Unpresence: Headlong’s 1984 and the screen on stage
Abstract
The article focuses on Headlong’s dramatisation of 1984 (2013) and on the role played in it by a stage-wide screen as a significant example of what relevant and specific functions video can have in a rather traditional theatre production. After an overview of the relation between the screen on stage and the novel’s ‘telescreens’, a semiological analysis of the mediated images shows that the effect of 1984’s screen is both unique, in that it identifies the audience with the Thought Police, and exemplary of video’s ability to present theatre with the otherness of ‘a presence that is not there’.
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References
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