Talk:Presentational and representational acting

Best way to describe Uta's terminology

Uta Hagen's 'formalist' actress: Sarah Bernhardt (connecting with her audience)

Uta Hagen's 'realist' actress: Eleonora Duse (ignoring her audience)

I'm not so sure that my choice of 'rehearsal-performance relationship' is the best way to describe Stanislavski's and Uta's use of 'representation'. Maybe for Stan, but maybe not for Uta. Maybe it's just simpler to say 'methodological approaches' or something like that. Will think about this more...

I've put Bernhardt/Duse images here without having discussed them. Didn't want to lose the links to these particular images, as I think they work well together.

DionysosProteus 03:15, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

I realised that although there are differences in the rehearsal method (as in the difference between Stanislavski and Brecht processes), the crucial difference as Stanislavski defines it is how the actor experiences the role while on-stage; it's an actor-character relationship, not a rehearsal-performance relationship. DionysosProteus 16:33, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm placing this material here in order not to lose it before it is completed to go onto front page

Hagen's terminology

Give outline of Respect for acting argument and its revision in A Challenge for the Actor.

Confusion of terms

Stanislavski's choice of the phrase 'art of representation' to describe an artistic approach that diverges from his own is unfortunate, given that the theatre that results from his own 'experiencing the role' approach is 'representational' in the wider critical sense. Uta Hagen's decision to use 'presentational' as a synonym for Stanislavski's 'experiencing the role' served to compound the confusion.

The representational: mimesis and repetition

Both writers take the word 'representation' to mean a process of re-presenting; specifically, the repetition of behaviour. In Stanislavski's formulation, this involves repeating behaviour that was initially 'lived' in rehearsal. In Hagen's formulation, this involves repeating behaviour that is a theatrical convention (confusing art of rep with xx) or repeating real-life behaviour in an external, simulated form only (confusing art of rep with xx).

'Representation', though, has a traditional meaning in the study of drama. In his Poetics (c.335BCE), the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle defines drama as a mimesis of action. ‘Mimesis’ is translated as either 'imitation' or, more frequently, 'representation'. Drama is the representation of action, according to Aristotle.

Explain drama as autonomy (Szondi et al) Then explain how Stan and Uta's performance strategies are therefore representational. The fourth-wall dramatic autonomy of their method creates a 'representational' fiction.

Denial of the presentational

The term 'presentational' is available to Hagen's reformulation because, like Stanislavski, she fails to acknowledge the existence of the presentational dimensions of drama at all. Both Stanislavski and Hagen promote a mode of theatrical performance that imposes an absolute autonomy of the dramatic fiction at the expense of the reality of the theatrical event; or, to put it in other terms, that maintains the fictional reality of the character by means of an exclusion of the actual reality of the actor. Stanislavski and Hagen recognize no 'outside' to the dramatic fiction (or, at least, none that functions positively). Many types of drama in the history of theatre, though, make use of the presentational 'outside' and its many possible interactions with the representational 'inside'—Shakespeare, Restoration comedy, and Brecht, to name a few significant examples.

Shakespearean drama assumed a natural, direct and often-renewed contact with the audience on the part of the performer. 'Fourth wall' performances foreclose the complex layerings of theatrical and dramatic realities that result from this contact and that are built into Shakespeare's dramaturgy. A good example is the line spoken by Cleopatra in act five of Antony and Cleopatra (1607), when she contemplates her humiliation in Rome at the hands of Octavius Caesar; she imagines mocking theatrical renditions of her own story: "And I shall see some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness in the posture of a whore" (5.2.215-217). That this was to be spoken by a boy in a dress in a theatre is an integral part of its dramatic meaning. This complexity is unavailable to a purely 'naturalistic' treatment that recognizes no distinction between actor and character nor acknowledges the presence of the actual audience. Nor is it only a matter of the interpretation of individual moments; the presentational dimension is a structural part of the meaning of the drama as a whole. This structural dimension is most visible in Restoration comedy through its persistent use of the aside, though there are many other meta-theatrical aspects in operation in these plays. In Brecht, the interaction between the two dimensions—representational and presentational—forms a major part of his 'epic' dramaturgy and receives sophisticated theoretical elaboration through his conception of the relation between mimesis and Gestus.

Confusing article

I respect that this article is based around confusing themes, however, the language used is not for lay-people. I am a performing arts student, and whilst my specialism is physical performance rather than naturalistic acting, I still found the language very heavy.

The introduction should be based on the Syntax of Wikipedia - i.e. providing a general overview of the answer to the question, not, as would be acceptable and normal in academia, an overview of the complexity of the question at hand.

I suggest more clarity. Sebbi (talk) 01:10, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

I'm a musician who has never studied theatre at all (not formally at least), and I found the article useful, enlightening, and intellectually stimulating, its language not intimidating or confusing. How accurate the article is, however, I'm not in a position to judge--most Wikipedia music theory articles are highly inaccurate. TheScotch (talk) 08:02, 15 January 2010 (UTC)