Authors Intentions

"Barthe is used as a justification for abusing the role of the writer and allowing the Director and actors to impose whatever half or fully baked ephemeral toss and meanings they want to upon an already sound text." The converse can be just as well argued: "Staying true to the authors intentions" is used as an excuse for taking artistic shortcuts and merely copying holus bolus previous productions! And how many times have decisions that were not made by the suthor but made the director of the original production been the basis for notes in the script and been interpreted as "what the author wrote". I know it happens all the time with musicals. I'll admit that the worst abuses of what Garreth is talking about have happened in the last thirty years in opera with the rise of regieoper (director's opera), and yet some of the greatest productions in that time have also been spawned in the same movement. Take for example the Chereau production of Wagner's Ring at Bayreuth in the 70s. He reset the whole opera cycle as an allegory of the industrial revolution and the abuse of the working classes. At first glimpse the reaction is - WHAT HAS THIS GOT TO DO WITH WAGNER'S RING!!! At further looking, it starts to dawn that he has taken as his starting point Shaw's brilliant essay on the Ring where he puts forward the view that that is what the ring is actually about. [Oh God, I'm going from Marxist to Freudian readings in two paragraphs] The other problem is - is what an author SAYS actually what he MEANS?! And are we to just go by what an author CONSCIOUSLY writes, or are we allowed to take into account what he may SUBCONSCIOUSLY mean. "A good playwright will never leave good actors and good directors in doubt as to how they should play the character." I'll counter that with: A GREAT playwright will ALWAYS leave good actors and good directors in doubt as to how they should play the character. Because it is through doubt and exploration of the MANY LAYERS OF MEANING that true great theatre happens. Example: Did anyone watch the Tony's last year? In particular Patti LuPone's unbelievable rendition of "Everything's Coming Up Roses" from Gypsy. The way she played that scene is RADICALLY DIFFERENT from either Roz Russell or Bette Midler in the filmed versions, and yet no less valid. The problem with your argument Garreth is that if you follow the line of it then it means ther is only ONE CORRECT way to perform any role or play, and any variation is in error. At which point it stops becoming theory and starts becoming dogma and we get to the point where people start criticising a production because "in the script the author clearly states that the sofa in act two is a two-seater not a three-seater!" Let me finally add that I am loving this thread. We've strayed from Dramatic Theory into what could be called Dramatic Philosophy. :-)