Silent game

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Silent play describes passages in the drama that are performed without spoken text. The silent game is often prescribed in the form of stage directions , sometimes it is accompanied by music. In contrast to pantomime , silent play does not have to be an art in its own right, but belongs to normal acting practice.

history

Dumbshow occurs frequently in the English Renaissance drama, the best-known passage is the play in the theater, Shakespeare's Hamlet (1603) in the III. Performs act in front of his parents. In the 18th century, the silent game is associated with the idea that the innermost core is expressed in it undisguised, in contrast to the spoken text (for example in Johann Jakob Engel : Ideas for a facial expression 1786). Therefore, there are central silent passages in numerous dramas of the time, such as in the final tableau at the end of Act IV of Kotzebue's Hatred and Remorse (1789).

A larger silent role , as was common in 19th century melodrama , such as Yelva in Yelva, the Russian Orphan , Victorin in The Orphan and the Murderer or Fenella in The Mute of Portici, gives special attention to silent play. The idea that this game is undisguised in contrast to the dialogues is also important here. In naturalism towards the end of the century, for example with Johannes Schlaf , the realistically executed silent game was propagated.

Due to vaudeville and silent film as proletarian forms of entertainment at the beginning of the 20th century, silent play on the stage lost a lot of its prestige, and the more modern pantomime also tried to distance itself from it. The absurd theater around 1950 and similar currents with which the spoken language was questioned, however, enhanced the silent play. Famous examples can be found in Beckett's Waiting for Godot (1953), further significant passages from a literary silent game can be found in Eugène Ionesco ( The Rhinos , 1960) or Thomas Bernhard ( The Power of Habit , 1974). At the end of the 20th century, since the drama text no longer has absolute priority in the theater (what is called “ performative turn ” or something similar), silent play again takes on special importance for this other reason - because scripts are generally less verbose as drama texts, silent play is more naturally integrated into the film than into the theater.

literature