Theatre Semiotics [antikvár]

Foreword to the Spanish Edition Fernando de Toro's book is one of the most important developments in the area of the systematization of the main themes and problems that a semiotics of theatre approach creates. This is one of the first complete studies of theatre semiotics (and it is the first to be written originally in Spanish). This study fills a void and is long overdue. It quite impressively succeeds in meeting its own dual objective: it not only contributes to theatre semiotics but also, and more to the point, to theory of Latin American theatre. For obvious reasons, I will refer only briefly to the first aspect but not before pointing out how the author's geographical and cultural roots cannot help but facilitate his proposed theoretical project. His background contributes particularly well to the clarification of the social, political and historical dimensions of the artistic phenomenon. This is the most advanced and progressive component of Latin American culture and acts as the perfect antidote to the current scientific, formalist, in a word, ahistorical tendency in semiology. Two of the main and most meritorious themes of this study are the chapters on reception and the basis for a history of theatre. The second important and very large theme is the extensive, balanced, original, exhaustive and appropriate update of pertinent problems (the specific nature of theatre discourse, the relationship between the dramatic text and the performance text, the semiosis process, the problem of the referent in theatre and the actantial analysis of character). Throughout this thorough analysis of current criticism (an incredibly vast and dissimilar group of texts, as the bibliography at the end of the book will testify) and thanks to the correct and 'creative' use of the adapted theoretical model (from Ubersfeld, Pavis, Hansen, Elam, etc.), de Toro successfully outiines current problems in a consistentiy clear manner. Furthermore, Fernando de Toro also sheds light on previously unexplored points and proposes some interesting theoretical summaries: for example, his outiine of intertextuality in theatre (which is an enrichment and synthesis of current typology) or his definition of the theoretical object as an intermediate between the dramatic text and the performance text that he calls the stage text and then the 'virtual performance text'. This is the result of the director's elaboration of the dramatic text which generally produces a material object similar to the Regiebuch or the script. In my opinion.