Contemporaneity in Historically Informed Performance
Magnus Tessing Scheider
Chapter from the book: Schneider M. & Wagner M. 2023. Performing the Eighteenth Century: Theatrical Discourses, Practices, and Artefacts.
Part of
Chapter from the book: Schneider M. & Wagner M. 2023. Performing the Eighteenth Century: Theatrical Discourses, Practices, and Artefacts.
Discussing how historical acting principles might enrich today’s theatre, the author suggests that theatre scholars turn away from semiotics: a twentieth-century theory that still informs today’s views of eighteenth-century acting, largely due to Dene Barnett, an influential pioneer of Historically Informed Performance. As an alternative to semiotic representation, the author points to Jan Kott’s concept of contemporaneity, which refers to a special relationship between the text, the actor, and the spectator. This leads him to promote the finesse: a crucial but forgotten concept of eighteenth-century acting theory that was associated with the actor’s revealment of the uniqueness of the character.
Scheider, M. 2023. Contemporaneity in Historically Informed Performance. In: Schneider M. & Wagner M (eds.), Performing the Eighteenth Century. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.16993/bce.e
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Published on June 20, 2023