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General terms in drama, theatre, and acting.

Action

Need to incorporate Barba's notion of action from Dramaturgy in Dictionary of Theatre Anthropology.

"It is evident that the possible worlds of the drama are never simple and static states of affairs but, rather, complex successions of states."

"Thus the fictional world [...] is not constituted by the initial or final state of affairs represented but by the entire sequence of actions, events and situations dramatized."

"A dramatic event is thus a change within the existing state of affairs".

Action constitutes the most important type of dramatic event. As Elam explains, an "action" is performed when "there is a being, conscious of his doings, who intentionally brings about a change of some kind, to some end, in a given context." Dramatic events also include occurrences that not considered to be "actions" because they are beyond or beneath human volition (such as death by natural causes, natural disasters, deus ex machina interventions, or unconscious human behaviour). Elam goes on to identify six constitutive elements of an action: "an agent, his intention in acting, the act or act-type produced, the modality of the action (manner and means), the setting (temporal, spatial and circumstantial) and the purpose." Elam (2002, 109). Combinations of actions are distinguished as "sequences" (where an over-arching purpose links the actions) or "series" (where actions succeed one another without a connection). In order to demonstrate the distinction between an action's "intention" and its "purpose", Elam provides the following example: "a family decides to spend a Sunday afternoon at the zoo, and so sets out in the family car only to find, on arrival, that the zoo is closed. In this case the intended action sequence (driving to the zoo) is duly performed, but its purpose (to allow the family to spend the afternoon looking at animals) is not fulfilled" (2002, 110). Elam's description resembles Kenneth Burke's "dramatism" (his analysis of the components of action) and its "dramatistic pentad": act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose; see his A Grammar of Motives (1945). Alice Rayner provides a book-length study of the nature of dramatic action in her To Act, To Do, To Perform (1994).

Action unifies the different semiotic systems of theatre language. Pavis suggests that this unifying function of action was stressed by the Prague Linguistic Circle: "Action—the very essence of dramatic art—fuses word, actor, costume, scenery and music in the sense that we recognize them as conductors of a single current that travels through them, passing from one to the other or through several at a time"; Jindřich Honzl, quoted by Pavis (1998, 346).

"Aristotle's concept of action has a strong moral content; it means a purposeful action, resulting from a decision, for which its agent is to some degree responsible. Good and bad decisions are fundamental expressions of character, which differs by virtue and vice."

Scene (drama)

A scene is

“ One fundamental formal characteristic of drama is the method by which the content is organised into blocks of text. Where a novel traditionally does this by means of chapter divisions, drama is divided up into acts and/or scenes which signal the beginning and end of a unit of action in relation to the whole. ”

Conventional divisions.

"Where 'breaks' are signified to the reader by means of acts and scenes, in performance such divisions may not be apparent."

In French neoclassical drama, for example, a new scene begins each time a character enters or exits.

Interesting bit on Maeterlinck's subversion of dramatic form via lyrical "tableaux". Then the "cyclical mirroring" of the two acts of Waiting for Godot.

problem play as successor to well-made play.

“ In c5th BCE Athens, the skene was the equivalent of the Elizabethan tiring-house: a wooden building behind the orkhestra (or open playing-area), probably about four netres high and twelve metres long, with a large double door. It housed the actor's dressing-room, but the exterior was also decorated with designs representing palaces, forests etc., probably on painted backdrops. Significant to its wide range of meanings in English is the fact that the original Greek work (and Latin scena) could be used to signify either the building, the acting space or its decoration.
Arriving in English via Fr. scène, most of the current theatrical senses of the word appeared during the great burgeoning of the English professional theatre in m-lC16. The ancient sense of decorative devices to create the illusion of a specific place--later scenery--can be deduced to have been in use as early as 1540 from Palsgrave's use (in the Prologue to his Comedye of Acolastus) of the now obsolete scenyshe in the phrase 'scenyshe apparaylynge'--'the setting forth or trymming of our scenes, that is to saye our places appoynted for our players to come forth of).' The term is used more clearly ju Jonson in The Masque of Blackness (1605): 'First, for the Scene, was drawn a Landtschap, consisting of small woods ... which falling, an artificiall sea was seene to shoot forth.'
Also in mC16, the term is employed for the sub-division of an act, as seen in Heywood's Proverbs & Epigrams (1562): 'In volewmes full or flat,/There is no chapter, nor no seane,/That thou appliest like that.' This separation of a piece into scenes is referred to as scene division.
The earliest figurative usage of the term is found as early as//1577: 'His sean is played, you folowe on the act' (Whetstone, A remembraunce of the wel imployed life of G. Gaskoigne). All the major theatrical usages of the term have since passed into general usage, perhaps the most famous being behind the scenes.
In the 1580s and 1590s, two other senses are shown to be current: those of 'setting'--"Well doon, Balthazar, hang up the Title: Our scene is Rhodes" (1592, Kyd, Spanish Tragedy)--and 'stage performance or action'--"A Kingdome for a Stage, Princes to Act,/And Monarchs to behold the swelling Scene" (Shakespeare, Henry V, Prologue). Later C17 theatrical devleopments of the word have not lasted: the term was once used for both 'dramatic writing' and for 'the theatrical world' (compare drama and theatre).
Beale charts the major C20 development of scene, citing an article entitled Basic Beatnik: A Square's Guide to Hip Talk (The Daily Colonist, 16 April 1959), where 'scene' is defined as 'something that's happening or the place where it's happening--(the verb here relating to the noun happening). This sense developed in American jazz and drug culture in e-mC20, reaching Britain by the 1950s and has spread outwards to refer to any enclosed or esoteric culture or world, as in the literary scene or the political scene. ”

"It is evident that the possible worlds of the drama are never simple and static states of affairs but, rather, complex successions of states."

"Thus the fictional world [...] is not constituted by the initial or final state of affairs represented but by the entire sequence of actions, events and situations dramatized."

"A dramatic event is thus a change within the existing state of affairs".

Action constitutes the most important type of dramatic event. Action unifies the different semiotic systems of theatre language.

Elam objects to the use of the "quest" pattern to exemplify the dramatic structure of all drama: "while it is unquestionable that much classical, popular and folk drama adopts such a form (Oedipus and Everyman being notable examples), it is by no means clear that this is the appropriate framework in which to consider, say, Miss Julie or Travesties."

Sources

• Aston, Elaine, and George Savona. 1991. Theatre as Sign-System: A Semiotics of Text and Performance. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415049326.
• Burke, Kenneth. 1945. A Grammar of Motives. California edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969. ISBN 0520015444.
• Elam, Keir. 2002. The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama. 2nd edition. New Accents Ser. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0415280184. Originally published in 1980.
• Harrison, Martin. 1998. The Language of Theatre. London: Routledge. ISBN 0878300872.
• Rayner, Alice. 1994. To Act, To Do, To Perform: Drama and the Phenomenology of Action. Theater: Theory/Text/Performance Ser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. ISBN 047210537X.

Scratchpad

• Need to consider whether to create two articles for text/performance (Action (drama) • Action (acting)) or to create only one that explores all senses (Action (theatre), or maybe Action (drama) is better, as this includes the dramatic components of a film)?