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Jindřich Honzl's seminal essay on the "Dynamics of the Sign in the Theater" from 1940 serves as the point of departure for discussing the borderline between the building (or site) where the performance event takes place and its mimetic dimensions, through which the scenography or scenery as well as the acting and all the other elements of a particular production create a specific fictional...
Erin Hurley and Sara Warner in their insightful study "Affect/Performance/Politics" (2012) remind us that humanities and social sciences today experience a new sweep of theoretical inquiry, focusing on studying affect as a leading mechanism of our cognition and communication, as well as making and receiving art products. This paper takes this theoretical proposition further. I argue that...
The author examines selected scholarly studies available in English translation, and the ways in which they form or deform the understanding of the Prague Linguistic Circle for the English speaking reader. The contribution aims to show how the semantic shifts alter some theoretical concepts of the Prague School theorists. The semantic shifts mentioned here are indicative of both individual concretization...
The article deals with Jiří Veltruský's ideas about the relation between the literary drama and the theatre. Veltruský speaks in favour of a reunion between both art kinds, whose theoretical and institutional separation began in the late nineteenth century. Arguing that the theatre suffers intellectually and aesthetically from the separation Veltruský refers to Jan Mukařovský's studies on the dialogue...
Jan Mukařovský (1891−1975) has played a prominent and unique role in the history of Czech Structuralism. He is the author of numerous theoretical and overview works on theatre and dramatic art, but only a part of it is widely known and commented on. This gives rise to the impression that Mukařovský dealt with theatre in bursts only, in fact producing only the occasional text. However, the opposite...
The rise of Structuralism and semiotics in Western thought during the 1970s and 1980s led most theatre theorists to misinterpret the Prague School contribution as a mere transfer from Russian Formalism. They consequently disregarded those aspects of several Czech theorists' work which pointed to the dynamism, changeability and flexibility of the system of theatre signs, thus going beyond the taxonomic...
In his essay "Sémiotika sémiotika Otakara Zicha" (Otakar Zich's Semiotics, 1981), Ivo Osolsobě seeks to illuminate one of Zich's most troubling and mysterious terms: 'významová představa' (semantic image). For Osolsobě, it "is a complex, liminal, and interdisciplinary phenomenon about which a substantial body of studies has been written, though a majority of which only hardly touched...
This paper presents the partial results of the ongoing research of scenographic theory. It discusses the institutionalized support of the Structuralist approach to scenography that culminated in Czechoslovakia in the first half of the 1970s under the auspices of the Institute of Scenography. Its head, Miroslav Kouřil, repeatedly claimed allegiance to Structuralist thought. Particular attention is...
The terms 'spontaneity' and 'convention' obtain different meanings in Honzl's texts devoted to issues of acting. The dynamic in the interpretation of these terms is influenced by Honzl's artistic development and also by political changes in the period of 1920s–1940s. The paper is based on the research of Honzl's personal archive that includes variations of texts, proof-read versions and notes. These...
This paper explores the contributions of the Prague School scholars to the theory of intermediality. Although the theory of intermediality did not yet exist in the 1930s, scholars of the Prague School presented a number of ideas that today would certainly be understood within the scope of the theory. They perceived what we now call intermediality as part of a comparative exploration of arts, and aimed...
The biopic has been traditionally regarded as a minor, audience-limiting genre. As a consequence of this, producers, directors and actors have tended to avoid this term when referring to their work. This paper discusses how, despite the allegedly minor status of this genre, in recent years a fair amount of Academy Awards ('Oscars') has been awarded to actors and actresses engaged in biopic performances...
The essay analyses the central ontological gesture of the Prague School (or Prague Linguistic Circle) on the examples of Jindřich Honzl's seminal text on the theatrical sign and Roman Jakobson's later essay on translation. This ontological gesture is contextualised historically and politically with the PLC's activities in its early decades, and proposes a radical and perhaps provocative revision of...
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