Outsourcing: A Relevance-Theoretic Account of the Interpretation of Theatrical Texts

Abstract

Plays are interpretive events. However, it is not clear what ought to constitute the basis for the interpretation: the play text, or performance. I contend that performance provides critical evidence in ways that the playwright foresaw and intended. However, the teaching of drama rarely (or at least inadequately) incorporates performance elements; instead, students are taught to treat plays identically with non-dramatic texts such as novels. I believe this oversight profoundly impoverishes the student experience of theatre. In this chapter, I want to lay the basis for a principled argument for treating performance as an essential part of the interpretation of dramatic texts, using the framework of relevance theory. To support my arguments I will draw on the problems raised by two plays — Strindberg’s Miss Julie and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House — and demonstrate that interpretive difficulties raised by reading are best (perhaps only) resolved through decisions made in and communicated by performance.

The only thing that all forms of theatre have in common is the need for an audience. This is more than a truism: in the theatre the audience completes the steps of creation … In the theatre this is modified by the fact that the last lonely look at the completed object is not possible — until an audience is present the object is not complete … I think any director will agree that his own view of his own work changes completely when he is sitting surrounded by people.

(Brook 1990: 142)

The drama is not for the library, but for the theatre; and it is not for the joy of the little group of dilettantes, but for the stimulation of the public as a whole.

(Matthews 1908: 223)