Of Paint and Plays

The three elements the talesman must work

Sarcey and the Stage

Francisque Sarcey was the drama critique in Paris for 40 years, from 1859–1899. I have been transcribing his Essai d’une Esthétique de Théâtre from his originally-published newspaper columns which appeared in 1876, and from Brander Matthews’s abridged translation which appeared in book form in 1916.

In preparing to discuss the theater, Sarcey makes analogy with painting:

Au lieu qu’on cherche toujours à la façon des théologiens, les lois d’un art dans la contemplations de je ne sais quel beau idéal, qui serait une émanation de la divinité, ou dans l’étude de ce qu’on appelle l’âme humaine, nous nous plaçons sur le terrain des faits sensibles.

Le peintre prend un morceau de bois ou un lambeau de toile, pour y représenter la vie humaine. C’est une surface plane, n’est-ce pas? Voilà un fait sûr, indéniable. Nous partons de là.

Eh bien, regardons de même pour l’art dramatique, s’il n’y a pas un fait aussi certain que peut l’être celui-là dans la peinture et qui soit également pour lui une condition absolue d’existence et de développement. Si nous le trouvons, nous en pourrons tirer logiquement des conséquences de cet œil; les autres son changeantes, puisqu’elles ne sont commandées que par des accidents de l’organe.

—And here is how Brander Matthews translates it (he takes the third paragraph from a later part of the treatise):

“The first question to be settled then is that of the conditions, material or moral, in which resides necessarily and inevitably the art of which we speak. As it is impossible to separate the art from these conditions, as it lives only thru and by them, as it is not a subtle inspiration wafted from heaven or emanating from the depths of the human mind, but something wholly concrete and definite which, like all living things, cannot exist except in the environment to which it is adapted, we are moved naturally to analize this environment to which the art has accommodated its life, from which it has sprung, so to speak, by a series of successive developments, and of which it will always retain the impress. The painter takes a bit of wood or a scrap of canvas on which to represent life. It is a plane surface, is it not? Here is a fact, sure, undeniable. We will set out from there.

“In the same way let us inquire concerning dramatic art if there is not also a fact which corresponds to this fact in painting and which is in like manner the indispensable condition of its existence and development. If we find this fact we shall be able to draw logically some conclusions as incontestable as the fact itself; and we shall discover afterwards the proof of these conclusions in the history of the art.

“Now, in regard to the theater there is one fact which cannot fail to strike the least attentive; it is the presence of an audience. The word play carries with it the idea of an audience. We cannot conceive of a play without an audience.”

I have some additions to Sarcey’s analogy which I hope will shed more light on it.

Paint

First let’s go back to painting. The board or canvas is not enough; the painter also has need of pigments and some means of applying the pigments to the board or canvas — brush, knife, stylus, thumb, sponge, or something else. A third element comes into play, which is the eye of the viewer. Seurat used the science of optics to construct his great pointillist masterpieces (so Sarcey was also a bit naïve when he said that the chemist had nothing to teach the gardener), so that the individual dots of pigment would be mixed within the eye of the viewer to make an impression of color more vibrant than if the eye merely received passively a flat expanse of one hue.

So in painting, the painter must deal with the canvas, the pigments and his tools, with the aim of pleasing the eye of his viewers.

Plays

In a like way, the playwright deals with the stage (or some such area set apart for the actors to exist), an area given over by imagination to the world of the play, separate from the ‘real’ world in which the audience sits. This is like the painter’s the board or canvas. He also has his actors, the props and backdrops of the stage, and the costumes the actors wear. These are like the pigments and tools the painter uses to apply the pigments to the canvas. And finally there is the eyes and ears of his audience, in which, let us say, the sights and sounds of what happens onstage are blended into a pattern the audience understands as a tale unfolding before them.

So in plays, the playwright must deal with the stage and the actors, with the aim of pleasing the eyes and ears of his audience.

(Note that the ‘playwright’ is rarely the sole talesman of a play, and that the whole company also partake of talesmanship, in the way the scenes are painted and designed, the props arranged, the costumes designed and fitted, and the actors move and speak their lines. All this is usually now under the command of the stage director or manager. I hope in simplifying all the company to the single ‘playwright’ I do not fall into the same mistake I find in Sarcey.)

Consequences

The result of this emendation of Sarcey’s fait aussi certain is to expand our understanding of what the playwright (and the painter) do in his task.

Because the play will be performed, the playwright must take care to write his lines with an eye to how they will sound when spoken aloud by the actors, within the imagined space of the stage. Because the play will be performed, the playwright must be aware of how the actors will move about the stage when they are reacting to other actors’ lines, and how the actors will be dressed, and what the scenery will look like, and what props are available, and so on. All these items — scenery, props, furniture, costumes, actors — the playwright must arrange and move through his tale always with the audience in mind, and how all this will look and sound to the audience.

Words

In the same way, the talesman who is a writer, and uses only words to be read to tell his tale, must be aware of these three general elements of his art: first the page upon which the words will be displayed, and its layout, its texture, its colors, and any other decorations or parts of the physical design; second the words which the writer proposes to print upon this page; third how those words on those pages will affect the reader through his senses and the way he apprehends the tale.

(Composed on keyboard Monday, April 21, 2008)