The Actor Researcher as a Sign and a Sign Carrier

Abstract

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), the Swiss Linguist looks at the sign as the outcome of the relationship between the signifier and the signified. This relationship is seen as arbitrary, since it does not necessarily relate to the physical actual reality; it rather suffices itself with the reference to the mental image that is sent by the signifier. This is what Saussure confirms in his speech about the sign: "We do not connect things to a certain name, but to the audio concept of them, and the latter is not a physical sound, each thing is pure physics; it is the psychological impact of the sound; the mental impression made on our senses."What the signifier transmits of audio, signed, or gestured images, it is received by the recipient as a signified; it is then transformed into mental images to create meaning. This is the mission of the creative actor who interests the spectators not only emotionally, but thematically to provoke them. That is, provoke their imagination and thinking and alert their mental abilities, to include the spectators inside the signs system that is transmitted to them through significant signs carried to them by the actor. The signifier can possibly be an uttered sound, a sign, or a gesture, since the actor have the charming ability to deliver this signifier and express the signified through suggestion because of his skills. By linguistic ability, we are not referring to the actor's uttering the literary texts, but the actor's sensual ability to express through his body, culture, consciousness, his deep reading for the text, and the interaction with his dramatic partner on the stage, whether this partner is another actor, lighting, décor, customs, music, or props. This will not be fulfilled unless the actor is a creative researcher on the stage and conscious to what he says and does, because the utterances, language, is the first step towards delivering the signifier what he embody through gesture and active body