Play-within-a-play and audience response theory: A comparative analysis of contagious dramas by Gatti, Stoppard, and Weiss

Agnes Sophie Bauer, Purdue University

Abstract

Using recent contributions in audience-response theory, my dissertation examines the phenomenon of theatrical "contagion" as determined by elements in the text of three post-modern European plays: The Marat/Sade (1964) by Peter Weiss, Chant public devant deux chaises electriques (1966) by Armand Gatti, and The Real Thing (1982) by Tom Stoppard, three works which use the well-known technique of the play-within-a-play. Chapter one defines the play-within-a-play device which is often confused with other dramatic techniques (such as the play-as-a-play, role-playing-within-the-play, or self-reflexive plays), and closely linked to other theatrical concepts (such as theatricalism, metatheater, and mise-en-abyme) as chapter two shows. Chapter three looks at the functions of the play-within-a-play: its historical functions, i.e., the reason why the play-within-a-play appears at certain times in history, and the immanent structural functions, which scholars have assigned to the device regardless of history. In chapter four, three historical examples are then examined: Thomas Kyd's Spanish Tragedy (c.1585-90), Pierre Corneille's L'Illusion Comique (1636), and Ludwig Tieck's Die Verkehrte Welt (1797), emphasizing the similarities in the engendered effects of the device which point to an awareness of the possible relationships between audience and stage. Chapter five then explores the theories pertaining to this relationship. Concern for the audience has always existed but attempts to establish a "relational theory" of the theater, a theory that would take into account the relationship between stage and audience--in Ross Chambers' words "contagion"--have only recently been made. Thus, performance theory, reader-response, and semiotics provide significant techniques and strategies to analyze by what means a performance constructs the reception by its audience. The dissertation essentially focuses on the manipulation of the spectator's attention as determined by two concepts: distance and focalization. Chapter six examines the three post-modern plays individually emphasizing their similarities as well as their differences: the effects of contagion emphasized by the play-within-a-play structures invite the spectators to experiment with their feelings and ideas, to understand that ideas need to be constantly challenged, destroyed, and rebuilt. Furthermore, they establish a reflection about audience-response thereby bringing together theater and theory, the place where one beholds and the way one beholds.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Pellissier, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Comparative literature|British and Irish literature|Romance literature|Theater

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