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Theatre and Performance: The Cherry Orchard and Henry V
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 November 2021
Extract
Experience as it is represented on stage—“represent” understood as the simple action —can be divided into performance, productive work, statecraft, and personal relations; theoretically, any one of these can serve as a subject for theatrical representation. In practice, however, some kinds of experience appear on stage more frequently than others. Productive work is rarely represented in theatre. Even in plays like John Gabriel Borkman or The Cherry Orchard, where the productive mentality is an important theme, we rarely see the producer actually working. Performance is shown on stage more often than productive work, but still rather infrequently. When it does occur—in a play within a play, in a marriage or funeral scene, in a boxing match—it is usually an isolated scene, and is rarely the subject of an entire play. The most common subjects for theatrical representation are without doubt statecraft and personal relations.
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- Copyright © The Tulane Drama Review 1967
References
1 A scene that shows a welder at work represents productive work, a scene in which actors act or jugglers juggle represents performance. Structure is of no importance here. In other words, in a seduction scene where both seducer and seduced are playing games, the activity represented is not performance but personal relations—that is the simple action of the scene.
2 It has been argued that a structure cannot be temporal in nature and that “structure” is therefore an improper word to apply to the patterns that are revealed in the course of a theatrical performance. This is true, but here I mean something quite different by “structure.” “Structure,” as I use it, is not part of the play itself, but an intellectual construct abstracted post factum from the play. As such, it is static rather than temporal. Later, to deal with those patterns that are realized in the course of the play, I shall introduce the concept of texture.
3 It is important to remember that when I say theatre “imitates” structural elements of other activities, I am talking only about formal patterns, inherent in other activities, that sometimes appear in theatre. Thematic parallels between theatre and other forms of performance are another question altogether. Such parallels may often be found, especially between theatre and ritual, but indicate no special affinity between the two forms. It is no more than natural that a culture should use both ritual and theatre (and the other arts as well) to express themes that especially concern it.
4 It has been suggested that since, except in terms of scale, texture is no different from structure, there is no need to use both terms. Structure alone, it is said, should suffice. A discussion of this question led inevitably to an attempt to define the component units of a play. If these units could be defined, the term “texture” might indeed be superfluous—we would be able instead to speak of the structure of a beat or of a scene as opposed to the structure of the play. Since, however, the component units of a play remain for the present undefined, it seems useful, at least temporarily, to keep the distinction beween structure and texture.
5 In most circumstances statecraft and in some circumstances personal relations do have rules if not structures, but these rules serve only as frames into which a structure must be inserted. In a regulated situation anyone who tries to adopt the structure of play (by nature unregulated) will usually find himself in trouble. This is possibly the case with Richard II.
6 More exactly, he is in a situation in which the role of king is clearly defined. There is, however, general agreement that in matrixed performances the requirement of displaying the characteristics attributed to a role is itself a kind of role.
7 Henry's short speech (11. 221-33) is pure theatre.