Theory: Towards a materialist semiotic - Annotation
This post discusses a scholarly article:
Knowles, Richard Paul. "Theory: Towards a materialist semiotic." Reading the Material Theatre.
Cambridge University Press, 2004. 9-23. Web. 12 July 2017.
Richard Knowles’ introduction to Reading the Material Theatre features important terms that influence his theoretical approach of materialist semiotics -cultural materialism and theatre semiotics- describing their origins, objectives, and complications. He proposes reconciliation between the two to form his theoretical approach that takes into account the roles of all aspects of theatrical production and reception in the analysis of productions. He provides a framework to performance analysis where meaning is produced in theatrical productions as a product of the relationship of three crucial factors; performance text, conditions of production, and conditions of reception.
Materialist semiotics as a solution to cultural materialism and theatre semiotics is effective and necessary because while cultural materialism focuses on cultural, historical, social, and political analysis, it fails to close read the particularity and the importance of specificity in location and individual productions, and while theatre semiotics focuses on creating a systematic code, it centers around the classification of semiotic system far too much to take any specific political analysis of productions into account. Knowles’ model is effective because it seeks cultural, historical, social, and political identities in association with each and in their relationship of how meaning is produced with a very site-specific lens that urges me to improve my analysis of theatre.
This relationship between performance text, conditions of production, and conditions of reception is a useful concept when analyzing theatre in a more critical and advanced way. This reading challenges my conventional view of what reading a text is- the usual association of a written script, and this is important because it provides an entire framework and concepts to inform the context of all the readings pertaining to my research, academic or otherwise, and the terminology he works with will be applicable in the analysis of every other source I use. Knowles’ introduction is useful for providing a basic understanding of the importance of semiotics and how that philosophy is incorporated into theatre. Because I am researching the production of meaning through the lens of language, I can use the semiotic theory he offers as a starting point into exploring how semiotic systems impact meaning, especially when applied to the productions in the Avignon Festival where language was a barrier, to create a universally symbolic device in lieu of a verbal language.
