A semiotics of performance text : how the non-verbal languages communicate in the theatre

This project is based on a semiotic methodology using a poststructural perspective. Its aim is to reinterpret semiotics in a way which will show its usefulness to the. theatre practitioner - the actor, director, designer, dramaturge, critic and theatre student. For the purpose of example, the main focus has been on the work of the actor. It uses a process of readings of two productions (from video) of the Caryl Churchill play Top Girls to exemplify a method of examining how meanings are made . in the theatre. For methodology it draws on information from the work of the Prague structuralists to the current theatre semioticians, but is particularly indebted to the poststructural approach of Roland Barthes. As it uses a process of 'readings' rather than searching for a grammar of non-verbal languages, it, therefore, adopts a postrational viewpoint