| This dissertation posits that the theatrical object, in itself and as a sign system, is important to meaning production onstage, and that through its analysis, the process of signification which structures a mise en scene is illuminated.;It investigates objects in society and onstage. It discovers the object's most authentic characteristic is its relationality. Created from gestus, playing upon matter according to an idea, the object is relational to a subject, in space and time, and within itself as a complex of meaning units able to be restructured. Different aesthetics toward theatrical objects and the variety of their functions in performance are examined.;The dissertation proceeds to analyze objects as a system of signs within one performance text, Jarry's Ubu Roi staged by Antoine Vitez in Paris, 1985. This semiotic analysis takes the form of an object-text, wherein objects are broken down into meaning units based upon manipulations. The object-text is organized around the objects' relationality, a focus upon the objects' interaction with other meaning units of the production. Notation is akin to the construction of a motion picture, showing and noting with whom or what the object is in relation (discerning spatial and character-related functions). It also notes when these relationships are constituted along the continuum of the performance (discerning temporal functions). Materiality, semantic and rhetorical functions of the theatrical objects are likewise part of the object-text's schema for analysis.;A reconstructive phase of analysis follows, to discover the movement of meaning units within a work of art toward larger meaning units, which interact to create one dynamic structure. It is concluded that objects as a sign system are created from the interplay of gestus, materiality and design as well. Here, the gestus is the play's overall spatio-temporality which puts the concrete objects into play according to a stuctural code that embodies the production's unifying concepts. The gestus must show itself showing, since this code to the performance's signification is not shared in advance by creator and spectator. |
