A Theory of Contemporary Rhetoric (27 page)

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In the Renaissance and into the sixteenth century, rhetoric provided the theoretical basis for acting manuals. With simple staging, the emphasis on acting in public or private spaces was paramount. In a precursor to multimodal theory, the gestures, movements, and choreography of acting were the subject of comprehensive acting guides.

Although such manuals were mocked by Shakespeare and fell into disuse, the fundamental vocabulary of acting has remained. The current chapter looks at rhetoric in relation to these historical precedents, to the “empty space” that is theatre, to contemporary acting and classical training, to drama, and to the voice. All these aspects of acting and theatre emphasize the spatial and gestural dimensions of communication, as well as the production through voice and voices, rather than the linguistic dimension.

Brook's (1972) “the empty space” provides us with a starting point for exploring the rhetoric of drama and theatre. In effect, any space can be the ground for drama and theatre. A space for dramatic performance can simply be identified, then (crucially) framed by, in effect, saying
that
territory is outside the dramatic space, and
this
is inside it. The space may be framed by an already defined space like a garden or warehouse or porch, but it can equally be created by drawing a line in the sand, demarcating the acting space with a rope or with pieces of wood, or merely by saying “here is the line.” What is inside the demarcated space is magical in that it circumscribes the space in which we give attention to the action through a suspension of disbelief: the action can be realistic or surreal or anywhere on that spectrum. Wherever the action sits in relation to the real world, it is defined as a fictional world, a possible world. This separation of the real world from the fictional world is no more distinct than in Japanese Noh theatre, where the fictional world can take on the status of a spiritual world. In a production witnessed in a forest outside Osaka in the 1980s,
the raised stage was lit by four fire beacons at each corner of the stage, fueled by logs with which teenage young people kept the fires going. They would crawl in the dark of the area beyond the stage, so as not to be seen by the audience (or, in the suspension of disbelief that occurred, not noticed).

As with all framing, what is inside the space “speaks to” what is outside. The audience is conventionally outside the space and see and hear what is inside as representative, in some way, of their experiences in the real world. The action inside the space can mirror that outside it—directly, or indirectly, in various degrees of abstraction from the real world. Just as with a framed painting, or a poem framed by white space on a page, the theatrical space provides the parameters for action of a different order from that of the real world and invites contemplation, reflection, emotional response, and comparison with the real world.

As with painting and the other arts, trangression of the line between the action and the audience is now common practice. In a production of
The Taming of the Shrew
by the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford in the 1970s, Sly appeared from amid the audience at the beginning of the play, with the house lights up, and staggered drunkenly on to the stage. Fighting off stewards and ushers, he proceeded to destroy the set while half-dressed actors, the director, and stage managers tried to stop him. Finally collapsing on the stage, the rest of the set fell on him, the lights went down, and the cry of the hunting horn that presages the hunt who find him, lying drunk in a ditch, signaled the start of the play proper. As the stage lights came up, a new, barer set was revealed, and the hunt entered to find him. In other productions, naked dancers at Sadler's Wells have cavorted through the audience in dance; actors have engaged directly with members of the audience, as in One
Man, Two Guv’nors
(National Theatre production in London and New York, 2011–13); in a production of
The Master and Margarita
by Complicité at the Barbican Centre, London in 2013, one of the actors turned to the audience
as citizens
in a totalitarian state to ask for their vote on a decision in the play. At the Globe Theatre on London's Bankside, characters frequently move through the groundlings who are standing in front of the raised stage. Entrances and exits, in the latter example, are often through the audience, and some of the action takes place amid the audience.

In film, Woody Allen's
The Purple Rose of Cairo
has the main actors moving in and out of the cinema screen into the audience, between the world of film and the real world of the cinema stalls.

Why does the transgression of the line between action and audience cause such surprise and either excitement or shock/outrage? Because the framed space of the fictional action is not only fictional, but sometimes sacrosanct, the crossing of the boundary by either the actors or the audience is seen as crossing more than a functional line. First, it surprises
the audience from their state of suspension and the pleasure that ensues from sitting back and watching/listening. Suddenly their physical space is encroached. Second, it suggests that the relationship between the fictional space and the real space is more complicated than had been assumed: indeed, that the membrane between the real and the fictional/possible/ spiritual/”other” is more delicate, more permeable, and more interesting than had been imagined. Third, it raises the possibility that a member or members of the audience might be transported to the “other side,” however momentarily. Such transgressions almost always engender laughter: as much from nervousness as to what might ensue as well as from the comic potential of incongruity.

From a director's or actor's point of view, the trangression of the line between the acting space and the audience is simply another device they can use to generate a response, to shape the structure of feeling in the “auditorium,” and to map out their designs upon the audience. These possibilities are part of the rhetorical armory of the theatre.

If we were to attempt to write a contemporary manual of rhetoric for the modern actor, where would we start and what would it contain? First, with the body and gesture, including facial expression. Second, with movement. Third, with the voice. Each of these affordances of the actor—or dimensions of possibility of expression—have further subcategories.

In terms of the arts, the body has its purest form of expression in dance, where the form of the physical shape, both in stillness and in movement and the relations between them, is central. Just as with theatre, dance performance is circumscribed by the stage, as defined by the theatre and/or by the dancers themselves. (In a different context, we could say that formal or free-form dancing to a live band, or in a disco, is rhetorical in the moves that people make, both by themselves and in relation to others—a “conversation” in physical movement.) Formal, staged dance performances are choreographed, using a technical score like that for music or words, but with its own vocabulary. The range of dance moves—from athletic to statuesque, from dramatic to “pure,” from classical to modern—indicates the rhetorical range. In addition to these, specialized forms of physical acting such as fighting, period dance, contemporary street dance, dying, and acrobatics are all practiced by those training to act.

Gesture is a specific form of movement, usually using hands and arms but in concert with movement of the whole body, that signifies meaning without resorting to sound or words. This form of rhetoric was specifically the subject of acting manuals of the Renaissance period but is also the subject of anthropological studies; for example, Morris (1979). In
theatre, it is fore grounded in dumb shows and plays within plays, such as “The Mousetrap” or “The Murder of Gonzago” in
Hamlet
, where the actors perform a play that is prefaced by a dumb show or mimed reprise of the action. Gesture is also used in acting as one of the devices to convey character, response, and feeling.

Facial expression is another aspect of bodily movement that operates as part of the rhetorical armory of the actor. Whether the expression is fixed, as in Chinese opera or in masked performance; or whether the whole range of expression is used, as in conventional Western theatre, the importance of facial expression is evident—and the audience's perception of its significance is sometimes lost if the play is performed in the round. In film or television, where close-up is possible, facial expression takes on even greater significance as the conveyer of feeling to the audience via the character's expression.

The second major category of physical expression in acting is movement. Within the framed space of the stage, the positioning of the actors, and how they stand or sit or lie (or fly) in relation to each other is as choreographic as in dance. Students of acting are sometimes asked to observe animals and to sustain an animal-like set of movements over a period of time. The concentration involved in such an action requires the whole body to move in a particular way and, if the other actors in the exercise are different creatures, to move in relation to each other. The notion of flying reminds us that the framed space of the stage is vertically defined as well as on a horizontal plane. Not only do the stage and its set have a vertical as well as depth dimension; actors sometimes fly in or descend from the “flies” (and also emerge from underneath the stage). Such verticality in the framed space had moral and religious significance for Shakespeare's theatre and for his predecessors in morality and miracle plays, with heaven above the stage and hell below it. But most relative movement is on a horizontal plane.

Thirdly, the voice is an instrument used by actors to speak lines, to sing, to modulate feeling, to convey thoughts, and to utter sounds that are significant and communicative. Rooting the voice in the stomach, in the lungs, or in the throat and head has different resonances and different effects. Changes in volume, tone, emphasis, pace, rhythm, projection, and other features of the spoken voice all bear upon the rhetorical influence an actor can have upon an audience. In addition, variations in social dialects and accents, regional dialects and accents, national and international dialects, plus the whole range of languages worldwide provide a wide range of possibilities. In 2012, at London's Globe theatre, all 37 of Shakespeare's plays were produced, each in a different language. Although the physical (dance, gesture, choreography) aspects of communication were strongly in evidence, the spoken languages of the plays were foregrounded.

Bringing together the elements of the acting space and the acting itself, actors must learn to fill the space and work with the audience to generate the effects they wish to create. It is a marked difference between a play that is performed, on the one hand, in a space where there is light and where the parameters of the space are hard to define (or are defined loosely); and, on the other, in a space that is more tightly defined and where the light can be controlled in order to separate the acting space from the space in which the audience sits. Without such separation, trangression is more difficult. The differences between rehearsals, rehearsed performances, and fully fledged performances are marked by increasing definition. As has been suggested, the definition of dramatic space can be made by a theatre, or it can be made anywhere where lines are drawn to create a framing of dramatic space.

The rhetorics of such spaces and what goes on within them suggest that multimodality is seen in its fullest and most explicit forms in theatre, opera, and other art forms where all channels of expression are used and where the possibilities of communication between the real and possible worlds is at its most open and vibrant. Rhetoric defines these possibilities and the basic language of the arts of discourse that is employed.

How is dramatic discourse different from literary discourses and the field of poetics? How does poetics relate to rhetoric?

One aspect of rhetoric is concerned with text, specifically, in what form that text appears: linguistic text, semiotic text, or multimodal text (the categories overlap). We could include in that set of texts other “languages,” such as that of mathematics and musical scores. These texts tend to be printable, meaning that they either appear in print (e.g., in book form, on paper) or are on an electronic screen and can be printed if required. The history of printing informs the myriad ways in which text can appear.

Dramatic
script
can appear in printable form, but its full realization, that of music, is in performance. The fact that dramatic and musical performances can be recorded in analog and digital codes is yet another dimension of their realization, but it is not the core of the art of the discourse.

Dramatic discourse is based on speech and action (forming characters and plot) but also on “setting.” The setting manifests itself in the stage set, which indicates place; on the costumes of the actors, which indicate the period in which the play is set; and on other physical and temporal features that are designed by the director, the stage designer, and the actors. (The issue of design is one to which we will return later in the present chapter.) Even if the stage set suggests no particular period, or is
minimal in its suggestion of place, it is situating itself in relation to place and time. In such a way, the stage set contributes to the rhetoric of the whole and has its own vocabulary, its own syntax. Changes of scene in performed plays are often accompanied by changes in the stage set. These are sometimes undertaken on a darkened stage so that the impression is one of magical transformation; on other occasions, the changes are swiftly undertaken by stage hands dressed in black to distinguish them from actors; and sometimes the actors themselves change the sets by moving furniture, by changing the lighting, and by moving props.

But it is in speech, gesture, facial expression, and physical movement—as described previously in the section on Acting—that the realization of dramatic script takes place. The process of moving from a two-dimensional script on a page to a three-dimensional performative realization or
enactment
is part of rhetorical transformation. The words in the script have to be learnt, tried out, sometimes adapted, sometimes cut or elaborated, and embodied in the voices of the actors. The learning of lines for an actor means not only learning the actual lines assigned to his or her part, but also keying into the cues that the other actors and other parts provide. The rhetoric is deeply dialogic, in principle and in action: the stage is a place where dialogue is exhibited, even when the play is a monologue and where the character is talking to him- or herself (and a further dialogic dimension is always with the audience). In no other art form is the dialogic imagination so explicitly demonstrated. Characters speak to and with each other, and as an audience we observe their interaction. Through such observation, we reflect on the possible world presented before us and how it relates to our own worlds.