Embodiment
Overview
Is every Theatrical Performer a character? Nope!
There are many way to Embody a script. The one we tend to think of immediately is for an Actor to perform a character. However, there are different ways to act and interact. Is the Actor (which is what we'll call a Theatrical Performer) aware of the Audience? Do they have wants and needs? Can they influence the action of the script? Are they in the world of the script, or are they outside of things?
Please note that the Taxonomy of Performance is the intellectual property of Emily C. A. Snyder.
There are many way to Embody a script. The one we tend to think of immediately is for an Actor to perform a character. However, there are different ways to act and interact. Is the Actor (which is what we'll call a Theatrical Performer) aware of the Audience? Do they have wants and needs? Can they influence the action of the script? Are they in the world of the script, or are they outside of things?
Please note that the Taxonomy of Performance is the intellectual property of Emily C. A. Snyder.
Embodiment
EMBODIMENT: The relationship between Performer, Script, and Audience.
- Enacted: This is when the Performer enacts a character. A character lives fully in the world of the script, and has relationships with other characters in that same world, and has wants and needs that they pursue through the course of the script. The character may or may not acknowledge the Audience. However, if they do acknowledge the Audience, it is still within the world of the script.
- Representative: This is when the Performer behaves in a choral function, either as an individual or a group. The Performer is not a character, in that they do not have particular wants or needs. They can and do interact with characters, and may even influence them and events of the play slightly. They may also be aware of the audience. However, they tend to represent the feelings of the audience within the world of the script.
- Presented: This is when the Performer presents the script in a narrative role. They are not a character with wants and needs within the world of the script. They are aware of the world of the script, and may comment on it. However, they are also aware of the Audience as separate from the world of the script. They address the Audience as audience directly, and have little to no interaction with the characters or chorus.
Once again, a script may switch a Performer from one type of embodiment to another - such as how the Narrator in Into the Woods begins in a Presentational Embodiment...until they get sucked into the world of the play, at which point they become a character. (And then actually reappear as the character of the Mysterious Man!)
Similarly, a production may decide to veer from the generative script, and interpret a choral performer as an actual character, such as many production of Henry V tend to create a character for the Prologue.
Similarly, a production may decide to veer from the generative script, and interpret a choral performer as an actual character, such as many production of Henry V tend to create a character for the Prologue.
"Three Voices of Poetry"
T. S. Eliot wrote an essay on "The Three Voices of Poetry," wherein he posits that there are three ways in which a writer might approach the embodiment of a text.
ELIOT'S THREE VOICES
For our purposes, though, by the time we get to Theatrical Expression, we are less interested in how close or far the script is from the author's point of view than in the point of view from the Performer. Therefore, it may be helpful to tweak Eliot's idea to something like:
SNYDER'S THREE VOICES
ELIOT'S THREE VOICES
- First Voice: The poet writing in their own voice about their own feelings
- Second Voice: The poet putting their words under a thin veneer of someone else's text
- Third Voice: The poet empathizing with a different character from themselves, and writing in that character's voice and opinion
For our purposes, though, by the time we get to Theatrical Expression, we are less interested in how close or far the script is from the author's point of view than in the point of view from the Performer. Therefore, it may be helpful to tweak Eliot's idea to something like:
SNYDER'S THREE VOICES
- First Voice: The Enacted Character, acting within the world of the script - "I feel this; I did this"
- Second Voice: The Representative Chorus, representing the audience to the characters within the world of the script - "You feel this, you did this"
- Third Voice: The Presentational Narrator, acting outside the world of the script, commenting directly on the actions of the script to the audience - "They feel this, they did this"
