Review

Reviewed Work(s): Drama, Metadrama, and Perception by Richard Hornby

Review by: Gay Gibson Cima
Source: Theatre Journal , Dec., 1987, Vol. 39, No. 4, Distancing Brecht (Dec., 1987), pp.
545-546
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3208277

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 545 / BOOK REVIEW

The for
effectively organized and entirely appropriate Master Builder; Pinter, Betrayal. Hornby's
undergraduate use. description of his 1978 University of Calgary pro-
duction of Woyzeck is especially intriguing, because
PETER A. DAVIS
of the tension between his desire to find a "produc-
Tufts University
tion interpretation ... in the script" and his realiza-
tion that Woyzeck radically challenges that goal.

Rooted in the work of Ferdinand Saussure,

Roland Barthes, and Northrop Frye, Hornby's book
DRAMA, METADRAMA, AND PERCEP-
will appeal most to those who want to explore the
TION. By Richard Hornby. Lewisburg: relationship between reality and drama, and be-
Bucknell University Press, 1986; pp. 189.
tween presence and absence, in structuralist terms.
$26.50.
For example, Hornby likens the relationship be-
tween the individual script and the overall literary
Richard Hornby's most recent book begins with
system to the relationship between parole and
the premise that all drama is in some sense meta-
langue in structuralist linguistics. He does not limit
dramatic: plays relate to life indirectly, reflecting
himself to Saussure, however. In the chapter on the
themselves and other plays, as well as "other systems
play within the play, he usefully cites Russian for-
of literature, nonliterary performance, other art
malists such as Viktor Shklovsky (as well as Bertolt
forms (both high and low), and culture generally"Brecht) in his discussion of the function of art as
(17). Hornby identifies the intricate interrelationship
ostraneniye. The next chapter, on "the ceremony
between cultural and dramatic codes as the "drama /
within the play," employs a Suzanne Langer-based
culture complex," and explains that we interpret life
semiological approach, and the examination of role
through this complex, rather than directly through
in chapter 4 usefully connects role playing to the
individual, "mimetic" plays. In a clear and well-
identity theories of Erik Erikson, Heinz Lichtenstein,
reasoned introductory chapter, he argues that there
and R. D. Laing. Only very fleetingly does Hornby
is no such thing as true "realism," and that our
take advantage of the opportunity to use decon-
reliance, especially in the United States, on the
structionist (not to mention reader response) theory
binary opposition of realistic/unrealistic drama has
to inform his analysis. This may seem a curious
severely limited our ability to understand the nature
choice to some readers, since the book is about
of the theatrical event. In his view, the most serious
disruption and audience perception.
plays in the Western tradition attack the reigning
drama/ culture complex through their metadramatic One of the major achievements of the book is its
strategies, and it is through an analysis of thesecatalogic comprehensiveness in identifying the
strategies that we can most effectively explore thevarious types of metadrama. Hornby divides each
relationship between drama and reality. aforementioned type into further sub-headings, ex-
plaining, for example, that the play within the play
In Part I he presents a useful overview of these
may be inset or framed. He then offers continental
strategies as they operate in Western drama, discuss-
as well as British examples of each type, and an in-
ing them in successive chapters: the play within the
teresting exploration of the causes of the demise of
play, the ceremony within the play, role playing
"the play within the play" after the Renaissance and
within the role, literary and real-life reference, self-
its reemergence (in the frame mode) in German ex-
reference. Drawing on Lionel Abel's pioneering
pressionism and French surrealism.
Metadrama, Hornby grounds Part I in structuralist
theory. In Part II he examines "the sixth type of Hornby acknowledges that the drama/culture
metadrama," the play which is about the nature ofcomplex changes with the times, but he also argues
perception itself. Although Hornby's assertion thatthat certain types of metadramatic strategies func-
the importance of perception as a theme in drama tion in predictable ways no matter what: for exam-
has been "little noted" is debatable, and perhaps the ple, he identifies the ceremony within the play as a
book devotes a disproportionate amount of space to"device for exploring social concerns." But in Jean
this generalized type of metadrama, Part II offers in-Genet's "quasi-ceremonies," who can say that the
teresting reading. Each chapter in this section of the concern is solely, or even primarily a/social?
book is devoted to an analysis of a drama which is
centrally about the nature of perception: Sophocles, In his analysis of the dramatic illusion as a form of
Oedipus the King; Shakespeare, As You Like It;primary process thought - the theoretical basis of
Buchner, Woyzeck; Strindberg, The Father; Ibsen, Part II-Hornby argues that nonlogical, intuitive

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 546 / TL December 1987

thinking is "the essential part of the creation or the Identifying four tropes developed in the eigh-
response to any artistic work" (108). Drama gives us teenth century- metaphor, metonym, synecdoche,
pleasure through a unified, coherent vision. Perhaps and irony - Foster links them with the choreography
it is this view of the theatre which leads him to at- of Hay, George Balanchine, Martha Graham, and
tack many avant garde directors and playwrights. Merce Cunningham, respectively. The artifice of this
grid yields oversimplifications as well as insights.
Drama, Metadrama, and Perception offers an im-
Foster does best when she avoids the general and ap-
pressive and comprehensive exploration of the
plies theory to specific dance examples. Although
various types of metadramatic devices, connecting
she wants these tropes to be a nonhierarchical and
them, in a convincing and highly readable analysis,
pluralistic way of organizing history, she clearly
to the structuralist theories Hornby has researched
values Cunningham's work over Graham's. This is
in earlier studies.
no loss to Graham, however, who benefits from
Foster's brilliant deconstruction of her expressionist
GAY GIBSON CIMA
approach.
Georgetown University
Foster goes easy on Hay, Balanchine, and Cunn-
ingham. After her treatise on denaturalizing the
body, she inconsistently describes Hay's dances with
READING DANCING: BODIES AND SUB-
verbiage loaded with "natural" overtones: grace/
JECTS IN CONTEMPORARY dignity /extraordinary presence/ethereal rapport.
AMERICAN DANCE. By Susan Leigh But her own theoretical models press the reader to
Foster. Berkeley: University of California
demand: grace or dignity as defined by who7; what
Press, 1986; pp. 307. $25.00. kind of presence with what boundaries of awareness
in the body?; ethereal rapport according to which
It is a pleasure to read a book about dancing assumptions
that about spirituality and the body? Balan-
credits choreographers, scholars, and literary
chine's dances are described as "masterpieces" of
theorists together in the writer's traditional list of and proportion - ideal forms. Again Foster
design
thank-you's. Susan Leigh Foster's Reading Dancing:does not pursue the unspoken question: whose idea
Bodies and Subjects in Contemporary American of human perfection is this and what are its political
Dance bridges the long-entrenched gap between ramifications?
the Throughout the book she described
materially experienced body and theoretical under-
gender differences in ballet and Baroque dance yet
pinnings that construct the body as a system of explores the implicit power relations of these
never
meaning. Foster bases her book on the assumption differences. She states in a footnote that her style of
that the body is a culturally formed "subject" rather
analysis is compatible with socio-political theories
than a natural or fixed entity. She focuses on such
how as feminism but her actual gender analysis
dance communicates its message, how the body is her theory sound thin.
makes
shaped by a physical discourse of technique, choreo-
graphic procedure, performance approach, and au- The problem in Foster's book is that she too often
dience involvement. The book is studded with relegates
pho- advanced theoretical thinking to the foot-
tographs that pointedly illustrate theoretical notes where she explains that she applies literary and
remarks. A generous bibliography encompasses cultural criticism to dance - specifically Barthes and
both dance and literary criticism. Foucault. Following Foucault, she thinks of her book
as an "archeology of dance," considering historical
Foster, herself a choreographer, writes from periods
the distinct strata of civilization, comparing and
point of view of someone who both composes contrasting
and not only Hay with the Renaissance but
watches dances. This is radical in a field that isolates
Balanchine with the classical period, Graham with
theory from practice. Her project is to construct athe Romantic-Expressionist, and Cunningham with
history and theory for contemporary dance com-twentieth-century "objectivist" sensibilities.
position. She takes risks-"artistic license" - with
history. She sees the dance canon as an assemblage Foster grounds her dance theory on a fascinating
of different choreographic projects; she appreciates coincidence between Barthes's and Cunningham's
Renaissance dance because its forms are similar to approaches to representation. Both, she claims,
those developed by contemporary choreographer disengage the natural relation between signified and
Deborah Hay; she is interested less in precise signifier
his- and replace it with an arbitrary one. Foster
labels Cunningham's dance objectivist in that he
torical accounts than in a "composite or generalized
focuses on pure physicality divorced from specific
overview" that fleshes out her theories of representa-
tion in dance. referential meanings. Yet within her own theory of

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