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Semiotics and Contemporary Play Directing: the Example of Ogonna Agu’S Dawn in the Academy

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Semiotics and Contemporary Play Directing: the Example of Ogonna Agu’S Dawn in the Academy ISSN 1712-8358[Print] Cross-Cultural Communication ISSN 1923-6700[Online] Vol. 16, No. 3, 2020, pp. 57-62 www.cscanada.net DOI:10.3968/11746 www.cscanada.org Semiotics and Contemporary Play Directing: The Example of Ogonna Agu’s Dawn in the Academy Affiong Fred Effiom[a],* [a]Department of Theatre, Film and Carnival Studies, University of Effiom, A. F. (2020). Semiotics and Contemporary Play Calabar, Calabar, Nigeria. Directing: The Example of Ogonna Agu’s Dawn in the Academy. *Corresponding author. Cross-Cultural Communication, 16(3), 57-62. Available from: http//www.cscanada.net/index.php/ccc/article/view/11746 Received 3 August 2020; accepted 1 September 2020 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/11746 Published online 26 September 2020 Abstract The success of any theatrical performance depends INTRODUCTION largely on how the theatre director understands, A study of the major styles, concepts and approaches experiments and explores the wide array of techniques in theatre reveal a preponderance of techniques and and approaches for creating such theatrical production. diverse method of theatrical presentation. More so, with This inquiry experimented on the semiotic theory, a the preoccupation of the modern theatre practitioner, 21st century postmodern experimental form, as an whose essence consists in varied experimentations approach to creating a theatrical production. The play carried out either by projecting old concepts, question script Dawn in the Academy was semiotically analyzed certain phenomena or tenets of existing movements. This and presented from a directorial perspective on the stage development had no doubt, characterized contemporary of Chinua Achebe Arts Theatre, University of Calabar, theatre and set its dynamism along a transient path. This Nigeria. The inquiry emphasizes that the semiotic fleeting nature of the theatre which Edwin Wilson calls sign system is an indispensable tool in the dialectic “Kaleidoscopic adventure” (3) results in it’s phenomenal interchange between the stage and the audience. The growth with attendant complication, contradictions and research, supported by the play project establishes that inconsistency and challenges. In the same vein, theatre the semiotic discipline is a productive method a director directors and practitioners have continued to evolve could apply when faced with an interdisciplinary play and experiment on new forms as a way of solving these script. The semiotic oriented approach of directing on peculiar problems. One of such experimental form is the basis of this research, is therefore established as the semiotics. vehicle, which the ambiguities, indissoluble structure and How best can a stage director convey meaning to an juxtaposed variegated happenings inherent in scripts can audience with complete clarity? How does he approach be transformed. Consequently some of the basic elements an interdisciplinary / postmodern play script especially of the semiotic theory as highlighted in this paper, reveal those written in the disjunctive, displaced, playful and the rich and vibrant content of the various facets of the indeterminate fragmented forms. This paper focuses on semiotic production process. Contemporary play directors the workability; suitability and practical application of in their professional quest to fully interpret and project the semiotic sign system in translating a latent play script the works of playwrights to the audience, have, among into a meaning producing performance. It explicates how others, the option of applying the semiotic theory and sign the contemporary play director who is faced with non- systems in their stage experimentation. traditional / non-realistic scripts which are non-linear, Key words: Semiotics; Sign System; Mise-en-scene; non-discursive, and non-closure oriented can manipulate Transformability the sign systems during the mise-en-scene to achieve simplicity, consistency and conciseness in a performance. 57 Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture Semiotics and Contemporary Play Directing: The Example of Ogonna Agu’s Dawn in the Academy Through Keir Elam’s five taxonomy of performance sign all these things in every case stand for other things (74), and Jon Whitmore’s model of Diachronic Analysis of dramatic performance he concludes is a set of signs. The theatre sign system and against the backdrop of Ogonna theatre as seen by Bogatyrev is a medium that transforms Agu’s Dawn in the Academy, the paper analyzes and show everything into a semiotic structure, where objects how the juxtaposed variegated episodes, indissoluble become for the spectator a sign of a sign or sign for a structure and ambiguities that characterized the play were real object. Every aspect of the theatrical scene presents decongested, deconstructed and transformed. clusters of signs signifying one thing or the other. This multifarious dimension of a theatrical enactment makes the theatre a veritable arena for interplay of signs, which THE SEMIOTIC ENTERPRISE can, according to Bogatyrev serve as “a particularly Introduced in philosophy at the end of the 17th century by rewarding area of semiotic investigation” (42). John Locke, the semiotic discipline did not blossom until the end of the modern period. Describing its growth as At the base of this dynamics of theatre signs / semiotic rapid, Keir Elam asserts that, of all recent developments analysis is the Theatre’s TRANSFORMABILITY and in what used to be confidently called humanities, no event MUTABILITY. This aspect of the theatre is specifically has registered a more radical and widespread impact viewed by Bogatyrev as one of the most important than the growth of semiotics. 21st Century theoreticians and fundamental feature of the theatre sign system. He in their search for a ‘reliable theatre’ have continued points out that “the actor changes his appearance, dress, to expand the frontiers of semiotics as a discipline, voice and even the features of his personality into the projecting its relevance and application to solving appearance of the character whom he represents in the perceived problems especially within the field of Theatre play” (33). On stage things that play the part of theatrical and Communication Studies. It is on this score that this signs can in the course of the play acquire special semiotic experimentation was carried out as a way of features, qualities and attributes that they do not have in solving the problems inherent in staging scripts fashioned real life. Expressing his views on the transformability in the post modem continuum. of signs and signifiers in the theatre, Whitmore posits Semiotics has generally been defined and described as that signified and signifiers are, highly transformable … a scientific study of signs, and sign being an indispensable because of the given circumstances, the same object may element of communication is an integral and continuous stand for different signified at different moments in the part of semiotics. The notion of sign dates back to man performance. A plain chair may become a King’s throne who has always questioned certain phenomena about in one scene and a toilet in the next. (21) signs and the laws that govern them. This conscious and Jerzy Grotowski in his bid to strip the theatre bare continuous analytical inquiry dates back to the classical of every stage decor based his theatre aesthetics in the period as can be seen in the works of Plato, Socrates, transformability of objects and actors during the mise-en- the medieval scholastics, the 17th century mentalists scene. The transformability of the accouterments of the and empiricists. This obviously set the base for the theatre is viewed as a major and significant principle of crystallization in the 20th century of a renewed interest in the semiotic enterprise. The experiment that gave vent to the principle of sign systems. this paper utilized this very important principle. Patrice Pavis aptly demarcates the scope of semiotics within the Theatre and Drama sphere as; The Play - Dawn in the Academy The play written in the postmodern continuum is an A method of analyzing text and or performance that focuses on the formal organization of the text or the show as a whole, on archetype of the various dissensions that bedevil Nigerian the internal organization of those signifying systems that make Universities. Through symbolic characters, the play with up both test and performance, on the dynamics of the processes the thematic concept of oppression dramatizes the success of meaning and establishment of sense through the participation of the collective struggle of the Academic Staff Union of theatre practitioners and audience (Xiv). against the dictatorial and draconian rule of the head of the Institution. The open, playful, optative, disjunctive, The value of semiotics in the precinct of theatre and displaced, indeterminate plot clearly reflect the multi- drama consist in the manipulation of the complex sign dimensional style employed by the playwright. The system that exist between the playwright, director, actor, emblematic setting of the play, a Nigerian University designers and the receptive task of the spectator. Each campus, sets the atmosphere and environment for the of these constituents of the theatre constitutes signs in dramatic action built around twelve major characters. themselves; they become, in Bogatyrev’s formulation Action begins with the commissioning of the “a sign of a sign”. The theatre therefore, presents a Academy by the head (king) of the Community
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