playing with speech devices – the utopia of an understanding

Abstract

As Michel Foucault argues, in recent years the elements of theatre have been increasingly analysed as devices. The concept of device points to the analysis of power relations in the form of cultural “power-knowledge” and the possibilities of its (aesthetic) subversion.

The critical potential of modes of speech on stage and their discursive exposition lie in the fact that they contain theatrical devices concerning the performance speech and the discourse of the “characters”, and they relate to them in a concrete way; in other words, by playing. These hybrid modes of speech play with the language and therefore set out the utopia of an understanding. They relate to the physical part of the text material, to a “music of meaning”, to a gesture of a mode of speech that is not at the service of a representation of characters or their individual expression. In this framework, it is worth highlighting the game with the devices, i.e., an ongoing willingness to play with the theatre elements as a playful use of oral gestures.