What happens in performance, above all to the characters, when an actor transforms them from their fictional existence on the page to their physical enactment on the stage?
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Richard Coyne: ‘Everything is Code’.
As any student of semiotics knows, speaking in code is what we do — when we communicate. It’s normal. To speak directly is the exception rather than the rule. In the kind of work I’m involved in getting others to do what you think you want them to do is primarily an exercise in subtle influence, persuasion and suggestion, perhaps delivered as a “nudge” rather than an order. It’s the same in advertising. Only crude advertisers direct you to buy Weetabix — obviously, overtly, as a command.
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Beowulf: a multi-lingual translation-as-performance?
What insights about the idea of ‘translation’ might be gleaned from thinking about it not only in performance, but itself as a kind of performance? Nicholas Arnold, following last week’s ‘Re-’ Interdisciplinary Network symposium on ‘Translation as Performance’[1], was prompted to reflect on the multicultural and multilingual shows and audiences that have characterized international theatre festivals since the 1960s – including his own productions.
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The Task Ahead: Salvatore Settis and the ‘Classical’.
Asked by an academic friend to name one book I would save if the world were to collapse in an apocalyptic climate change scenario, I thought: ‘it’s too hard’, but then started going though my mental library. ‘You wouldn’t want to save an academic book, would you,’ said my friend, ‘surely a novel, an artist’s book…’. But in those few seconds I had already settled in my head for Salvatore Settis’ The Future of the ‘Classical’ (Polity, 2006, translated by Allan Cameron). Why?
Recent Posts
“What happens to the representation of women in the move from page to stage?” Enza De Francisci on her new publication.
What happens in performance, above all to the characters, when an actor transforms them from their fictional existence on the page to their physical enactment on the stage?
Richard Coyne: ‘Everything is Code’.
As any student of semiotics knows, speaking in code is what we do — when we communicate. It’s normal. To speak directly is the exception rather than the rule. In the kind of work I’m involved in getting others to do what you think you want them to do is primarily an exercise in subtle influence, persuasion and suggestion, perhaps delivered as a “nudge” rather than an order. It’s the same in advertising. Only crude advertisers direct you to buy Weetabix — obviously, overtly, as a command.
Beowulf: a multi-lingual translation-as-performance?
What insights about the idea of ‘translation’ might be gleaned from thinking about it not only in performance, but itself as a kind of performance? Nicholas Arnold, following last week’s ‘Re-’ Interdisciplinary Network symposium on ‘Translation as Performance’[1], was prompted to reflect on the multicultural and multilingual shows and audiences that have characterized international theatre festivals since the 1960s – including his own productions.
Why we should all care about the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
Say the Re- Editors:
Last week Tower Hamlet’s Council website crashed because of the volume of objections to a planning application by a New York hotel developer to convert the Whitechapel Bell Foundry into a luxury hotel. People are always lobbying to preserve an original building or object somewhere. This is different.
When are copies more authentic than originals? Factum Arte’s Adam Lowe in conversation with Simon Schaffer.
Factum Arte’s prodigious industry since the mid-nineties means we will have to rethink what we mean by original, copy, and authenticity. Technologies developed under its aegis mean it is now possible to capture and record data about an artwork to an accuracy of 100 microns (100 million measured spatial points per square meter) – and for the first time, this year, these works can now be rematerialized to an accuracy of 20 microns. This is, as Simon Schaffer says, marks a ‘complete revolution in the last two decades’
