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From Issue #13, Fall 2006

ORAL INTERPRETATION+READERS THEATRE=PERFORMANCE
An Alternative Form
by Walter Ray Stump

PARY TWO. (Part One apeared last issue and can be reviewed in the archives)

Simple Readers Theatre emphasizes oral interpretation to a greater degree than the other forms. It is essentially presentational in nature in that it does not attempt to recreate events, but rather suggest them in the minds eye of the audience. In a sense it is theatre of the imagination in that the audience must share the job of making the words come alive. Normally Simple Readers Theatre is performed with the use of offstage focus. Offstage focus is rarely used in stage plays. It is a technique in which performers, generally seated in a line facing the audience, never look directly at each other. They visualize the characters as being out beyond the audience. This method enables the audience to see every nuance in the face of the interpreters while making them feel that they are a part of the conversation. While this approach may seem awkward and artificial, it is surprisingly effective and powerful if done correctly. The following is Adams' method used by permission of the Readers Theatre Institute and Script Service P.O. Box 421262 San Diego, California 92142. A more detailed treatment may be found in Adams' book "INSTITUTE BOOK OF READERS THEATRE; A PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR SCHOOL, THEATRE AND COMMUNITY. The book is available at the above address.

STYLE I: SIMPLE READER'S THEATRE

The readers are usually arranged in a formal straight line seated on stools or chairs or standing at music stands. The readers are placed in a meaningful relationship to each other. For example, a narrator for a particular character is usually placed by that character. If there is a main character, that reader will probably be placed center.

FOCUS

NARRATORS: Audience Focus. They "see" the characters in Offstage Focus.

CHARACTERS: Offstage Focus.

SCRIPTS

Scripts are used. Even if lines are memorized for public performance, the cast should appear to read from their scripts.

The should be controlled so that turning of pages and other physical usages do not distract the audience. Hardbacked folders are helpful to achieve good script handling.

Scripts are not used as props in this style.

ACTIONS

No literal movements are used. Entrances are indicated merely by looking up from the script with an inner surge of psychic energy (called "taking the stage"). Exits are indicated by looking down at the script with a decrease of energy.

Discard all pantomime and gestures, but encourage inner responses. SIMPLE READERS THEATRE should have the same energy, expressiveness, and involvement as more external styles.

STYLE II: STAGED READERS THEATRE

This performance style emphasizes the literature while providing certain theatrical elements that help to bring the text alive for readers and audience. It is particularly suited to beginners in Reader's Theatre because the mime and other actions on stools are highly involving, but full stage movements are not required. It both controls and frees the performer. It uses the following techniques:

SET-UP OF REVOLVING STOOLS AND READING STANDS

Revolving stools and stands are usually placed in a straight line to indicate the non-realistic style.

Stands are sometimes angled slightly toward each other to show the narrator's relationship to both audience and cast.

Characters are placed to indicate characters importance and relationships.

Note: If stools are not available, chairs can be placed profile to the audience permitting 3/4 turns. Wooden stools can be given false revolving tops of plywood or enameled for easy turns.

FOCUS

NARRATORS: Audience Focus is used. Also, narrators look from time to time at the performers with Onstage Focus as an added bridge between cast and audience, and because this style is more theatrical than simple Readers Theatre.

CHARACTERS: Offstage Focus is generally used.

SCRIPT FOLDERS

Scripts are used in this style to prompt the reader, although there is no reason why the words should not be memorized if a polished performance is desired. They also emphasize the importance of the literature in Readers Theatre.

Scripts are also used to suggest props (a tray, a fan, a frisbee, etc.).

ACTIONS

This style uses entrances and exits by characters revolving on stools front and back-to-audience (bta).

Gestures and mime are also used, but they are highly selective with no attempt to do more than suggest the actions of the text.

The mime is also done with Offstage Focus. That is, the reader hands an imaginary cup of coffee toward the offstage spot where the receiving character is visualized rather than to the actual reader on stage. It is important that the actions are synchronized so that the cup is not taken by the receiver before it is offered by the giver.

STYLE III: STORY THEATRE

Story Theatre is a term with two meanings:

1. A technique for arranging a literary text so that the characters speak their own narrations as well as dialogue, and can be performed in any style.

2. A staging form advocated by Paul Sills in which the actions are performed as conventional theatre by actors who speak their own narration and dialogue.

This second type of Story Theatre uses the following techniques:
SET-UP
Provide whatever stools, chairs, steps, tables, or platforms the actions and locales of the script require. Realistic scenery is rarely used. If a script calls for several locales, the weight-bearing structures are usually placed simultaneously for the entire time, or cast members rearrange them as the actions dictate.

SIMPLICITY is the keynote to Story Theatre.

FOCUS

CHARACTERS: The characters use Audience Focus for the narrative elements and Onstage Focus for the dialogue.

SCRIPTS

No scripts are used because the literature is acted out with full stage movements. Lines are memorized as in conventional theatre so that the performance will not resemble a play rehearsal.

ACTIONS

The actions are performed with full stage movement as in conventional theatre. There is a basic difference, however, because literature other than plays often telescopes time, requiring extreme compression of movements. Or "real" time stops while the narration comments on a situation. Or there may be abrupt changes of time and locale.

TEXT

Narration is an essential element in Readers Theatre based on literature with that ingredient. Do not attempt to drop or minimize the narration to make a "play" of the script.

STYLE IV: CHAMBER THEATRE

Chamber Theatre is a style advocated by Robert Breen as a theatrical approach to performing narrative literature. It is a still-evolving form, so do not hesitate to experiment to find the most effective and appropriate ways to make the script come alive as theatre.

NOTE: Most of its techniques are the same as those in Story Theatre, since both use the same basic approach to full-stage performance.
SET-UP

Simple weight-bearing structures are used as needed. (See Style III: Story Theatre).

In some Chamber Theatre productions, the full physical resources of theatre (lighting, scenery, costumes, make-up, props, sound) are provided. A general principle of Readers Theatre in any form, however, is to seek the MAXIMUM COMMUNICATION of the text with the SIMPLEST MEANS.

SCRIPTS

Scripts are not ordinarily used (See Style III: Story Theatre)

FOCUS

NARRATORS: Audience Focus is used.

CHARACTERS: Onstage Focus is used

Sometimes it is meaningful for characters to speak their narrations to other characters on stage.

ACTIONS

Full stage actions are performed as in conventional theatre. (See Style III: Story Theatre).

Since separate narrators are used, unlike Story Theatre, it is necessary to integrate them fully into the production. Narrators are alter-egos, confidants, and commentators on the action, as well as the author's storytellers. They must not be shunted to the sides as if they were merely to be heard rather than seen. They are the "camera's eye," following the action with wide, medium, or close-up shots, so arrange their stage relationships accordingly.

TEXT

Narration is an essential element in Readers Theatre based on literature with that ingredient. Do not attempt to drop or minimize the narration to make a "play" of the script.

PERFORMANCE STUDIES

Recently, there has been considerable new scholarship into the role of performance in communications and behavioral science. Departments of Interpretation have plunged into new and challenging methodologies that go much farther than the traditional parameters of oral interpretation and readers theatre. Many have felt that the label performance studies is more in keeping with the new agendas. Scholars reason that performance incorporates a whole range of activity. Under the umbrella of performance studies the performance phenomenon is being studied in its various manifestations. It is now being argued in academic circles that there are three basic groups of performances: Cultural, Literary and Performance Art.

Cultural Performance is used to describe those acts performed in everyday life such as personal narratives, public display, and public performances that utilize various media such as musical statements, mime, masks, light displays and other visual resources. Communal forms of ceremony such as National Political conventions, vigil marches, some street theatre where live bodies take on symbolic meaning are presently considered cultural performances. All of these events tend to affirm, reaffirm or reject value systems. While cultural performances may draw on a literary tradition, they tend to be more oral-centered than print-centered.

Literary Performance under this new organization would include oral interpretation, readers theatre and traditional theatre. Any performance of literature is placed under this category. Plays, short stories, poetry, novels, essays, humorous literature of all kinds form the text of performances of this kind. The artist becomes an interpreter of dramatic literature in a stage play and an oral interpreter if he or she is interpreting a poem. Literary performance, then, embraces the more traditional roles of textural performance.

Performance Art is the most controversial of the performance studies because it involves the study of performance artists who create their own texts from eclectic sources such as music, dance, media art, visual art, sculpture and the like and because it resembles the so-called avant-garde theatre of the twentieth century. These performances tend to be anti-establishment, often assaultive, and frequently in opposition to commonly accepted definitions of art. They often incorporate multimedia collages of seemingly incongruous material in an effort to attack traditional value systems. The performance art artist sometimes takes physical risks in an effort to re-examine the boundaries of aesthetics.

In Stern and Henderson's book "Performance Texts and Contexts" Chris Burden, Eleanor Antine, Whoopi Goldberg and Spalding Gray are listed as pioneers in the field. They represent a rather wide spectrum of method. Burden and Antine tended to use their bodies as text, while Goldberg and Gray were more concerned with words.

Chris Burden's pieces involved considerable risk to himself. In "Prelude to 220 or 110" Burden bolted himself to the floor of a studio with copper bands. Close by on the floor were live electrical wires of 220 volts next to buckets filled with water. Should the audience choose they had but to dump the buckets over and electrocute Burden. A recorded voice taunted the audience but Burden survived to prove his point. Ostensibly, the piece created a new relationship between the audience and the art. Another creation which Burden called "Shoot" (1971) he had himself shot in the arm at close range by a friend.

Eleanor Antine's experiments were concerned with exploring her body through multimedia means. In "Carving: A Traditional Sculpture" (1972) Antine used the idea of traditional Greek marble sculptures as a basis for her work. As she explains it "they would keep carving around and around the figure and whole layers would come off at a time until finally the aesthetic ideal had been reached." In this particular work she had herself photographed naked from several different angles for 36 days while she dieted. In viewing the photographs the audience could see her attempt to achieve her self described aesthetic ideal. It was possible for the audience to see Antine playing a game with time.

Whoopi Goldberg is included as a performance artist by Stern and Henderson because of her one woman shows in which she challenged society through monologue. Her most famous work is called "The Spook Show." While Goldberg is much more verbal centered than Antine or Burden, she is never-the-less more the performance art artist than the actress. In one performance of "The Spook Show" when she did not get the response from the audience that she wanted she stopped the performance and instructed them as to the proper response. Goldberg's characters are iconoclastic and instructional. From Fontane, the drug-addicted Ph.D. from Columbia to "Little Girl with the Blond Hair," Goldberg breaks traditional stereotypes and attacks racism.

The late Spalding Gray has been called an "Autoperformer" by critics. A student of Richard Schechner," Gray was a performance art artist in that he uses himself as text. His longest and most complex as well as most famous Autoperformance was "Swimming to Cambodia." Gray performed a small role in the film "The Killing Fields" and used his experience as a scenario. Ostensibly autobiographical, Gray weaves a kind of fiction that tends to give the piece a different kind of aesthetic as he explores Gray the person, Gray, the author as well as Gray the performer. These early innovators can be said to have defined the genre.

Certainly performance studies gives us an interesting way of looking at the performance phenomenon. Whatever the label, the rich heritage of interpretation, reader's theatre and theatre itself is ever present. Further, underlying the performance aesthetic whatever it may be, is a determination to communicate. In the final analysis performance is a very exciting way to produce art.

 

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