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The Video Documentation of Theatrical Performance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 January 2009

Gay McAuley
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Abstract

Video technology has been widely available for the last twenty years, and offers possibilities for the documentation of theatrical performance that no previous generation has possessed. What are we doing with these possibilities? Why is it that we are only now taking some timid first steps towards the establishment of national or regional video archives? This article reports some findings from ten years of experimentation with recording formats and analysis, and urges the need for action by theatre practitioners, funding authorities, and university researchers to ensure that the theatrical output of another generation is not lost. The author, Gay McAuley, teaches in French and Performance Studies and is Director of the Interdisciplinary Centre for Performance Studies at the University of Sydney. Her research in recent years has focused on the semiotics of performance and, in particular, the ways actors use text in the construction of performance. She is currently writing a book called Space in Performance.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Theatre Quarterly , Volume 10 , Issue 38 , May 1994 , pp. 183 - 194
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

Notes and References

1. ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduct’ (1936), trans. Zohn, Harry, in Benjamin, Walter, Illuminations (New York: Schocken Books, 1968), p. 217–51.Google Scholar

2. The Theatre Museum at Covent Garden is currently working to set up a National Archive of Stage Performance, and at least two productions have already been filmed under the guidance of Video Consultant Roger Jenkins. There are also major library collections of theatrical performance on film and video – e.g., the Maison Jean Vilar in Avignon, and the Theatre on Film and Tape (TOFT) collection at the Lincoln Centre in New York. Also, the British Consortium for Drama and Media in Higher Education has made a sterling attempt over a number of years to locate and catalogue film and video recordings of theatrical performance available for purchase or hire. There is a distinction to be made between centres which collect material which is commercially available or donated to them, and those, like the Nederlands Theater Institut and the Covent Garden Theatre Museum, which intervene directly in order to make the recordings.

3. de Marinis, Marco. ‘A Faithful Betrayal of Performance: Notes on the Use of Video in Theatre’, New Theatre Quarterly, I, No. 4 (1985), p. 388.Google Scholar

4. The reluctance of theatre practitioners to devote resources to documentation has to be weighed against their apparent eagerness to consult the archives that do exist. A survey of users of the TOFT Collection at the Lincoln Centre in 1988–89 found that, out of 2,510 users surveyed, 1,497 were theatre professionals, and amongst these actors were overwhelmingly the largest user group (more than 50 per cent of the total).

5. Arcanal is funded by the French Government, and its task was originally seen as recording live performance for archival purposes. As the group explains in a mission statement ‘Assez rapidement le souci de la diffusion a fait évoluer cette activité.’ Their main activity now is to explore forms through which artists (they mention writers, directors, and choreographers but not, interestingly, actors) can experiment with film and television. Their goal is to co-produce ‘oeuvres cinématographiques ou vidéographiques susceptibles de renouveler les rapports entre l'image enregistrée et le spectacle vivant’ (Mission Statement, 1991, by Arcanal, 3 rue Boissiàre, Paris 16e).

6. It is true that film has been available for much longer than video, but film necessitates a gross intrusion into the performance reality. It is only with the latest video technology that we have the possibility of recording the whole theatrical performance in real time, without fragmenting its spatio-temporal integrity, without adjusting the stage lighting levels, and without interposing the recording apparatus between the actors and the spectators in the performance space.

7. Barba, Eugenio, ‘Eftermaele – That Which Will Be Said Afterwards’, The Drama Review, Summer 1992, p. 77–9.Google Scholar

8. Benjamin, Walter, op. cit., p. 220–2.Google Scholar

9. Bablet, Denis, ‘La Vidéo au service de la recherche théâtrale’, Cahiers Theatre Louvain, XVVI (1981), p. 75–90.Google Scholar

10. Figures 1–5 are the result of taking images from the video recordings by using a computer frame grabbing device. Some of the images were then retouched, using computer software, in order to clarify the image of the performer in relation to the background. An account of the earlier work on performance documentation carried out at the University of Sydney is published in Working Papers, Vol. 1: Documentation of Theatrical Performance (Sydney: Association for Studies in Society and Culture, 1986).Google Scholar

11. Empirical studies of spectators in a range of performance situations carried out by my colleague Tim Fitzpatrick using a modified ‘eyemark’ device are producing evidence of how spectators do in fact ‘read’ performance. See, for example, Fitzpatrick, T. and Batten, Sean, ‘Watching the Watchers Watch: Some Implications of Audience Attention Patterns’, Gestos, XII (11 1991), p. 11–31.Google Scholar More work is now needed to produce evidence of normal scanning patterns of television viewers, and then to compare these with typical saccade patterns of viewers of video recordings of performance, and with the findings of Tim Fitzpatrick concerning spectators in the theatre.

12. Taviani, F., ‘In Memory of Ryszard Cieslak’, New Theatre Quarterly, VIII, No. 31 (08 1992), p. 249–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar