Showing and telling—How directors combine embodied demonstrations and verbal descriptions to instruct in theater rehearsals

Abstract

In theater as a bodily-spatial art form, much emphasis is placed on the way actors perform movements in space as an important multimodal resource for creating meaning. In theater rehearsals, movements are created in series of directors' instructions and actors' implementations. Directors' instructions on how to conduct a movement often draw on embodied demonstrations in contrast to verbal descriptions. For instance, to instruct an actress to act like a school girl a director can use depictive (he demonstrates the expected behavior) instead of descriptive (“can you act like a school girl”) means. Drawing on a corpus of 400 h video recordings of rehearsal interactions in three German professional theater productions, from which we selected 265 cases, we examine ways to instruct movement-based actions in theater rehearsals. Using a multimodally extended ethnomethodological-conversation analytical approach, we focus on the multimodal details that constitute demonstrations as complex action types. For the present article, we have chosen nine instances, through which we aim to illuminate (1) The difference in using embodied demonstrations versus verbal descriptions to instruct; (2) typical ways directors combine verbal descriptions with embodied demonstrations in their instructions. First, we ask what constitutes a demonstration and what it achieves in comparison to verbal descriptions. Using a typical case, we illustrate four characteristics of demonstrations that all of the cases we studied share. Demonstrations (1) are embedded in instructional activities; (2) show and do not tell; (3) are responded to by emulating what was shown; (4) are rhetorically shaped to convey the instruction's focus. However, none of the 265 demonstrations we investigated were produced without verbal descriptions. In a second step we therefore ask in which typical ways verbal descriptions accompany embodied demonstrations when directors instruct actors how to play a scene. We distinguish four basic types. Verbal descriptions can be used (1) to build the demonstration itself; (2) to delineate a demonstration verbally within an instruction; (3) to indicate positive (what should be done) and negative (what should be avoided) versions of demonstrations; (4) as an independent means to describe the instruction's focus in addition to the demonstration. Our study contributes to research on how embodied resources are used to create meaning and how they combine with and depend on verbal resources.

Overcoming Blanking: Verbal and Visual Features of Prompting in Theatre Rehearsals

“…The present study builds on existing research on social interaction in theatre settings (Hazel, 2018) in that here, too, theatre is understood as a workplace setting rather than a performance venue. While other studies have looked at the embodied means by which a script is brought to life (Lefebvre, 2018), or how directors use embodied demonstrations and verbal descriptions to instruct actors (Schmidt & Deppermann, 2023b), the novelty of this study is that it focuses on a function that has received little to no attention in current research: the prompter. The prompter is interesting because s/he primarily has a coordinating function within the work environment.…”

Bodies to suit the music : Depictions in opera rehearsals

“…I particularly wish to contribute to the emerging understanding of how performing arts come into being in interaction over time (cf. Deppermann & Schmidt, 2021b;Hazel, 2015Hazel, , 2017Hazel, , 2018Lefebvre, 2018;Lefebvre & Mondada, 2023;Norrthon, 2019Norrthon, , 2021Norrthon & Schmidt, 2023;Schmidt, 2018;Schmidt & Deppermann, 2022. I do this by focusing specifically on how depictions are a tool in the creative process and how they figure in relation to language (see also Schmidt & Deppermann, 2022).…”

“…Deppermann & Schmidt, 2021b;Hazel, 2015Hazel, , 2017Hazel, , 2018Lefebvre, 2018;Lefebvre & Mondada, 2023;Norrthon, 2019Norrthon, , 2021Norrthon & Schmidt, 2023;Schmidt, 2018;Schmidt & Deppermann, 2022. I do this by focusing specifically on how depictions are a tool in the creative process and how they figure in relation to language (see also Schmidt & Deppermann, 2022). By examining the relationship between descriptions and depictions in interaction when artistic non-verbal communication, namely an opera production, is created, I wish to contribute to a more general discussion on the role of language vs. the role of the body, both when creating performing arts, and in human sense-making in general (cf.…”

“…Proximal proposals are sometimes entirely embodied (Stevanovic & Monzoni, 2016;Stivers & Sidnell, 2016). Further, visuospatial resources may be used to make proposals in the absence of verbal descriptions, as evidenced by research on theatre rehearsals (Schmidt & Deppermann, 2022.…”

“…Previous interactional literature has targeted how such artistic correlates of multimodal gestalts are created in theatre rehearsals (Hazel, 2018;Lefebvre, 2018;Lefebvre & Mondada, 2023;Norrthon, 2019;Norrthon & Schmidt, 2023;Nissi & Stevanovic, 2021;Schmidt, 2018Schmidt & Deppermann, 2022. Although scenic opera rehearsals bear many similarities with theatre rehearsals, a couple of features distinguishes the two.…”