Drawing on Elaine Aston s Semiotics of Performance, study the following excerpts from

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1 Ana Mondal DRAM 3001 Prof. Cordula Quint Drawing on Elaine Aston s Semiotics of Performance, study the following excerpts from Peter Brook s film Marat/Sade, and focus your attention in particular on the use of Brechtian techniques as well as the semiotic construction of madness in the performance of Glenda Jackson as well as other asylum inmates. Semiotics as defined by the Free Online Dictionary is the theory and study of signs and symbols, especially as elements of language or other systems of communication, and comprising semantics, syntactic, and pragmatics 1. Theatrical Performance and Semiotics are two closely linked concepts, as even at an introductory level, the analysis of performance requires a working knowledge of semiotics, reception studies and theories of ideology, gender, corporeality, space and ethnicity in addition to experience of the art form in question. Semiotics happens to be one of the most important aspects of a successful production, and the actor always plays an important role in this. As noted in Aston s book, the actor holds a very important function in a great chunk of the production. There are lesser aspects outside the actor, than inside the actor. Brecht is a keystone figure in the world of performance, as a lot of techniques branched off from his ideologies, and a lot of people use his styles, even in the contemporary world. Even someone as great as Brecht, had inspirations and people who d influenced and motivated him. 1 "Semiotics." The Free Dictionary. Farlex. Web. 5 Apr <

2 Ana Mondal 2 His main influence was that from the poet, Frank Wedekind. He had declared that his greatest work was his own personality, and he followed that ideology to develop the same for himself. He wanted his own personality to become greater than any literature he could ever create, and he d said that in his books and interviews. 2 Brechtian motifs and images involve a lot of: absinthe, dark woods, vanishing heavens, and the torture stake. 3 Though these characteristics hold importance in Brechtian styles, they aren t the sole aspects used in Brechtian productions. The number of strategies he s furnished in books, journals, etc are relatively innumerable and as his beliefs were that of varied natures of productions based on the nature of the play rather than idealistic modes of performance, things can be adapted endlessly. Peter Brook s film The Persecution and Assassination of Jean-Paul Marat definitely involved quite a few Brechtian strategies in its performance. Brechtian influences are quite vast and subject to question when it comes to the direct depiction of a film of this nature in performance. Peter Brook had directed major productions at the Royal Shakespeare Company in his early twenties. He formed his own company of multicultural actors, in Paris in 1970 under the title International Theatre Research Centre 4. He was one of the most innovative and experimental figures in English theatre, as witnessed by his famous staging of Peter Weiss s Marat/Sade, based on theories of Antonin Artaud 5. However, the parts now in question are the 2 Morley, Michael. "Preface." Preface. The Young Brecht. By Hanns Otto Munsterer, Tom Kuhn, and Karen J. Leeder. London: Libris, Vii. Print. 3 Morley, Michael. "Preface." Preface. The Young Brecht. By Hanns Otto Munsterer, Tom Kuhn, and Karen J. Leeder. London: Libris, xi. Print. 4 Roose-Evans, James. "To Mountain with Many Caves: Peter Brook, Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart." Experimental Theatre from Stranislavsky to Peter Brook. London: Routledge, Print. 5 Rafael, Mark. "Peter Brook (1925)." Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus, Print.

3 Ana Mondal 3 Brechtian strategies rather than Artaudian techniques, though the two are essentially quite interlinked. In this performance, he addresses the question of how theatre can be made a simple organic necessity like food and sex, though in an indirect fashion. His philosophy says that make believe is a necessity. He says that he strives to find quality that has been lost to Western industrial societies. 6 He not only incorporates these things in Marat/Sade, but also for other productions, as it s a Peter Brook philosophy that carries on even outside one specific performance, despite it carrying a certain aspect of his philosophical traits in it. It was mostly because just like Gratowski, Brook is concerned with the question of what theatre really is, what an actor is, their relationship and what serves best between that relationship with respect to a production 7. He wasn t concerned with the exchange of theatrical skill, but that of an international experience, for which language especially was very important factor for a prime experience 8, and this could be established, only when a production involved diversity of multiple kinds. His depiction of Marat/Sade showed the effective use of Brechtian influence as it involved certain aspects that Brecht has used in his productions. Brecht s first full-length play Baal was about this person who cared only about earthly pleasures: food, drinks, dances and making love to men and women. Using earthly pleasure related aspects in Marat/Sade, depicting 6 Roose-Evans, James. "To Mountain with Many Caves: Peter Brook, Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart." Experimental Theatre from Stranislavsky to Peter Brook. London: Routledge, Print. 7 Roose-Evans, James. "To Mountain with Many Caves: Peter Brook, Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart." Experimental Theatre from Stranislavsky to Peter Brook. London: Routledge, Print. 8 Roose-Evans, James. "To Mountain with Many Caves: Peter Brook, Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart." Experimental Theatre from Stranislavsky to Peter Brook. London: Routledge, Print.

4 Ana Mondal 4 madness and dark factors shows a certain link between the two productions, though not as conspicuously as it could get. 9 The basic gist of Marat/Sade as narrated by the Storyline of its description on the Internet Movie Database is that The Marquis de Sade is locked in the Charenton mental hospital and decides to put on a play. His overseers agree as long as he follows certain conditions. He writes and directs the other mental patients in a play based on the life of the Jean-Paul Marat. As the play progresses, the inmates become more and more possessed by the violence of the play and become extremely difficult to control. Finally, all chaos breaks loose. 10 Now, the description by itself used Brechtian strategies, due to the Cathartic nature of it. As the performance involved inmates in an asylum, the whole actors or actresses looking like ordinary people off stage and on stage factor falls in place. As much as they aren t ordinary people per se, they involve them being their natural selves, to an extent. This involves cathartic components to it, slightly similar to that of what was used by Boal as well, seeing how all these dramatic theorists are oddly connected. Glenda Jackson is an Academy Award-winning actress, and a socialist. Politics are significant to her. 11 This would also mean that things that branch of from politics, indirectly, such as therapy in mental asylums, held significance to her as well. With this production and her 9 Schoeps, Karl-Heinz. Bertolt Brecht: Life, Work and Criticism. Fredericton, N.B.: York, Print. 10 "Marat/Sade." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 10 Apr < 11 (AP). "Glenda Jackson Ready to Take on Political Role." Toronto Star: F.3. Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies. May Web. 10 Apr

5 Ana Mondal 5 role as Charlotte Corday 12, she clearly was an actress facilitating Drama therapy in an asylum. Notably, her performance involved depiction of dark Brechtian strategies, as clearly observed by artist Marianne Faithfull, those were the strategies in Glenda Jackson s acting she d observed Brechtian styles in 13. This had a deep influence on her. The incorporation of the construction of madness in performance too, was clearly evident, as just watching the film made the madness aspect of it flash brighter than a shooting star. Just watching the performance, one could see the stereotypical madness associated with it. It was even clearly mouthed as a therapeutic measure. Her acting in the performance embarked on the aspects of Brechtian styles, as the whole time, the audience was aware that this performance was not reality, especially when weapons weren t thrust into people s hearts, as they weren t made to seem like they were actually thrust in their bodies causing instant death. The weapons were pushed through the side of the body and the arm. Brecht believed that an actor coming close to examining the truth of the procedure of his performance was a necessary operation. He felt that the actor is then merely thrown back on her natural sensibility and corrected by reference to reality. We can see this in Glenda Jackson s performance, established with the semiotics of madness in the excepts. The acting opened up a type of theatre, in film, where feelings were not only released by these inmates, adding insights and impulses, but also connected the performance with a historical field of human relations in which action took place, and employed and encouraged those thoughts and feelings brought out to transform the field itself, just like Brechtian styles note. 12 "Marat/Sade." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 10 Apr < 13 "Influences: Marianne Faithfull." New York Feb : 77-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 10 Apr

6 Ana Mondal 6 Brecht also felt that giving the actor possession by his/her role by itself, causes a lot of confusion and indignation as the actor forgets about his/her super task, and sees only his/her own parts, which offends against the content of the play as a whole, even when they give their parts interesting details and great acting ability. Such things were avoided in Peter Brook s directed performance. Glenda Jackson was obviously aware of the performance as a whole, as a performance of this nature involves deep attention inclined to the production as a whole, instead of one mere aspect of it. Brecht had stated that An actor lives, weeps and laughs on the stage, and all the while he is watching his own tears and smiles. It is this double function; this balance between life and acting that makes his art. 14 and in order to prevent them from trying to melt their audience together into a single emotional lump, Brecht asked his actors to think of their audience as a divided group of friends and enemies, rich and poor, and to divide their audience accordingly by addressing themselves to one part of the audience for the first moment, to another part for the next, so on and so forth. This was heavily incorporated in this performance of Marat/Sade, as the spectators were not spectators, but spectactors and were directly involved in the performance. Brectian philosophies also state that The semiotics of a particular Gestus are also dependent on accurate costuming, carefully chosen and handled props and an understanding by the actor of the effects of life s experiences on a character s physical expression (such as the toll exacted by the character s job). All these elements contribute to the audience s understanding of the character s social significance within the play. 15 As this performance involved spectactors, an effective Gestus with cathartic elements was achieved. 14 Eddershaw, Margaret. Performing Brecht: Forty Years of British Performances. London: Routledge, Pg. 20. Print. 15 Thomson, Peter, and Glendyr Sacks. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, Print.

7 Ana Mondal 7 This film was a form of new theatre, that Brecht had envisioned as one that wasn t a church full of high priests and worshippers or art, but a sports arena where the actors, and the director could be wild experimental beasts, and explore the theatre in a manner that wasn t overly controlled, but full of experiments through trial and error. Brechtian strategies involved the audience being experiential, like their own Columbus, discovering things as the production went deeper into the plot, or lack of a specific plot rather. He believed in the use of Aristotelian Catharsis by using the Alienation Effect and presenting a play the way it would not really happen in real. He liked keeping that difference between real life and theatre as he felt that an audience swept away with emotion is not capable of learning and growing. Contrary to Stanislavsky, he wanted an actor to demonstrate a character rather than be the character. He wanted it to look more like a story than like that of real life. He believed in theoretical experiments instead of catering to the audience. He felt that he audience should be able to retain their capacity of critical observation; hence lights were necessary to avoid the effect of mystery and illusion. He wanted everything to be crystal clear though he wanted the audience to continuously learn through the course of the play. This was quite evidently incorporated in the Peter Brook s film production of Marat/Sade, through Glenda Jackson s acting style. He felt that music used in productions shouldn t be such that it emotionally enhanced the plot of the play, but be unrelated and often go against the action and interrupt the text instead. 16 This wasn t as clearly evident in the performance, as it was more of a fifty-fifty factor. However, that s something rather relative, and based on how individuals perceive such things. Not everybody looks at the effect of music in the exact same manner. As Brecht s work had some French influence as he d spent a while in 16 Schoeps, Karl-Heinz. Bertolt Brecht: Life, Work and Criticism. Fredericton, N.B.: York, Print.

8 Ana Mondal 8 France, and seriously considered settling down there 17, and as he liked absurd and avant-garde theatre 18, this performance is linked to his philosophies. It uses Brecht s concepts and ideologies of using theatre to assert reasoning behaviour 19, as it also uses spectactors to remind audience members that they, too, are capable of conscious intervention. 20 Brecht was suspicious that dramatic theatre had the tendency to use the processes to channel the actors and the spectators towards having similar emotions to the characters. There was a reinforced tendency in dramatic theatre to make everyone look at the plot the same way. There s always a protagonist and an antagonist. Not every side of the story is shown 21. Hence, he drifted away from it and indulged in epic theatre a lot more than other forms of theatre. This performance is definitely a form of avant-garde theatre and depicts that act of the semiotics of madness and drifts away from that tendency, as it isn t one that forces the audience to look at the performance in one specific manner, but is about spectactor involvement and catharsis more than anything else. In Brecht s time, he d used theatre to show that communists were respectable people and the police had no justification to fire at them. People he was close to had been hurt 17 Chetana, Nagavajara. Brecht and France. Bern U.a.: Lang, Print. Counsell, Colin. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth Century Theatre. London [u.a.: Routledge, Print. 18 Chetana, Nagavajara. Brecht and France. Bern U.a.: Lang, Print. Counsell, Colin. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth Century Theatre. London [u.a.: Routledge, Print. 19 Mumford, Meg. Bertolt Brecht. London: Routledge, Print. 20 Mumford, Meg. Bertolt Brecht. London: Routledge, Print. 21 Mumford, Meg. Bertolt Brecht. London: Routledge, Print.

9 Ana Mondal 9 due to various policies in the time he d lived in. 22 This could be connected to that philosophy as it shows that inmates in an asylum are respectable people and shows their side of the story as well. It uses the type of acting Brecht liked and advocated, though that can be understood only in relation to what he was opposed to in the German theatre of his time. It was a period of violent transition. Brecht disliked emphasis on intensity. 23 As this performance gets more intense as time passes, it may not have completely conformed to Brechtian techniques. A primary aspect of theatrical function of the actor in Brechtian theatre, is the representation of character. Information on the appearance and interplay of the character are important aspects. Semiotics of madness requires a crucial physiological and psychological involvement of characters to bring out the true effect of semiotics of madness in a play. Fluctuations in behaviour and expressions, body language and movement also enhance these aspects. 24 Brecht conformed to no single sign system style. He felt that the style should be dictated by specific performances and their needs rather than using a specific ideal. His earlier plays employed expressionist like forms and a lot of influence by dramatists like Frank Wedekind and George Kaiser. For his latter ones, he d used the Japanese Noh Theatre a lot This was an aspect that could be observed in Peter Brook s film, which was important with 22 Bradley, Laura. Brecht and Political Theatre: "The Mother" on Stage. Oxford [u.a.: Clarendon, Print. 23 Kleber, Pia, and Colin Visser. Some Reflections on Brecht and Acting. Martin Esslin. Re-interpreting Brecht: His Influence on Contemporary Drama and Film. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, Print. 24 Aston, Elaine, and George Savona. Theatre as Sign-system: A Semiotics of Text and Performance. London: Routledge, Print. 25 Schoeps, Karl-Heinz. Bertolt Brecht: Life, Work and Criticism. Fredericton, N.B.: York, Print. 26 White, John J. Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory. Rochester, NY: Camden House, Print.

10 Ana Mondal 10 regard to the performance, as adapting styles helps understanding a specific concept of a theatrical process a lot more deeply, and helps immerse one into the deeper aspects that come only when there is an emphasis on the scrutiny of a certain production. There are plenty of hidden aspects to performances that require heavy contemplation in order to truly understand its inner meaning. Hence, these aspects are quite important with regard to the true enactment of a specific production. The semiotics of madness was very clearly enacted in the production. Music was an important aspect of this production as in quite a few parts, there were calm interludes when scenes were intense, and that also helped soothe things. It was cathartic and therapeutic in unusual manners. When Glenda Jackson stabbed herself in the performance, one could see how it was quite easy to believe that she was completely insane, as she kept stabbing herself in the performance, and chanting sentences that got louder as the scene drifted in more. She was clearly explaining grievances. Everything was so poetic that it was obvious that none of this could be real. It was a false reality in a scenario that was enacted as a part of real situations. Her insanity in judgemental terms was quite evident in the performance. Her expressions played an essential role in her performance. The way she d worded things made her look like a savant in some ways. But the way she d enacted this would be quite open to interpretation based on the person watching it. There wasn t exactly a real direction to it. Hence, the audience could have their own minds when watching this performance. One can see how her madness progressed through the film, as at the start, she clearly didn t show traits of madness as intense as it got later into the film. It s almost as though the performance shows that a lot of people enter mental asylums completely sane, and just turn insane due to the way they are treated in there. But that too, isn t as very clear as it could be, as different sides of the argument are seen due to the way it has all been presented.

11 Ana Mondal 11 The last except especially shows heavy detail in the semiotic construction of madness as it gets severely intense in the end, as everyone turned wild in it, and Glenda Jackson got louder, and moved around and spoke of injustice everyone was subject to. There were sound effects that signified madness as well. As she falls off signifying suicide, people catching her as she falls cushion her. This breaks that reality, which clearly is another aspect that was one, founded by Brecht.

12 Ana Mondal 12 Works Cited Aston, Elaine, and George Savona. Theatre as Sign-system: A Semiotics of Text and Performance. London: Routledge, Print. Bradley, Laura. Brecht and Political Theatre: "The Mother" on Stage. Oxford [u.a.: Clarendon, Print. Chetana, Nagavajara. Brecht and France. Bern U.a.: Lang, Print. Counsell, Colin. Signs of Performance: An Introduction to Twentieth Century Theatre. London [u.a.: Routledge, Print. De, Marinis Marco. The Semiotics of Performance. Bloomington: Indiana UP, Print. Eddershaw, Margaret. Performing Brecht: Forty Years of British Performances. London: Routledge, Print. Giles, Steve, and Rodney Livingstone. Bertolt Brecht: Centenary Essays. Amsterdam: Rodopi, Print. (AP). "Glenda Jackson Ready to Take on Political Role." Toronto Star: F.3. Canadian Newsstand Major Dailies. May Web. 10 Apr "Glenda Jackson Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television. Web. 09 Apr < Hanke, Ken. "Marat/sade." Mountain Xpress: 69. Alt-PressWatch Web. 10 Apr "Influences: Marianne Faithfull." New York Feb : 77-. ProQuest Research Library. Web. 10 Apr Kleber, Pia, and Colin Visser. Re-interpreting Brecht: His Influence on Contemporary Drama and Film. Cambridge [England: Cambridge UP, Print. "Marat/Sade." IMDb. IMDb.com. Web. 10 Apr <

13 Ana Mondal 13 Münsterer, Hanns Otto, Tom Kuhn, and Karen J. Leeder. The Young Brecht. London: Libris, Print. Morley, Michael. "Preface." Preface. The Young Brecht. By Hanns Otto Mu%u0308nsterer, Tom Kuhn, and Karen J. Leeder. London: Libris, Vii. Print. Mumford, Meg. Bertolt Brecht. London: Routledge, Print. Rafael, Mark. "Peter Brook (1925)." Telling Stories: A Grand Unifying Theory of Acting Techniques. Hanover, NH: Smith and Kraus, Print. Roose-Evans, James. Experimental Theatre: From Stanislavsky to Peter Brook. London: Routledge, Print. Roose-Evans, James. "To Mountain with Many Caves: Peter Brook, Alfred Wolfsohn and Roy Hart." Experimental Theatre from Stranislavsky to Peter Brook. London: Routledge, Print. Schoeps, Karl-Heinz. Bertolt Brecht: Life, Work and Criticism. Fredericton, N.B.: York, Print. "Semiotics Encyclopedia OnlineE.J. Pratt Library - Victoria University." Semiotics Encyclopedia Online. Web. 09 Apr < "Semiotics." The Free Dictionary. Farlex. Web. 5 Apr < Thomson, Peter, and Glendyr Sacks. The Cambridge Companion to Brecht. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, Print. White, John J. Bertolt Brecht's Dramatic Theory. Rochester, NY: Camden House, Print.