ABSTRACT
This volume is a successor to Chapple and Kattenbelt (eds.), Intermediality in Theatre and Performance (2006) in that it has grown, as noted, out of the IFTR group’s work. Two aspects follow from this context, which might now helpfully be framed in Elleström’s recently constructed “Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations” (2010, 11). 2 The first is an emphasis on the principles of composition of live theatre as a “strongly multimodal media” (Elleström 2010, 38) phenomenon with, in Kattenbelt’s formulation, a distinctive capacity to be a hypermedium which “stages” other mediums (see 2006, 37). 3 The second is an established acknowledgement that the relations between different media in a multitracked text are ultimately a matter of perception and interpretation, namely Boenisch’s sense that intermediality is an “effect of performance … created in the perception of observers” (2006, 113) because the relational aspect between thing and sign is a matter of experiencing. Ellerström nevertheless contends that, “it is crucial to discriminate theoretically between the material and the perception of the material if one wants to understand how media can be related to each other” (2010, 13). In sustaining a concern with both principles of textual composition and distinctive experiences that new modes of theatre and performance might generate, this volume acknowledges the usefulness of the theoretical distinction between them whilst recognising their praxical proximity.
