The Semiotics of Performances - by Paul Bouissac (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Drawing on semiotic developments of the past five decades, this book introduces students to the semiotic analysis of live performances and provides them with a clear method for untangling the multimodal complexity of performance from the spectator's point of view. It explores a broad range of performance types from across different cultures, including music, opera, ballet, theatre, circus, mime, improvisation, and immersion, and is accompanied by a companion website featuring recorded extracts from live performances"--

Book Synopsis

What is a live performance? And why is semiotics the best approach for the analysis and interpretation of the performing arts?

Drawing on semiotic developments of the past five decades, this book introduces students to the semiotic analysis of live performances and provides them with a clear method for untangling the multimodal complexity of performance from the spectator's point of view.

Presenting live performances as two-way communication processes, social events, and cognitive and affective experiences, each chapter of this highly accessible book begins first with an overview of the basics. This is followed by a case study, and moves through to a more advanced discussion, accompanied by suggestions for exercises and further reading. Diagrams and flow charts help to clearly illustrate the conceptual tools used in the analytical process, and a companion website contains recorded extracts from the live performances discussed in the book, which students can use to put their knowledge into practice. The book explores a broad range of performance types from across different cultures, including music, opera, ballet, theatre, circus, mime, improvisation, and immersion. It offers a guide for understanding the way in which a performance is produced, from an initial idea through to the final presentation in front of a live audience, and provides the reader with the tools and understanding they need for a successful semiotic analysis of live performance.

Review Quotes

A balanced, clear introduction, with semiotic, linguistic, sociology and communication perspectives, and close practical analysis of performances and performer comments, in a wide range of types (drama, dance, circus, music). This is an invaluable education text, and wide ranging tool for performers, theatre students and scholars, and general arts readers.
Geoffrey Sykes, Editor Southern Semiotic Review, Australia

A remarkable textbook. It provides a rigorous introduction to performance analysis in a discursive and unassuming style, covering a wide range of issues and genres, with an exceptional sense of the pedagogical reach of the idea of performance as a communication process and as a social experience.
Domenico Pietropaolo, Professor Emeritus, University of Toronto, Canada

Paul Bouissac uses semiotics to explore a wide range of performances -- the circus, the arts, everyday life -- in Western and non-Western cultures. He integrates key theories with his own experiences in a scholarly yet happily readable book.
Richard Schechner, Professor and Editor of The Drama Review, NYU, USA

About the Author

Paul Bouissac is Professor Emeritus at Victoria College, University of Toronto, Canada. He is a world renowned figure in semiotics and a pioneer of circus studies. He runs the Semioticon, an Open Semiotics Resource Center, which has a global readership.