‘A Faithful Betrayal of Performance’: Notes on the Use of Video in Theatre

Abstract

Video recording has recently become an accessible, unobtrusive, and increasingly inexpensive way of making a permanent record of theatrical performances. This might seem to anticipate a revolution in theatre studies, once the theatre of the present has become the object of study by future generations: yet little thought has been given to the dramaturgical or the pedagogic implications of this new tool. How, for example, will the medium affect the message it transmits, by the way in which it makes permanent what is in essence ephemeral, and ‘fixes’ what is constantly changing? Marco de Marinis here offers some tentative thoughts about the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the audiovisual recording of theatre, intended not so much to present a definitive methodology as to clear the ground of some prevailing mistakes and misconceptions. His paper was first presented to a round-table at the Prato Centre for Theatre Semiotics in February 1983.

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