Emphasis on effective communication has become the concern of many literary scholars. The need to explore where the burden of communication lies in the literary arts resounds among literary critics and beyond. The study sets out to examine how ordinary intentional dramatic objects in selected Igbo plays of A. B. Chukuezi; Udo Ka Mma, Aku Fechaa and Akwa Nwa are utilised to influence and communicate the intents of the drama texts to the audience. The theoretical framework is based on the viewpoint of theatre semiotics. The belief of theatre semiotics is that every part of a play is relevant in the actualisation of the complex whole called the text. The findings suggest that dramatic objects are not mere symbols for stage beautification, but are objects that can connect a text to its audience. They can also illuminate and illustrate the content and context of a text; as well as develop and extend a storyline.
Her current research includes 3D visualisation and modelling of theatre spaces; the spatial theory of heterotopia; space in Australian and Canadian theatre; database of Australian performance; multicultural theories and drama, and intercultural performance.
In fiction, a character is a person or other being in a narrative (such as a novel, play, radio or television series, music, film, or video game).[1][2][3] The character may be entirely fictional or based on a real-life person, in which case the distinction of a "fictional" versus "real" character may be made.[2] Derived from the ancient Greek word ÏÎÏÎκÏÎÏ, the English word dates from the Restoration,[4] although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749.[5][6] From this, the sense of "a part played by an actor" developed.[6] (Before this development, the term dramatis personae, naturalized in English from Latin and meaning "masks of the drama," encapsulated the notion of characters from the literal aspect of masks.) Character, particularly when enacted by an actor in the theatre or cinema, involves "the illusion of being a human person".[7] In literature, characters guide readers through their stories, helping them to understand plots and ponder themes.[8] Since the end of the 18th century, the phrase "in character" has been used to describe an effective impersonation by an actor.[6] Since the 19th century, the art of creating characters, as practiced by actors or writers, has been called characterisation.[6]
Theatre semioticians have to date concerned themselves primarily with the semiotics of the literary dramatic text, the semiotics of the physical enactment of this text, or the relationship between the two. Theatre Semiotics offers a broader, differently oriented analysis, balancing consideration of the ways theatrical signs are produced with the ways they are received and creatively interpreted by a public. The theatre experience is here regarded not simply as the physical realization of a written text on a stage but as a complex social event whose semiotics involves not only play and performance but the entire experience of attending theatre.
Each section of the study works from a different but related perspective. The first discusses how audiences develop interpretive strategies from sources both within and outside the production system of the event itself, and some of the implications of this process for producers of theatre and for audience participation. The second section deals with the semiotics of space and its relationship to interpretation of the theatre event. The concern here is not with the performance on stage but with other space involved in the performance event, such as theatre architecture and performance outside traditional theatre spaces. The final section deals more directly with the creative contribution of the audience.
As its title suggests, Theatre Semiotics is primarily semiotic in orientation, but it draws upon related work in reception theory, hermeneutics, and phenomenology in order to provide clearer understanding of the dynamics of the total theatre event.
Giorgio Melchiori, the most eclectic Shakespearean, has produced seminal contributions to the field of textual studies and interpretative commentary on Shakespeare and his contemporaries. He has written on a wide range of early modern authors, employing diverse methodologies and critical viewpoints in relation to the aims and targets of his research. Among the critical perspectives adopted, Melchiori deals with structuralism and semiotics, historical and neo-Marxist approaches, and formalist and textual analyses. He has also undertaken a successful, experimental harmonizing of a variety of critical methods to reach a pluralist interpretation.[5] He is internationally known as a textual scholar and editor of Renaissance plays, as well as of a bilingual, nine-volume edition with translations by diverse scholars, of Shakespeare's complete plays.
In the 1980s, Susan Bassnett, following current tendencies in the semiotics of theater and drama, argued that theater has been one of the most neglected areas in translation studies, mainly because it has become common practice to translate dramatic texts in the same way as prose texts (1991b, 120-132).
The fourth year of the program is devoted to writing a dissertation under the guidance of a faculty advisor. Recent doctoral dissertations have explored semiotics, feminism, medieval traditions, American theatre history, contemporary English and German drama, ethnicity and performance theory, Latin American/Latinx performance, historiography, and Asian performance. Click here to view current and past dissertations.
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