Yuri Lotman and the Semiotics of Theatre

Abstract

The semiotician Yuri Lotman wrote decisive contributions to the field of semiotics of literature. However, throughout the 1970s he expanded his universe of interests beyond the literary text contributing to the study of cinema, fine arts and even Russian nobility’s code of behavior. In this article, I introduce Lotman’s writings in the field of theatre semiotics to demonstrate how the Russian semiotician brings important considerations to a field until then underexplored within semiotic studies. His reflections on the nature of the theatrical space, on the relations between text and code, on the role of theatre semiotics, and on the theatrical ensemble enlarged the path opened by the Linguistic Circle of Prague and anticipate discussions that only recently started to be explored by the semiotics of theatre.