Striking a Pose: Performance Cues in Four French Hagiographic Mystery Plays ('la Vie Et Passion de Monseigneur Sainct Didier, Martir Et Evesque de Lengres,' 'Le Mystere de Saint Bernard de Menthon,' 'Le Mystere de Saint Crespin Et Saint Crespinien' and 'la Vie de Monseigneur Sainct Laurens Par Personnaiges') (Report‪)‬

While they approach medieval theater from different perspectives, modern theorists and theater historians nevertheless agree that theatrical texts are unlike literary texts in a variety of ways. Their most obvious difference lies in the fact that theatrical texts presuppose a supra-textual performance that may include gestures, decors, timing, costumes, props, intonation, simulated action, noise, and music. Players, musicians, painters, and staging supervisors are among those who amend the structural and thematic intention of the written words by providing any number of conventional, or improvised, creative acts. As theoretician Anne Ubersfeld has argued, this intentional relationship between a dramatic text's verbal (textual) and nonverbal (performance) elements is unique to theatrical works. (1) From the historical perspective, Graham Runnalls's examination of French mystery play culture in the late medieval period confirms that a performance intention preceded in most cases the writing of an appropriate text; therefore, that intention would have been reflected in the resulting document. (2) Accordingly, the written composition of any work intended for performance contains evidence of this unique relationship between a spoken narrative and its performance mandate. As a result of this internal relationship between spoken text and implied performance, plays are not simply characterized by written dialogue that carries a narrative forward, but by spoken words that rely on physical and vocal acts to amplify, or perhaps even complete, their narrative intention. If a dramatic character proclaims that "[t]here is the church I seek," he or she must follow through on those words by moving physically through space toward the appropriate decor or prop. If he or she fails to do so, the theatrical intention fails to achieve its communicative goal. In other words, even if the narrative itself has been satisfied by such an announcement, the theatrical intention requires further interpretation. Theater's genesis as an art form, as Mercedes Travieso Ganaza reiterates, resides in the fact that it is "toujours liee, concretement et virtuellement, des configurations de mise en scene" (always linked, physically and purposefully, to the contours of performance). (3)