Czytanie dramatu
Reading Drama

Author(s): Beata Popczyk-Szczęsna
Subject(s): Theatre, Dance, Performing Arts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego
Summary/Abstract: The article is a reflection on the currently popular practices of reading drama: public presentations of plays, which are artistic events on the verge of a linguistic performance and a theatrical play. The remarks presented in this text arise from observations of various forms of reading drama. The author points at its significant, processual dimension—it is simultaneously a performance of readers and an event-encounter of a group of people which aims at negotiating meanings of the text and exchanging experiences. The reading of a play initiates the double activity of the speech acts preserved in the text (in the communication schemes of reader—reader and reader—listener); therefore, they may be identified as performance. The simultaneity of the experience of reading and the experience of encounter leads to the creation of a mental and emotional interpretative community of the recipients. Reading drama is one of many examples of various performative practices related to the functioning of the contemporary theatre. These are events symptomatic for our culture, since contemporarily it is the creative process that plays a significant role and not merely the finished artefact. The public reading of a play is an occasion to participate in the spontaneous creation of meanings during the unplanned interpersonal interactions.

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