Theatre, Performance, and Semiotics Lecture Notes

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering theories of ritual, performance, performativity, semiotics, and historical performance studies from the lecture notes.

Ritual

Repeated actions with cultural or social meaning.

Play

Pretending and experimenting with different behaviors.

Second Reality

A temporary world created through performance.

Rites of Passage

Rituals that mark life changes.

Pre-liminal

The first stage of rites of passage, characterized by leaving your old identity.

Liminal

The second stage of rites of passage, characterized by being in between identities.

Post-Liminal

The final stage of rites of passage, characterized by entering a new identity.

Austin

Thinker who believes that words can perform actions.

Culler

Thinker who believes that context gives words performative power.

Schnechner

Thinker who believes performance can create real effects in imaginary situations.

Butler

Thinker who believes that repeated actions help create identity.

Diamond

Thinker who believes that performance connects with culture.

Constative

Words that describe something.

Performative

Words that DO something.

Misfire

When a performance fails because the proper conditions were not met.

Doing versus a Thing Done

The act of performing versus the completed performance.

Conjuring

Using words in an attempt to create an action or effect.

Mimesis

Representing or imitating an action.

Kinesis

Movement or action that produces an effect.

Theatrical Magic

Making imaginary events feel real.

Uncertainty

Making audiences question what is real and what is not.

Semiotics

The study of signs and meanings.

Sign

Something that communicates meaning.

Signifier

The physical form of a sign.

Signified

The meaning of a sign.

Referent

What the sign represents.

Interpretant

The meaning someone creates for a sign.

Iconic

A sign that looks like what it represents.

Indexical

A sign that directly points to something.

Symbolic

A sign that gets meaning through cultural agreement.

Mobility

The ability of signs to change meaning depending on context.

Polyfunctionality

The property that a single sign can have many meanings.

Codes

Shared rules for interpreting signs.

Three Energies in Theatre

Text, production, and performance that relate to signs.

Taylor Mac: 24 Decade History of Popular Music

A performance using music, drag, and audience participation to create a temporary second reality where the audience helps create the performance instead of just watching it.

The Couple in the Cage

A performance where Fusco and Gomez pretend to be members of a fictional indigenous group in a cage, exposing racism, stereotypes, and colonial attitudes.

T.D Rice

An individual who helped popularize blackface minstrelsy.

White-Authored Blackness

White creators' depiction of blackness.

Black-Authored Blackness

Black creators expressing their own identities.