To complain, then, about excessive visual effects in modern productions of Shakespeare's plays is not altogether justified. Perhaps if Shakespeare had had access to hydraulic platforms and computerized lighting systems, he would have exploited those resources to the full. Nonetheless there are grounds for suspecting that special effects in stage productions today represent an effort to make theater competitive with films. Marvin Carlson has addressed the first of these problems in Theatre Semiotics . Presences in the theater, as in everyday life, are not totally organized in and of themselves.
Organization is partly in the eye of the beholder.
However carefully designed a production may be in guiding the focus of spectators, an individual within that group is still able to pick and choose what she will attend to at a given moment and how she will piece together what she has noticed into a significant whole. Film and video, by contrast, are much more controlling media. Putting Pavis's principles to practical use was one of the primary exercises brought to the seminar by Lois Potter. After seeing Michael Kahn's production of King John at the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, participants were asked to produce a one-paragraph review that took a single short section of the play and analyzed it, using a notational system of the reviewer's own devising. C ontributons to this website by seminar participants illustrate a range of the framing devices mentioned by Pavis.