A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation. London: Phaidon, 1960.
[12] HAVLÍČKOVÁ KYSOVÁ, Šárka. 2015. Metafory, kterými žijeme: Perspektivy mezí české kognitivní teatrologie [Metaphors We Live By: Perspectives of Limits of the Czech Cognitive Theatre Studies]. Theatralia 18 (2015): 1: 65–84.
[13] HODGES, Drew and David SEDARIS. 2016. On Broadway: From Rent to Revolution. New York: Rizzoli, 2016.
[14] LAKOFF, George and Mark JOHNSON. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books, 1999.
[15] LÁNSKÁ, Dita. 2016. Meaning(s) of Otakar Zich's Concept of the 'Semantic Image'. Theatralia 19 (2016): 2: 103–121. | DOI 10.5817/TY2016-2-6
[16] LIDDEL, Henry, Robert SCOTT, Henry S. JONES and Roderick MCKENZIE. 1996. A Greek-English Lexicon. Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1996.
[17] METZ, Christian. 1982. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.
[18] MCCONACHIE, Bruce. 2001. Doing Things with Image Schema: The Cognitive Turn in Theatre Studies and the Problem of Experience for Historians. Theatre Journal 53 (2001): 4: 569–594. | DOI 10.1353/tj.2001.0115
[19] MCCONACHIE, Bruce. 2011. Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
[20] MITCHELL, W. J. T. 1994. Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1994.
[21] MCLUHAN, Marschal. 1969. The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man. New York: New American Library, 1969.
[22] MCPHERSON, Heather. 1999. Sarah Bernhardt: Portrait of the Actress as Spectacle. Nineteenth Century Contexts 20 (1999): 4: 409–454. | DOI 10.1080/08905499908583459
[23] ONG, Walter J. 1982. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New York: Routledge, 1982.
[24] NOVÁK, Bohumil. 1933. Rozhovor s Otakarem Zichem [Interview with Otakar Zich]. Čin (1993): 4: 465–469.
[25] OSOLSOBĚ, Ivo. 1981. Herecká postava pro a proti [Actor Figure For and Against]. In Jan Císař (ed.). O současné české režii 1 (= České divadlo 6). Prague: Divadelní ústav, 1981.
[26] OSOLSOBĚ, Ivo. 1986. Two Extremes of Iconicity. In Paul Boissac, Michal Herzfeld and Roland Posner (eds.). Iconicity: Essays on the Nature of Culture. Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 1986: 95–116.
[27] OSOLSOBĚ, Ivo. 1992. Mnoho povyku pro sémiotiku: ne zcela úspěšný pokus o encyklopedické heslo sémiotika divadla [Much Ado About Semiotics – Rather an Un-successful Attempt at an Encyclopedic Dictionary Entry 'Theatre, Semiotics of the']. Brno: Nakladatelství G, 1992.
[28] OSOLSOBĚ, Ivo. 2007. Principia parodica totiž Posbírané papíry převážně o divadle [Principa Parodica, or Collected Papers Mainly about Theatre]. Prague: Akademie múzických umění v Praze, 2007.
[29] POYNOR, Rick. 2017. National Theatre Posters: A Design History. London: Unit Editions, 2017.
[30] ROBINS, Elizabeth. 1900. On Seeing Madame Bernhardt's Hamlet by Elizabeth Robins. North American Review 171 (1900): 908–919
[31] PROCHÁZKA, Miroslav. 1994. Komparativní sémiotika Jiřího Veltruského [Jiří Veltruský's Comparative Semiotics]. In Jiří Veltruský. Příspěvky k teorii divadla [Contributions to the Theory of Theatre]. Prague: Divadelní ústav, 1994: 5–14.
[32] RUGGIERI, Vezia et al. 2017. Psycho-Physiological Hypothesis about Visual Mental Images Projection. Academy of Social Science Journal 2 (2017): 9: 969–979.
[33] SCHAFFER, Peter. 1974. Equus: A Play. New York: Avon Books, 1974.
[34] SHAW, George B. 1907. Dramatic Opinions and Essays 2. London: Archibald Constable & Co, 1907.
[35] SMYTH, Patricia. 2010. Beyond the Picture-Frame Stage: Late Nineteenth-Century Pictorial Theatre Posters. Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film 37 (2010): 2: 4–27.
[36] SUS, Oleg. 1992. Geneze sémantiky hudby a básnictví v moderní české estetice (Dvě studie o Otakaru Zichovi) [Origins of the Semantics of Music and Literature in Modern Czech Aesthetics]. Brno: Filozofická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity, 1992.
[37] THAGARD, Paul. 2005. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science. 2nd ed. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2005.
[38] VELTRUSKÝ, Jiří. 1992. Sémiologie a avantgardní divadlo [Semiology and Anvant-garde Theatre]. Svět a divadlo 1 (1992): 145–155.
[39] VYGOTSKY, Lev S. 1971. Psychology of Art. Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press, 1971.
[40] ZICH, Otakar, 1921. Estetická příprava mysli [The Aesthetic Preparation of the Mind]. Česká mysl 17 (1921): 181–204.
[41] ZICH, Otakar. 1931. Estetika dramatického umění [The Aesthetics of Dramatic Art]. 1st ed. Prague: Melantrich, 1931.
[42] ZICH, Otakar. 1986. Estetika dramatického umění: teoretická dramaturgie [The Aesthetics of Dramatic Art: A Theoretical Dramaturgy]. 2nd ed. Prague: Panorama, 1986.