Acting (Re) Considered: A theoretical and practical guide (Phillip B. Zarrilli,

5. "Just be Your self": Logocentrism and difference in performance theory

(Philip Auslander, 1994)

• P.53 Logocetrism is "the orientation of philosophy toward an order of meaning - thought, truth, reason, logic, the Word - conceived as existing in itself, as foundation" (Curler 1982:92)
• Derrida, who denies the existence of such a foundation, points out that every mental or phenomenal event is a product of difference, is defined by its relation to what it is not rather than by its essence. If nothing can legitimately claim to possess a stable, autonomous identity, then there is nothing which can be invested with the authority of logos.
• Derrida demonstrates that meaning is generated by a productive non-presence he calls differance, defined as "the playing movement that 'produces,' but does not precede, differences"(1982:11)
• P.54 As semiotists who have studied acting have discovered, the performing actor is an opaque medium, an intertext, not a simple text to be read for "content." We arrive at our perception of a performance by implicitly comparing it with other interpretations of the same role (or with the way we feel the role should be played), or with our recollection of the same actor in other roles, or with our knowledge of the stylistic school to which the actor belongs, the actor's private life, etc. If our perception of the actor's work derives from this play of differences, how can we claim to be able to read the presence of the actor's self back through that performance?
• Theorists as diverse as Stanislavsky, Brecht and Grotowski all implicitly designate the actor's self as the logos of performance; all assume that the actor's self precedes and grounds her performance and that it is the presence of this self in performance that provides the audience with access to human truths. Their theories are aptly summarized by a sentence of Joseph Chaikin: "Acting is a demonstration of self with or without a disguise" (1980:2)

• Stanislavsky defines good acting as acting based on the performer's own experience and emotions. He privileges the actor's self over his or her role by stating on the one hand that actor and character should fuse completely in performance and, on the other, that an actor can never play anymore but herself, since she "can't expel [her] soul from [her] body and hire another to replace it".
• Stanislavsky divides the self into consciousness and the subconscious, identifying the latter as the source of truth, the seat of "emotions that are dearer to [the actor] than his everyday feeling".
• P.55 Stanislavsky posits the presence of self in performance as the highest good, but his psychology is based on the idea that true self-presence is impossible.


• Brecht overturns Stanislavsky's central priority: he privileges the conscious mind over the subconscious....
• P.56 Brecht wants the actor to "Demonstrate [her] knowledge......Of human relations, of human behavior, of human capacities" by not allowing herself to be "raped" by the character but by keeping the character at some distance form herself and showing it to the audience.
• Brecht privileges the actor over the character, but for a different reason that Stanislavsky: in order that the actor's commentary on the character be meaningful to the audience, the actor must be present as herself as well as in character and her own persona must carry greater authority than the role.
• P.57 ... the ethos behind their [Brecht and Stanislavsky] respective theories of acting is the same: performance can be truthful only if it invokes the presence of the actor's self.

• He [Grotowski] is concerned with the relation of the "mask of lies" we wear in everyday life to the "secret motor" behind the mask....Grotowski privileges the self over the role in that the role is primarily a tool for self-exposure.
• Grotowski suggests that a physical language could surmount the mediation of different by becoming transparent and making psychic (心靈的) impulses directly visible to an audience. He grounds self-presence in physical presence, a seemingly irrefutably originary presence.

• p.60 Perhaps the actor can deconstruct her own work only to a limited extent within that work and it is the audience which makes the fundamental decision of whether to search for presence and determined meaning in a performance or to revel in the play of ungrounded significations. Deconstruction, fundamentally, is the perception of differance.

Zarrilli, Phillip B.. Acting Re(Considered): A Theoretical and Practical Guide. New York: Routledge, 2002.