To Face or Not To Face the Audience: Performing Styles

• Authors: Georges Banu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper proposes a series of theoretical considerations on the performing styles used in contemporary theatre, according to the relationship the actor establishes with the audience. If Diderot was the first to question frontal relationship, and asked the performer to ignore the spectator, this programme will only be accomplished one hundred years later, with the emergence of the director. Later on, theoreticians such as Meyerhold, Vakhtangov or Copeau will ask for a partial return to performing facing the audience, as a sign of the return to the theatrical tradition dominated by the exigencies of the stage and not by those of the truth. With Piscator and Brecht theatre rediscovered frontality, as a sign of the wish to engage the auditorium as an active partner of dialogue. The author discusses several avatars that this new frontality acquires in presentday theatre.

Keywords

EN

Theatre; Performing; Frontality; Back; Actor; Auditorium

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human and Social Studies
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 61-77

Dates

published

2014-03-01

online

2014-02-27

Contributors

author

Georges Banu

• Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle University, 1-5, Censier str. 75005, Paris, France

References

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• Donnellan, Declan. L’acteur et la cible. Vic-de-la-Gardiole: L’entretemps, 2004.
• Fried, Michael. Absorption and Theatricality: Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.
• Lassalle, Jacques, Jean-Loup Rivière. Conversations sur Don Juan. Paris: P.O.L, 2004.
• Oida, Yoshi. L’acteur flottant. Arles: Actes Sud, 1998.
• Vitez, Anoine. Le théâtre des idées. Paris: Gallimard, 1992.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/hssr-2013-0021