Oral interpretation on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Oral Interpretation is a
Oral Interpretation is a drama
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television.Elam (1980, 98). Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has b ...
tic art, also commonly called "interpretive reading" and "dramatic reading", though these terms are more conservative and restrictive. In certain applications, oral interpretation is also a theater
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The perfor ...
art – as in reader's theater, in which a work of literature is performed with manuscripts in hand or, more traditionally, using stools and music stands; and especially chamber theater
Chamber theater is a method of adapting literary works to the stage using a maximal amount of the work's original text and often minimal and suggestive settings.
In chamber theater, narration is included in the performed text and the narrator mig ...
, which dispenses with manuscripts and uses what may be described as essentialist costuming and stage lighting, and suggestive scenery.
The term is defined by Paul Campbel
Paul may refer to:
* Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name)
*Paul (surname), a list of people
People
Christianity
*Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chri ...
l (''The Speaking and Speakers of Literature''; Dickinson, 1967) as the "oralization of literature", and by Charlotte Lee and Timothy Gura (''Oral Interpretation''; Houghton-Mifflin, 1997) as "the art of communicating to an audience a work of literary art in its intellectual, emotional, and esthetic entirety". Historically essential to Charlotte Lee's definition of oral interpretation is the fact that the performer is "reading from a manuscript". This perspective, once the majority view, has long since become the minority opinion.
Voice and movement technique is ''opsis'' ("spectacle") while oral interpretation is, conceptually, ''melopoiia'' ("music technique").
Because oral interpretation is an essential dramatic element in all performance art, all actors, singers, storytellers, etc., are ''interpreters'' – but not all interpreters are necessarily actors, or singers, or storytellers, and so on. When, for example, the writer David Sedaris
David Raymond Sedaris (; born December 26, 1956) is an American humorist, comedian, author, and radio contributor. He was publicly recognized in 1992 when National Public Radio broadcast his essay " Santaland Diaries.” He published his first c ...
reads one of his stories on stage, or when Leonard Cohen
Leonard Norman Cohen (September 21, 1934November 7, 2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet and novelist. His work explored religion, politics, isolation, depression, sexuality, loss, death, and romantic relationships. He was inducted in ...
performs one of his lyric poems, they are both engaged in the art of oral interpretation.
References
{{Reflist Storytelling Theatrical genres