Gettin' To Know You

Personal research and analysis of role/roles from the text and in rehearsal.

Placing the role within the context of the work in particular and the musical theatre genre in general.

Documenting the development process of the role and justification of the interpretation within the context of the overall production concept.

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

I Know Things now - A Cheat's Guide to Contextualistaion

What is context?

What happens if you either miss out on the context or are oblivious to it?  Does it matter?

How do we critique our own experiences as good or bad?

How do we judge a piece of art if it changes within our own timeframe of life?  If memory is flawed how do we relive our salient experiences truthfully?

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

I Know Things now - A Cheat's Guide to Contextualistaion

You are effectively trying to survey the land for as much knowledge about a particular subject or valence as possible.  You then steel man the opposing view point to your initial reaction, you find works that either critique or praise and put them against each other.  You argue for both sides and then clean up the aftermath.

This will then give you confidence in your opinion.

Semiotic Theory  - "I'm not that smart"

Semiotics is an investigation into how meaning is created and how meaning

is communicated. Its origins lie in the academic study of how signs and symbols

(visual and linguistic) create meaning.

​Semiotics is a key tool to ensure that intended meanings

(of for instance a piece of communication or a new product)

are unambiguously understood by the person on the receiving

end. Usually there are good reasons if someone doesn’t understand the real intention of a message and semiotics can help unravel that confusion, ensuring clarity of meaning.

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

Semiotic Theory  - "I'm not that smart"

Semiotics is the study of signs of all types and their significance.

Firstly, a trawl through the difficulties of understanding what a sign is.

All of the following are signs: words, gestures, colours, shapes, sounds and pictures.
If I think of the animal canis lupus familiaris, I might say the word Dog. My stating that
word out loud is a sign, indicating what is in my mind. However, there are several problems:

• The audience may be deaf
• The audience may not speak English
• The audience may think of an alternative meaning for the word dog
• The audience may be frightened of dogs
•  The audience may either generalise or particularise their own image

In any case, the recipient will not have the same image as I do. Even if I show a photograph, say a Labrador, that picture is still no more than a sign. Arguably, there is nothing that I can do to get my concept into your mind, regardless of how much I try to explain, how many pictures I show or how much I describe my thoughts.  1984 vibes, "how many fingers am I holding up Winston?".

Ferdinand de Saussure broke transmission of signs into two parts: The Signifier and the Signified.

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

Signifiers
Assuming that you wish to transmit a message, you will pick a signifier that has

maximum potential for indicating the signified. Given the difficulties listed above,

it is essential that we seek some lowest common denominator for a sign that has

cultural and societal mapping.

Ironically, signifiers are frequently polysemic, since the signified will not be the same for all people. Thus, the picture of an ashtray with a red line through it, while purporting to mean no smoking, probably means relief for non-smokers and torture for smokers.

Music and theatre  as a signifier can also be polysemic. Country and Western, manufactured pop, opera and so on are tools of segmentation, not tools of homogenisation.

Signified
Were it to exist, the perfect sign would create a single meaning in the heads of all recipients. In practice, however, every signified is also a signifier. Smoke implies fire, implying danger, implying death, implying escape, implying life etc. Naturally, this is only one possible interpretation.

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

cons, Indexes & Symbols"

Charles Sanders Peirce suggested three types of signifiers.

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

Icon
In an Icon, the image itself is represented in the sign. This may be a photograph, a loosely symbol or an onomatopoeic sound. Thus a cuckoo whistle is an icon, as is a conventionally notated score, since it implies notes going up and down, along with the frequencies we hear (though the terms “up” and “down” are themselves arbitrary).
For the Icon to work, little shared knowledge is required between sender and receiver, though both should be capable of making the same observations.

Question: What other examples are there of the musical Icon?
 

Index
The Index has a spatio-temporal association. So, the term Northerner implies many things, not just geographical. “The Sixties” has much to do with the culture of that period rather than the calendar. Likewise, a picture of a champagne cork implies the drink, not the cork itself.
The important component of the Index is that it requires a common understanding between the sender and the receiver. Without a common culture, the index is neutered or generalised.

Question: What examples are there of the musical Index?
 

Symbol
The Symbol has an arbitrary, socially constructed association. Language is symbolic since the words and letters have nothing to do with the signified. Likewise the heart, representing love and green, meaning go. Without a dictionary or cultural experience it would not be possible to determine the signified for an arbitrary symbol.
To succeed, a Symbol requires both a shared culture and premeditated lexical agreement.

Question: What examples are there of the musical Symbol?

Musical Theatre

Semiotics & Phenomenology

Musical Theatre

Upgrade your notes

Spend 10 minutes upgrading your thoughts.

Make sure you have reviewed

Self Analysis

Questions:

adamblosse@me.com

fb.com/adamblosse

Assignment:  

~ To be discussed in class

Resource & Referencing

Musical Theatre

The Analyses

We will be expecting a visit from Lisa from LRC to discuss the LRC, your resources, and referencing.

Interactive AUB Link: LINK

Harvard Referencing Presentation: LINK

Library App - Best thing to use.

Digital Theatre+:

• Username: lrcstaff@bpc.ac.uk
• Password: College

Shibboleth Login

• Username: Student ID Number
• PIN: dd/mm/yy

782* is musical theatre code for library sorting.