Good point, but as far as I know - which isn't much granted - Beckett's estate is doing that purely at his request. That is, he asked for his works to be produced to the letter...

Singing oyster shadow puppet for sale at
Puppets in Melbourne

From memory (it was quite some time ago) the Perth female Godot only got away with it because Beckett's estate wasn't informed that they'd changed the genders until after the show had finished.

A novel author, in your example above, would say:
"You suck", said Mike, despondently.

So there is just as much scope to be prescriptive about meaning in writing a novel as there is for a playwright using stage directions, and I believe that by convention, novels give you far more information than play scripts do.

However, it still all comes down to the way the reader (or the actor) interprets the word 'despondently'. My interpretation may well be different from yours.

So I do agree that meaning comes partly from the recipient, not solely from the instigator. But it's a shared process. The more complicated a piece of communication is, the more opportunity there is for multiple differences of interpretation. And if that communication is passed through several links in the chain (author to director to actor to audience) then every link opens up a new opportunity for subtle reinterpretation.

I understand an author desiring the message that they send to be received the way they intend it. But the reality is, it's never going to be guaranteed to happen that way.

Unlike a novelist/reader relationship, a playwright knows that there is going to be a committee of people involved in the interpretation (director, actors, designers, etc), each potentially shattering the meaning before it reaches the audience. A director's job is to manage this committee and try to unify the interpretation so it shatters as little as possible...although this very act can not help but bend and shape the interpretation.

A playwright who understands the form of the medium they are writing in ought to understand and accept that this process of interpretation is several steps removed from them. Good writing will have strong meaning, but it is always up for re-interpretation by the director and the actors.

In a lot of cases, trying to be TOO prescriptive with the use of stage directions and dialogue-modifying statements is counter-productive. They'd be better off trusting the responsibility to the director to create an interpretation as they see fit. Theatre is a collaborative process.

Beckett is always cited, but I honestly wonder if the way his letters have been interpreted by his estate is really what he intended, as a theatre practitioner? If so, then he has restricted a certain amount of growth his work may have achieved posthumously. His art has died with him.

From what I have gleaned from internet articles on Barthe, his philosophy is easily applied to the dramatic arts, and in my opinion, should be.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

Hi Mike

I'm enjoying the way our recent discussions are exploring the subject but also the larger concepts and semantics.

Where you suck despondently in the example above (couldn't resist!):
Yes, of COURSE it is an attempt by the author to give a clue about how the reader should interpret Mike's feelings - a fairly blatant one! The author spells it out for us! It's more than just a signpost about what's happening in the novel...it IS the novel. Everyone who experiences that novel is going to be told that Mike said his line despondently. Every thought, action, description, nuance is clearly laid out on the page, not to hint at the novel's meaning, but to BE the novel.
It is still up to the individual how they personally understand and interpret the word 'despondently', but as far as expressing a clear intention, the novel author could not have been any clearer about that particular point. EVERYTHING in a novel is carefully and specifically selected by the author to deliver meaning to the recipient, although admittedly he cannot control how it is actually received.

Where you then talk about interpreting allegory and analogy, these are meanings that are outside the text, and much more subject to speculation. I don't quite see the relevance to your argument, because a play script can ALSO have meanings that are outside the text; allegory, analogy, metaphor, etc...not to mention then adding the dimension of physicality which gives more scope for interpretive variation, including physical metaphor and symbolism.

The playwright's intended recipient is the theatre-going audience, none of whom are going to witness the actual content of any stage directions. So those 'instructions that sit above the content' are not intended for the receiver, but are guidelines for the intermediaries - the director and actors.
A play script is not the end product. It's a blueprint, planning and suggesting how OTHERS ought to achieve the end product. Whereas a novel IS the end product.

So I don't see how you can assert that a playwright is being clearer in their intent than a novelist is. The playwright knows that there are middlemen involved, and in a 'chinese-whispers' sort of way the message is going to be modified at every point it passes.
I grant that a playwright is probably highly concerned with being clear and specific at the start of the process, and this is the point of stage directions, but it's only because it is a GIVEN that the message will be diluted with other people's interpretations by the time it reaches its end. It doesn't matter how many instructions he writes...every one of those instructions will need to be interpreted, so the potential for varied interpretation is actually increased with every stage direction. The audience will never see the specific direction; they will only potentially see the interpretation of that direction. It can only get vaguer, not clearer.
(Actually no, it CAN remain clear, but only by the efforts of the director to keep it so. For the message to remain 'true', it is by the author losing some influence, as the director gains influence.)

As for 'sharing being a two-way process':
You and I could share a piece of cake. Once it's cut down the middle, what we do with our half is entirely up to each of us. I don't have to let you taste any of mine or vice versa, but together we can get the task done of consuming all cake. Simultaneous but separate.
Or if we shared building a house; I might be responsible for doing all the brickwork, someone else does the plastering, then you might come in and do all the painting. What I've created informs and influences what you have to do, but you're free to interpret your job as you see fit and I have no interest or control over how you do it. The plasterer in the middle has distorted my contribution before you even get to see it. The end product house is the result of our shared efforts, but it was a linear process...exactly like an author/reader relationship.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

I have to say that I too enjoy these discussions. I enjoy being made to think!

Despite your reponse above, I am yet to be convinced. You're gonna have to work a lot harder!

Here's why.

The author, somewhere in the novel, tells us that Mike is despondent. There will be various intepretations of that, but I expect there wouldn't be too many arguments about what it is to be despondent. The author has told us quite explicitly something about Mike's mood. But in doing that and other things throughout the story, the author does not tell us about the novel itself. Mike's mood is no clue to the author's intent for the novel.

So when I read, say, "Little Red Riding Hood", I understand that there are characters in it who are designated (as we learn from within the text) as good and evil, and, in the end, that good triumphs over evil. I infer, from the way the story is written, that is written with the intent of entertaining children. The author hasn't told me this explicitly, either in person, through some direction on the cover, like "a story to entertain children", or maybe in an interview with a third person:
Interviewer: "Your latest book, 'Little Red Riding Hood', has been very succesful. Why do you think that is the case?"
Author: "I think its success is due to its appeal with children. After all, I wrote it with them in mind. See, it says here on the cover, 'a story to entertain children'".

Without explicit statements from the writer, we can only guess at what the writer may have intended. Sometimes our guesses won't be too far off. Sometimes they won't be anywhere near the mark. I've attended concerts where the performer introduces a song: "I wrote this next song following the grasshopper plague of 98, and it describes the inherent cruelty of Mother Nature . . ." The performer gives directions to the audience about the song and how to understand it. Without this, what would we make of a line such as, "your green-legged rapaciousness/your death-inducing kiss"?

And I believe this is the situation for playwrights. They can and do give directions on how to interpret the content. Of course, as you note, these directions are not necessarily visible to the audience. But they are to the cast, crew and director. The audience will have to interpret the play as best as they can, the same as a novel. The production team is privy to information the audience doesn't have, and can use it to inform or confound the audience.

Now . . . about 'sharing'. I expect this is another semantic difference. The word 'sharing' connotes for me a sense of voluntary, mutually agreeable give-and-take. For this to happen, there needs to be a dialogue between the protagonists. After all, who cut the cake? And who planned the house-building and engaged the construction crew? Like, how come you get to do the brickwork, and I get the painting (I hate painting!)?

If we shared building a house, there would be a discussion and negotiation, and if we were caring and sharing about it, we could settle amicably on a mutually agreeable allocation of tasks.

But there is no such discussion between author and audience, nor between playwright, production team and audience. The writing or staging of a play isn't the result of a plenary session of the parties. It is a linear process, like the brick, plaster and paint analogy, but it is not, in my view, 'sharing' in the same way the contruction of the house would be.

Really, Mike. Work harder? I only agree that you're making me work. Finding a convincing counter-argument is getting easier. Your whole argument, frankly, seems like a bit of a long stretch...!

To tackle the semantics argument first:

I will readily admit your usage of the word 'sharing' is a valid one. But you can't negate mine. So 'sharing' is a term that CAN but doesn't NECESSARILY mean that responsibility is passed back and forth. Therefore my original use is quite correct, and you have simply been trying to deflect the argument by concentrating on only one specific meaning.
I am happy to retract my usage of the term 'shared process' in my original point. That point still states that the meaning of a message is determined not only by the instigator, but by the receiver. In the case of an author/reader, it's a one way linear process. I think we have both agreed this, and so the exact usage of the word 'sharing' has become irrelevant to the argument.

Next, the house building analogy:

Contrary to your assertion that everyone involved in building a house 'shares' the tasks (as per your definition of the word), I know for a fact that they don't. The guy that poured the concrete slab for my house did it months before anyone else started work, and he had no communication with the roof tiler, who had absolutely nothing to do with the brickies (apart from not being able to start until he learned they'd finished), etc. What WAS shared was the blueprint they all worked from, and there was ONE project manager who was responsible for coordinating the other departments' tasks. It was largely a linear process, and no one really 'shared' information back up the line in the "mutually agreeable give-and-take" manner you suggest. Everyone was simply serving the blueprint, and overseen by the manager.

So apart from this difference (perhaps your definition of 'building a house' is also drawn from specific incidence rather than general - are you an Amish barn builder by any chance?) we seem to agree the house building analogy is similar to the playbuilding one. The playwright draws up the blueprint. The director is put in charge of getting the construction done. There is a production team of technicians and actors who get the job done: they might or might not interact, but they are managed by the director and always refer to the blueprint of the script. They don't generally have or need any recourse to the playwright. And when the final message is delivered to the audience, the house is complete.

What I find somewhat interesting is that even with the architect's blueprint being so key to the whole process, there were still several occasions during the building of my own house that we realised he'd gotten it wrong. From simple things like the placement of a powerpoint on the wrong side of a doorway, to a major mistake where part of the laundry cupboard-well had been bricked in where it shouldn't have been. Luckily we noticed it on an unofficial inspection and had them come back, tear down part of a wall, and rebuild it. It wasn't their fault - they'd been faithfully following a flawed plan. There were actually about 20 or 30 minor things that we caught and modified during the building process. (Usually an owner isn't meant to visit the site like we did, the usual scenario is you find out too late when nothing can be fixed without major expensive work).
My point with this little story is this: I maintain that a playscript is the blueprint for a production. But it's WRONG to believe a blueprint is infallible, that it is how the final product must turn out. The site manager (director)'s job is to be as true to the architect (playwright)'s intention as possible....but there is always room to discover that the blueprint (script) can be interpreted differently and yet still be true to that intent.

So now - back to the argument about intent:

1) Are you trying to argue that the writer of a play, novel or song has to explicitly tell us how to recognise style, otherwise we as audience/reader/listener won't understand it? If so, I think you are severely discrediting the competence of the audience. While I have all along been supporting Barthes' point of view that the end-user creates meaning, that doesn't mean that I think the author says it's a cat and the audience turns it into a fish.

2) The argument in your first two paragraphs seems to contradict itself. I think you were trying to say that the novelist doesn't give enough information (I don't agree, by the way) and that the audience will not know how to interpret. But then in your 'example' you demonstrate that the reader actually DOES interpret and gets all the right meaning, without needing the explicit interview. Haven't you kind of shot your own argument in the foot?

3) Your hypothetical examples are amusing, but don't bear close resemblance to reality. 'Red Riding Hood' was not written by any one author, but was collated from a tradition of German folk tales. You probably didn't realise how interesting an example it is for this topic of discussion: it actually started as a much darker allegory, and only later became watered down into a children's bedtime story. There is a valid interpretation which is about a child emerging into puberty and sexual awareness, getting her periods, cutting her close links with her mother, and venturing out into the world of sexual predator wolves...! This is a great example of how meaning can change with a new interpretation...although in this case the newer meaning is the one we all now accept as the 'correct' one: a simple innocent children's story!

4) While I recognise the example of your fictional songwriter explaining backstory to their song, I don't believe that a songwriter ever thinks we will have NO understanding unless it's first explained to us. This too is an interesting example: I subscribe to a podcast called 'Lyrics Undercover' where the presenter explains backstory to lyrics of many songs. Yes, my understanding of a song can significantly change once I understand the real history, literal meaning, and political background of its lyrics. The songwriter can have a 'hidden' intent which I may never have guessed otherwise. BUT this doesn't mean the songwriter isn't aware of the face-value impression of their song. They actually have ANOTHER intent - the meaning which we are to glean from the music and lyrics as we hear it on the radio with no other explanation necessary. The songwriter is fully aware that this is the form the song will be received in, and intends us to hear it that way, even if they do have other deeper meanings also intended, which only get explained to the die-hard fans at concerts.

5) Your fourth paragraph, and seemingly the crux of your argument, suggests that playwrights use stage directions to give the kind of information that you described as missing in the other forms: that they explicitly explain the style of their writing, that they tell you how to interpret all the themes and meanings, that they inform you of the kind of audience they were targetting...
Do they? DO THEY REALLY? I mean...REALLY?? Please give me a concrete example, because I have been flicking through all the published playscripts I have on hand and I can not find ONE single example which supports this argument you have been putting forward all along!
(For the record, the plays I just grabbed in a bunch off the shelf were Ibsen's Doll House, Orton's What The Butler Saw, Shakespeare's Taming Of The Shrew, Stoppard's Real Inspector Hound, Williams' Streetcar Named Desire, Brecht's Life Of Galileo, Pinter's Birthday Party, and Williamson's The Club. As eclectic and representative a sample as I could quickly grab with one hand).
Scanning each one, I have noted that in all cases the stage directions are short, precise, chiefly concerned with action, and FUNCTIONAL only! I have not yet found any evidence of a stage direction telling us how to interpret what is written, thematically or stylistically.
[Possibly the only exception is the foreword notes by Brecht, where he seems quite prescriptive in how he'd like it staged (or rather, not staged)...yet his notes are also extremely dated and seem more relevant in that context. At the time it was written, it was probably hugely significant to play in this new 'Brechtian' style. These days that the style is familiar, his notes seem quaint and carry less impact.]

I have also noted many stage directions which honestly don't bear more than a passing significance. They may offer an insight, but really you can take them or leave them, without detracting from the play. This is a contentious issue that has been debated on this website before, but it's the first time I have looked closely at a range of concrete examples. It's a good discussion for a separate thread, but I'm once again convinced that most stage directions aren't sancrosanct.

In summary:
Everything I have found in a playscript is exactly like what I find in a novel, a poem, a song lyric, a letter, this blog...
The meaning is contained in the text. The author has used what language skills he has to convey the meaning he intends. But the ultimate response and meaning of it all is up to you, the recipient.

Again, thanks for this discussion which has proved to be an enjoyable Easter distraction. But I'm afraid I think it's stopped being much of an argument.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

I think we're getting tangled up in our analogies. And I'll restate that I don't think we are disagreement, we are just tripping up over our ways of describing a point of view.

Okay . . .

A) Sharing. I agree that 'sharing' can be used in many ways. I see you are using it in the context of a linear process to which people contribute, even though they may have nothing to do with each other. In your building example you said, "What I've created informs and influences what you have to do, but you're free to interpret your job as you see fit and I have no interest or control over how you do it". Okay, I'm happy with that.

I had originally thought you were using it in the context of a mutually agreeable 'contract' ('we share our toys', which is how I mostly use it).

You originally said, "So I do agree that meaning comes partly from the recipient, not solely from the instigator. But it's a shared process." I don't know what you mean by putting the 'but' in there. It confuses things, suggesting some kind of counter argument to the first sentence ('he was a good boy, but . . .'). As I reread, it strikes me that 'but it's a shared process' isn't even necessary, and you could have gone straight on to the next sentence, and we wouldn't have diverted many words arguing about just one (as I'm still doing).

B) Building a house: I wasn't asserting that everyone shares in building a house. In fact, that was your analogy: "The end product house is the result of our shared efforts". I was countering this by asking, "And who planned the house-building and engaged the construction crew?" I then went on to say, "If we shared building a house, there would be a discussion and negotiation", meaning that if you and I were to build a house together (which is what I thought you meant when you said "Or if we shared building a house"), we would work out a plan of action between us (i.e. we would share the work (using 'share' how I would use it)).

In any case, the building analogy, though kind of neat, has a major flaw, so we should put it aside. I like the idea of the playwright as the creator of the blueprint and so on. But there is a major difference. An architect does sometimes create designs for no-one in particular, but mostly they are commissioned by someone, such as the future home-owner, who then takes over the finished product. Consequently, the design is often a 'shared' process (my meaning), because owner and architect discuss what is wanted. A playwright does not usually discuss the writing of the play with the audience.

So . . . back to discussions about intent, which I hope to address very briefly. I'll use your numbering

1 No, I'm not "trying to argue that the writer of a play, novel or song has to explicitly tell us how to recognise style".

2 No, I haven't "shot [my] own argument in the foot."

3 I'm aware of the background of Red Riding Hood. It's irrelevant to the point I was making. I could have inserted the name of any story read by kids.

4 You said, "I don't believe that a songwriter ever thinks we will have NO understanding unless it's first explained to us" and I agree.

5 Having gone through a couple of scripts quickly, I agree that most of the directions are functional. But not all. For example, In 'Oliver', the direction is "Mrs Sowerberry looks doubtful". The moment we get an adverb, we get a direction from the playwright about how to interpret a specific bit of the action.

Now . . . just expanding on the brevity of some of the responses above;

1 A songwriter, an author and a playwright will create something (usually) with a specific thought in mind, i.e. the intent.

2 From what I said earlier: "Each of us is unique, having different cultural, social, racial, historical backgrounds. These elements provide the frame of reference by which we interpret the world around us. Consequently, each of us will interpret an event differently (though those differences may not be much)."

3 If it is important for the creator of the work that the intent be recognised by the recipient, then the creator needs to take steps to make that intent as visible as possible.

4 The creator can do this in various ways. For example, a songwriter can introduce and explain a song.

5 An author doesn't get up and explain the novel before it's read by the reader. The reader deduces intent from the body of the text. A play audience deduces intent from the performance.

6 A reader and a playgoer are in similar straits. How well they perceive the intent depends on how unambiguously it is conveyed through the medium. This is then down to the author's skill and the playwright's skill.

7 But, for the play, there is an intermediary in the person of the director. The director is privy to information the audience doesn't have: the assorted staging remarks that are part of the script. These therefore give the director (and cast and crew) additional information about intent, which can help the director in the role of conduit between writer and audience.

8 But fundamentally, for any medium, unless we are specifically told what the intent is, our interpretations are assumptions. They may be pretty good assumptions about which there may be little disagreement, but they still remain assumptions.

And here I will make use of the point you made about songwriting: "The songwriter can have a 'hidden' intent which I may never have guessed otherwise". When I write songs they always have an intent, which is to get a particular thought expressed in some fashion. However, those thoughts are highly personal. Though I feel the need to express them, I do not want to embarrass myself (or others) by being explicit. The thoughts are therefore expressed in a highly obscure way, and unless I tell someone specifically, the real intent will remain invisible (which is what I want).

But people will interpret the songs how they hear them. They will infer a meaning. Possibly (but hopefully not), they will infer the 'real' meaning. But they will never know whether they are right, because I won't tell them.

Jessmess, this is a good example to explore. In all the previous discussion, no one's gotten down to specifics, which is why it still seems a vague concept.

I think a good rule of thumb in drama is, where possible, 'Show, Don't Tell'. It's a visual, physical medium. Yes of course dialogue is hugely important, but its power is in its efficiency. There is so much you can show the audience before you open your mouth, and that is what subtext is, and that's why we need direction and why we're having most of this discussion in the first place.

I agree with you:
Mike: You suck, and this makes me feel depressed.
is a pretty bad line! It seems to be stating the obvious, unnecessary, and it would be far more powerful for the actor playing Mike to express the emotion in delivery rather than literally.

Occasionally the author really wants the character to play the opposite of the way the line reads. So it may be valid to write
Mike: (grinning playfully) You suck.
which changes the subtext considerably, if this was the author's intent.

In your example above,
Mike: You suck. (He sighs as the rain begins to pour).
is valid in so much as you are painting a picture for the readers of the script. Mike doesn't just feel depressed, but it appears the world around him is joining in to add to the gloom.

Now the important point is, this stage direction has now done its job. It stops here. The director and actors get what you are trying to say. So this DOESN'T mean their production now has to have rain effects, or that Mike has to literally sigh after saying the line. You've given a clear subtext, now it's up to the director and actors to reproduce that subtext however they see fit. This is what we mean by interpretation. It could be a mood created with a lighting cue, a music cue, a physical gesture, a facial gesture, a vocal quality, a symbolic way of standing or moving, a sound effect, an audio/visual image projection, drawing attention to a particular prop, changing the physical energy compared to what it was before the line, changing the proximity of actors to each other, it probably can be demonstrated in the ongoing dialogue and how other characters react...there are a myriad of ways to demonstrate a status-change.
I have gleaned these examples from a two-word piece of text. With more information from a larger script, there would be more possibilities. Maybe the whole play builds to this moment, maybe it's a recurring theme that can unify other moments in the play. Maybe there is a historical or stylistic or contextual metaphor that could have been utilised.
Maybe I turn the sprinklers on in the roof, and the rain actually begins to pour.

At no time do I feel I have seriously misinterpreted the author's intention or reinvented the work.
But neither do I feel I need to strictly follow the stage direction, if I don't believe it is something the audience needs to see, or can think of another way of expressing it. That stage direction is the author's private note to me as a director, not to the audience. It's to give me a clue as to what intention he had in mind when writing the line. But it's my production, and the audience has come to see my interpretation.

I'm not just making these decisions in order to be an arty-farty wanker or show off my ego. I take it the reason many here object to this concept of re-interpretation is because they've seen it botched by such wankers, so let me assure you I dismiss them just as heartily. I'm only talking about GOOD directors, good actors, people who respect the playwright and text but also trust their ability to genuinely create exciting, valid theatre.
And in the hands of those types of creative people, this act of interpreting a drama script/blueprint and coming up with a version that is fresh and original is what is exciting about theatre. It's almost the only reason we should bother revisiting a script more than once. And it is understood by good playwrights, who are secure in their work and don't feel threatened by this process of positive collaboration.

Cheers,
Craig

(sighs and looks out the window as the Easter rains begin to pour)

~<8>-/====\---------

Being asked to be more explicit in itself sucks!

The first version is far more satisfying than the second.

It strikes me that whoever is making the suggestions is forgetting abouut the importance of non-verbal communication.

Well, maybe it wasn't that bad, but it makes Mike sound like he is in a counselling session and has had some new age advice . . .

Counsellor: "And how does that make you feel?"

Mike: "You suck, and this makes me feel depressed."

Counsellor: "Do yo want to talk about it?"

Mike "Sod off!"

"Barthe is used as a justification for abusing the role of the writer and allowing the Director and actors to impose whatever half or fully baked ephemeral toss and meanings they want to upon an already sound text."

The converse can be just as well argued:
"Staying true to the authors intentions" is used as an excuse for taking artistic shortcuts and merely copying holus bolus previous productions!

And how many times have decisions that were not made by the suthor but made the director of the original production been the basis for notes in the script and been interpreted as "what the author wrote". I know it happens all the time with musicals.

I'll admit that the worst abuses of what Garreth is talking about have happened in the last thirty years in opera with the rise of regieoper (director's opera), and yet some of the greatest productions in that time have also been spawned in the same movement.
Take for example the Chereau production of Wagner's Ring at Bayreuth in the 70s.
He reset the whole opera cycle as an allegory of the industrial revolution and the abuse of the working classes.
At first glimpse the reaction is - WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH WAGNER'S RING!!!
At further looking, it starts to dawn that he has taken as his starting point Shaw's brilliant essay on the Ring where he puts forward the view that that is what the ring is actually about.

[Oh God, I'm going from Marxist to Freudian readings in two paragraphs]

The other problem is - is what an author SAYS actually what he MEANS?!
And are we to just go by what an author CONSCIOUSLY writes, or are we allowed to take into account what he may SUBCONSCIOUSLY mean.

"A good playwright will never leave good actors and good directors in doubt as to how they should play the character."

I'll counter that with:

A GREAT playwright will ALWAYS leave good actors and good directors in doubt as to how they should play the character.
Because it is through doubt and exploration of the MANY LAYERS OF MEANING that true great theatre happens.

Example:
Did anyone watch the Tony's last year?
In particular Patti LuPone's unbelievable rendition of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from Gypsy.
The way she played that scene is RADICALLY DIFFERENT from either Roz Russell or Bette Midler in the filmed versions, and yet no less valid.

The problem with your argument Garreth is that if you follow the line of it then it means ther is only ONE CORRECT way to perform any role or play, and any variation is in error.
At which point it stops becoming theory and starts becoming dogma and we get to the point where people start criticising a production because "in the script the author clearly states that the sofa in act two is a two-seater not a three-seater!"

Let me finally add that I am loving this thread.
We've strayed from Dramatic Theory into what could be called Dramatic Philosophy.

I don't think shakespeare ever intended for his work to be "reinterpreted". He and his actors were probably more interested in just making sure that everyone could hear what they were saying. Also it is likely with only a few days of rehearsal before a new play was performed that the actors were more interested in learning their lines than bothering to invest any great meanings into it. Shakespeare would then have to help his actors and his audience to understand the emotion of the character and would do this through the use of verse.

If the play was good enough to enter into a companies rep, new actors would have been trained to play the roles as whoever they were taking over from would have. As was standard practice in most companies but perhaps most visable in Commedia Dell'Arte. This continued to be standard practice almost until the 1930's. We see it begin to disappear from historical sources about the same time as the rise of the director.

I'm not saying for a moment that the writers intention is law and that we musn't deviate from it or find other meanings in it but I find it arrogant in the extreme not to acknowledge in some way the motivation that the playwright had for producing the play in the first place. Also I might point out that if you chooseto ignore my intention in writing this then it was pointless writing it in the first place.

Or to interpret Jess ignoring her intention. The statment above assumes that paying strict attention to what the writer of a play wants immediately saps all the fun from it and that fun can't be had with a play where the staging is very strict. That plays that are diliberately ambiguous are also much better plays and that shakespeare is always necessarily filled with double meanings Oh and he also intentionally left it open to interpretation... which I might point out is a paradoxical statement.

Then again Heiner Muller did say "If you don't disagree with Brecht in some way, you are betraying him"

Garreth said:
>>I don't think shakespeare ever intended for his work to be "reinterpreted".

...Which is an interesting assumption, because a HUGE percentage of Shakespeare's work is material that HE himself had reinterpreted from other sources! With only a few exceptions, he did not invent the plots of his plays.

Hamlet & Pericles were retellings of old stories; R&J, Othello, and Much Ado were retellings of contemporary Italian writers; As You Like It and Winter's Tale were play adaptations of contemporary prose stories. The Roman and the English history plays were interpretations taken from historical events (or rather, interpretations of other people's translations of historical events). Lear, Cymbaline and MacBeth were from legendary tales from remote history. Sometimes Shakespeare was writing a play based on other existing plays that had already covered the material...for instance, there was already a play about King Lear, and one about Henry V.
And then, within the content of his plays, Shakespeare is consistantly referring to, paraphrasing, or sometimes directly quoting other people's work...from contemporaries like Christopher Marlowe, to poets like Homer and Ovid, to the writings by historians he had read, and of course, to the Bible.

Today we think of Shakespeare mainly as an author, because his writings have survived and become a literary genre of their own, and we place them in our current paradigm of a 'script' that is written with the intention of others to produce.

But in his own time, he should probably be considered more a 'Play Maker'. He was there, on the stage, creating the end product which would be viewed by a particular contemporary audience. He usually directed his own plays. In some cases, he took roles as an actor as well. His 'scripts' were nothing more than draft writings, simply a tool to be used in the production process, not intended as a piece of standalone work. Often actors were only given their individual parts. The 'scripts' that WERE collated into a single body were annotated with stage directions, edits, notes,...essentially a working prompt-script for the production.
Nothing was really kept or published until years after his death, when the First Folios were collected and re-arranged into script form by publishers and drama historians...it's only then that such a thing as 'a Shakespeare script' could even be said to exist.

In effect, Shakespeare was actually the production team, not the original author, and he was re-interpreting work that existed before, by turning it into drama. His use of dramatic writing and verse was a tool he used to help him reinterpret 'his version' of those stories.
I would even suggest that, even though he knew his value as a writer, he held less regard for his 'scripts' than any of us do today. I believe he cared more about the end product, which was the collaboration between his actors, his words, his direction, and his audience.

And this simply shows that it is OUR modern interpretation of 'what a script is' that has created what we 'think' Shakespeare intended. His actual intention is still clear...he intended to create plays. But you can see how we have re-interpreted the whole scenario by even including him in this argument about what a playwright IS, or intends.

The message has been given meaning by those who read it.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

Garreth said:
>> ...I find it arrogant in the extreme not to acknowledge in some way the motivation that the playwright had for producing the play in the first place.

There are several Shakespeare plays where his primary motivation in producing it was to please the ruling Monarch of the time.

Now the knowledge of this fact may significantly alter our understanding of the play and how we may choose to re-mount it. Rather than see it as how the author intended (ie having a definite political context), we usually simply take all our contextual understanding off the page, from what the characters say.

So for us to accurately acknowledge the author's motivation (which you say would be arrogant not to), requires a fair bit of extra information which might not always be available to us. And then even if we WERE knowledgeable about the motivation...do we create our present-day production as if we were trying to please Elizabeth the 1st, or do we translate that motivation to modern day so as to please Elizabeth the 2nd? Which way is more in keeping with Shakespeare's motivation?
Informed or not, we are forced to make choices, which amounts to end-user interpretation.

Garreth also said:
>>...if you choose to ignore my intention in writing this then it was pointless writing it in the first place.

That you took the time to express a point of view here and posit a valid argument implies that you believe there was a point to it all. You know you're possibly not going to be interpreted or understood by everyone, but by being as clear as you can be you probably feel that most people will 'get' you and so the point remains. You have no control over how people will take what you wrote, yet you wrote it anyway. I don't believe you would have done that if you thought it was truly pointless.
So you wrote your thoughts about Shakespeare. And your intention was implied in your writing.

And yet if people read my other response to your argument about Shakespeare and find merit in it, they would see the meaning in a rather different light, where your whole example can be turned around and used to dispute your point rather than support it. I chose to ignore your intention because I approached it from a position which suggests that your initial assumptions may be wrong and that the whole paradigm has shifted. This doesn't make what you wrote pointless, but it may change the meaning somewhat.
It's simply my interpretation, but it's independent of what you wrote or your intention in writing it.

I don't mean to say the message will always be interpreted in a way which contradicts how it was sent...in fact, I think this is rare. The meaning derived from what is written must always be supported.

But that meaning is independent of your intention. Same message, slightly different meaning, it now becomes MY intention. And I become responsible if you dislike it.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

Commedia Delle Arte is maybe not such a great example here either, coz a lot of that was about improvisation which means - yep, interpretation.
Yes its true that new actors would be trained to take over existing roles within a company and play a particular character that was very well defined with strict guidelines, but it's also true that the shows were not really scripted except in the sense that they had well-known comic routines. They would tell the same story, with well defined characters and routines known as 'lazzi' (spelling?) but the actual manner of telling would evolve and become custom-made to the skills of the particular performer. They didn't really have a director, but the actors of the troupe would be responsible for the interpretation of the well-known stories. And because the characters were so well-known and their status to each other was so well defined, they could easily interact through a performance of a new completely improvised story with no script if they wanted to.
So I guess you could say the characters had intentions, but the actors were free to improvise and interpret how they liked. And there wasn't really an author as such to have an intention. These were traditional stories that got handed down but could be adapted and modified to suit the occasion.
Plenty of room to reinterpret and introduce their own intents.

This question of intent has been rattling around in my head like moths banging at a window for the last few days, and refuses to settle down.

There are many gaps between quill and script. Some are temporal, geographical, cultural and linguistic. Some gaps are bigger than others. But they all act as obstacles to understanding. Imagine I was an Ecuadorian about to stage a play at the Quito Dramatic Centre. It is an Australian script, and contains a reference to New Zealanders and sheep. What would I make of this? Though in Australia we can chuckle at this reference, as an Ecuadorian it is likely to make little sense to me.

Artistic creations are intimately welded to their cultural environments, and if we are to decipher the text of a play, we need to be able to bridge those gaps somehow.

jessmess and craig respectively note the imperatives of the day: "most playwrights probably don't think past the first staging of their play, and novelists past finishing the novel" and "[Shakespeare] was there, on the stage, creating the end product which would be viewed by a particular contemporary audience".

These observations suggest to me the work of Stock, Aitken and Waterman (SAW) in the eighties, who wrote and produced a prodigious amount of music for the likes of Rick Astley, Kylie, Mel & Kim. I wonder what thoughts were uppermost in the minds of this song-writing team? Can we attribute to them a thirst for musical excellence? Or perhaps their predominant motivation was to achieve commercial success for those singers and themselves. Their material, like Shakespeare's, was drawn from the culture of the time and turned into highly successful pop tunes.

What we can conclude is that SAW wrote and produced highly accessible material that resonated with the recording buying public of that time. I further conclude that that was their intention.

I've never been a fan of SAW, and I viewed their music as shallow, blatantly commercial, and of limited artistic merit.

But something happens when you take these songs out of their original setting. If you peel off the poppy commercial veneer and allow the lyrics to determine a musical approach (as opposed to the reverse - making a song fit the style of the time), you can get some amazing interpretations.

So did SAW write their songs with this in mind, or were they solely interested in what would be commercially acceptable at the time?

You may wonder what relevance songwriting has to directing plays . . .

We can safely conclude that a playwright who created a play intended to do so . . . otherwise we would have no play. But can we know how they intended that play to be directed? Were they writing just for a specific audience, or did they have something more universal in mind? In many cases, the directing intention is obvious: here is a tragedy, here is a farce and so on. But it is not always clear what changes we can make because the world has changed.

If we believe we should abide by the writer's intentions, how do we do that? Should we replicate the fly-by-the-seatedness of, say, Shakespeare, and replicate The Globe. Possibly we could do that, but it would be virtually incomprehensible if just because of the language of the time.

Does a transformation of the material into current idiom represent an abuse of the of original intention? What would the writer think if we did this? We can make assumptions about what an acceptable transformation would be, but I've asserted before, these can only be assumptions unless the writer specifically tells us. That means a writer has to think beyond the immediacy of the play's premiere and consider what might happen many years into the future, and then send a message to those directors in that future.

If they don't do that . . . then, as I've noted before, our interpretations are based only on assumptions.

Mike, I think you've just made me realise why I've been so actively engaged in this argument:

I love covers!

I love the fact that a completely new style and feel and interpretation can be made of an old song, which fills me with respect for the new artist and their interpretation, yet doesn't diminish what I felt about the original. In fact, many times I only really appreciate the new version because I know the old version and recognise the new approaches.

Often the beauty of a song being covered is that you can tell that the new artist really understood the way the original worked and was originally performed (ie they took note of and understood the intention) and they deliberately use this knowledge to create a new meaning...sometimes heartfelt, sometimes laden with irony and humour.

I don't think there are too many successful songwriters who get overly upset when their song is reinvented...from a ballad to a dance number, or from a heavy rock song to a country and western rollick...it only shows that their basic idea transcends boundaries and has widespread appeal, beyond how they may have originally envisioned.

So I have naturally attributed this relationship to the theatre process. If a great song can be arranged and performed in ways entirely different to the original intention and still be regarded as a successful result, why not a great play?

Thanks, good example.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

What you are emphasising then, Logos, is that whatever the original intent of this argument, we are rapidly branching out into different interpretations of its meaning, largely dependent on our own personal understandings of the words 'intent', 'motivation', 'style', 'subtext', 'context', 'meaning'....etc, etc ad infinitum!

Even where we seem to agree, there is never an exact synchronity in what we believe others to mean, or how we ourselves are understood.

.

The Placebo version of 'Running Up That Hill' is not far different from Kate Bush's rendition, it's rhythmically similar and it's mainly the slower tempo that gives it the darker, more intense feel.

I know of more varying examples with 'Wuthering Heights'. Kate Bush's version has pathos and a strong hint of madness. This, I take it, you would call her 'intent'.
Albert Niland does an acoustic version which has all the pathos, softer and sadder, but I wouldn't attribute any madness. Probably still in keeping with the original.
James Reyne did an acoustic version, almost the same as Albert Niland's, but his version sounds like a piss-take...JUST because it's James Reyne!
The Puppini Sisters have two different tempo versions, where they are obviously far more focussed on making it fit their particular style (40's jazz a la the Andrews Sisters). No desperation in the performance, in fact it sounds fun. Still sounds like a love song, though. Still makes sense of the text.
White Flag do a heavy rock, high energy version, which also still seems true to the text but probably has more anger and no pathos...is this still true to the intent?
Mr Floppy does a techno dance version in a high pitched voice which probably doesn't care about any inherent meaning, but emphasises what a great and catchy melody it is. Perfect for the nightclub audience it is performed to.
And the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain does a version which they are probably taking seriously, but just sounds like a comedy. Probably the furthest from the original intent, but for the comedy alone though, it's valid, entertaining, and worth listening to. Why is that a bad thing?

But comparing songs IS a flawed analogy, because we are comparing all the new versions to the original PRODUCTION. By the time the original song was produced it had already been interpreted into form - no longer the original 'script' of words and notes - what we hear are the interpretations of the performer, musicians, arrangers, & recording engineers.

If it so happens that the writer of the song was the performer, who saw the production through, then the whole process may have been one of unified intent. And sometimes that happens with a playwright, who sees their script through to production and so what we see is probably what they had in mind. But that's an assumption. Even the original production was probably a merging of creative interpretations.

.

You've said in an above thread that you don't agree when the creativity strays too far from the original text. Assuming we're not talking about changing the actual words of the text, I guess by 'creativity' you're referring to what we do to the text with 'style'? But by 'true to the original text' I'm still not certain we've defined 'true to the original intent'...

Yes, a play had an original intention, which in so far as we understand it, we must try to take into consideration. The only question, which seems will divide us all forevermore into two camps, is whether, having recognised that original intention, we reproduce it as faithfully as we can; or still recognising it, we reinvent it with new intent.

If intent is more important than style, the question still remains: whose intent?

I think the end product must always be a synergy of TWO intentions. There is the playwright's intent in writing, and there is the director's intent in producing.
Both of these intents must start independently and yet must merge to create the final product. No matter what the writer writes, they know it will be effected by the director's style in production. And no matter what the director intends, it will always be effected by and considered against what the author wrote.

What we think of the results, how well they meld, is for the audience to decide, and must ultimately and simply come down to individual taste as to whether it's a good or bad result.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

I don't think we are actually that far apart. I guess the definition of authors intent is the barrier.
Interestingly enough I don't have too much trouble with changes to my words that can place the play into an environment that makes more sense to the audience. For example I don't think that many of my plays are so "Australian" that text changes to place them in, say the USA are a problem. As an extreme example however, a play I wrote and produced for the 2008 Fringe Festival attacked the anti sedition legislation, if a director and actors were to change the focus so the play supported the legislation would that not be an unwarranted attack upon my intent? Having recently reread the play I can see that it would be possible.
You are approaching this discussion as an actor, I as a writer/director and I suspect that most of our differences arise from this.

Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing.
www.tonymoore.id.au

>>"You are approaching this discussion as an actor, I as a writer/director and I suspect that most of our differences arise from this."

You're right, most of our differences aren't that different. Although actually neither are our approaches.

Although I AM an actor, I don't think that's the main influence to my approach here. As an actor I interpret dialogue and impose physicality to my characterisation but only have secondary control over stylistic choices as they evolve in the rehearsal room.

I HAVE occasionally been a director. I definitely found myself looking at the text with a view to finding a 'different' or at least a personally satisfying way of delivering it. But I'm always aware of where the author's intent and the director's intent must merge...I never approach with MALICIOUS intent. In your example above, if the political aspect is an essential central issue to the play, I imagine it would be highly unlikely someone would reverse it, even though you say it's possible. But in 60 years' time, when that political context is overshadowed by whatever Orwellian government we have imposed on us at the time...those strong political views may appear quaint and even bemusing, and the director may well need to interpret it in a totally different way than you can foresee now, so as not to make your writing appear farcical...which I'm sure would be your REAL concern.

I also approach this discussion as an audience member, who is acutely aware of the power of good writing, the power of good direction, and the possibility of fucking up both. We're all talking about RESULTS; how the end product reflects on those who contributed...and this is ultimately decided from the audience's perspective.

And I DO approach this, too, as a writer. I don't have any play scripts to my solo credit, although I have contributed to group devised efforts (which doesn't just mean improvising as an actor, but researching, writing, and editing dialogue, and having quite a strong input into structuring the script as well).
Professionally, my main strength would be as a lyricist, and having written the lyrics to a musical which was performed at several international festivals and was then translated for a production in Spanish (!), I am quite aware of the oddness of that feeling that you are 'losing control' of the meaning you specifically crafted into your words!
A comical song lyric, with its carefully measured rhythms and rhymes, the onomatopoeia, assonance, alliteration, deliberate phrasing, and reliance on puns and double meaning is probably the most concrete example of an author having a very specific intent with each and every word, and yet the moment it was translated into another language that all went out the window! As the production was directed by the original writer/director (who nonetheless didn't speak Spanish so needed to work through a translator!) I am sure he did his utmost to see that the overall intent of the play was retained. But for me, I had to let it go. They actually used the exact same recorded arrangements of my music, so there was no huge stylistic change, but the precise meaning..? I can only assume they did their best. I really wish I understood Spanish and was able to attend; I would have been fascinated to discover how they coped. The show got good reviews, so I guess it worked well enough.

What would be your thoughts if one of your plays was to be translated? Reassured, perhaps, that the overall gist of your intent would remain true, but resigned to the fact that each and every well-crafted sentence would be, of necessity, reinterpreted? It's an interesting slant to this argument! And interesting to think that a lot of the stylistic examples we might be thinking of (Brecht, Chekov, Sophocles, Ibsen...) are only really known to us as translations.

And finally, I also approach this argument as a writer, not in any theatrical sense, but as one reading and communicating here on a website blog. I see an argument I'm interested in, and I like to contribute, clarify, contest, compose and compete!
Particularly since this argument is all about writers trying to get their point across clearly and every reader responding in their own personal way, I think it's rather a good case in point of the topic we are dealing with! As writers with a precious point to impart, we don't want to let go...but the reality is, once the message has been posted, it's not in our control.

Cheers,
Craig

~<8>-/====\---------

Interesting you should mention translation. One of my plays has been translated into Greek and another (the abovementioned political play) into Hindi.
I was benused by the first as it was a very English comedy and I am still wondering how some of the jokes worked in Greek, obviously they were transliterated (is that a word?) as well as translated. I speak no Greek at all.
The Hindi translation I'm sure worked.
Someone is currently working on translating one of my plays for a South African Afrikaans company although the production may never happen.
I did not mean to belittle you. I was not aware of your other endeavours and looked upon you as an actor (a breed for whom I have much respect developed while watching them struggle with my words).
I may have appeared to be more difficult than I actually am about my words. I suspect I reacted by moving to a stronger position than I really feel. That doesn't mean that I will react quite strongly if I feel that my work is being butchered.
I do see your point about a Directors viewpoint and obviously if directing my own work I stick to my original intent but I admit that directing others work I do look for ways to make it more valid in the situation it is being presented in. I still feel that some directors can and do take this too far in quite a cavalier fashion.

Is that all there is? Well if that's all there is my friend, then let's keep dancing.
www.tonymoore.id.au

It's all good, you've never come across as belittling anybody and I didn't take it that way. I wasn't talking about my other endeavors as a means to improve my status, but simply to justify the perspectives I was discussing. And when it comes to it, I do see myself foremostly as an actor.

Thanks for your concern in clarifying; for the insight from your obviously far-reaching achievements; and for your contribution to this discussion which I continue to find extremely interesting!

Cheers,
Craig

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