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Generating Theatre Meaning
A Theory and Methodology of Performance Analysis

Eli Rozik
Eli Rozik is professor emeritus of theatre studies. Twice head of the Department of Theatre Studies and until recently Dean of the Faculty of the Arts at Tel Aviv University, he specialises in theatre theory, particularly in non-verbal communication in performance analysis. He has published numerous scientific articles in international leading journals, in Europe and the USA, and Metaphor in Theatre and Poetry (1981), The Language of the Theatre (1991), Elements of Play Analysis (1992) and The Roots of Theatre Rethinking Ritual and Other Theories of Origin (2002).

“Eli Rozik has been at the forefront of the development of the analysis of performance for over two decades and is one of the world leaders in developing a paradigm shift within theatre studies away from the studies of play-texts to the text that is performance. This new book, while situating semiotics within a range of possible theoretical tools, charts the development of the theories of performance analysis that have developed from the early semiotic applications.” Brian Singleton, former editor of Theatre Research International, and president of the International Federation of Theatre Research; Trinity College, Dublin

“Eli Rozik has written a comprehensive and brilliant study of performance analysis. His book joins a long tradition of scholarship on the performance codes of theatre, stretching from the Prague Linguistic School of the 1930s to contemporary writings in theatre semiotics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and audience response theory… Drawing upon an impressive range of knowledge, from philosophy and neuroscience to rhetoric and literary aesthetics, Rozik delivers a rich and complex investigation of theatre performance, written in a clear, forceful style.” Thomas Postlewait, editor of Studies in Theatre History, School of Drama, University of Washington

This book offers a theory and methodology of performance analysis as an alternative to traditional play-analysis. The underlying theme is that theatre performance is a descriptive text generated by the theatre medium and that the process of generating meaning takes place in the actual encounter between a theatre performance and the spectator. Many new understandings result, including how the theatre medium is iconic in the new sense of operating images of real or mental models, and how this impacts on the verbal text and stage metaphor; how poetic principles structure fictional worlds and bestow unity and wholeness on performance-texts; how a dialogue between implied director and implied spectator is inscribed in the performance-text; and how the implied spectator is characterized by functions of framing, reading, interpreting and experiencing a performance-text. It follows that actors’bodies on stage fulfil functions of textuality, metatheatricality, personification, characterization and aesthetic effect.

An Introduction surveys major contributions made to a methodology of performance analysis, particularly throughout the twentieth century, and problematizes the main issues. Part I is devoted to the semiotic substratum of the performance-text, i.e. to the theatre medium and its basic means of generating theatre texts and meaning. The innovation of this approach lies in seeing theatre first and foremost as a nonverbal medium. Part II deals with the poetic structure of fictional worlds described by the theatre medium and the metaphoric and rhetoric structures that operate on the level of relationship between the description of such a world and the world of a spectator. Part III contains analyses of actual performance-texts that illustrate the application of principles previously presented.

This is the first comprehensive book to address the necessity of a methodology of performance analysis and take issue with criticism of traditional theatre semiotics.

	List of Contents to follow

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