ACADEMIA Letters
The Prompt Script as Codex: Defining Rehearsal
Marginalia as Rhetorical Practice
Max Pinsky, University of Central Florida
In the beginning, the disciplines of rhetoric and theatre were so closely aligned that they were
formalized by the same philosopher: Aristotle. However, the modern schools within these
two disciplines are institutionally divided. The former is relegated to its use in the fields of
composition and oratory; the latter is confined within the performing arts. There have been
attempts to re-bridge the gap between these two fields, such as the dramatic conceptualizations
of social communications from Erving Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
in 1959 and Kenneth Burke’s “Dramatism” in Grammar of Motives in 1969. While also being
quite dated, these schemes do little to crossover the practical techniques of the theatrical field
into the theoretical concepts of the rhetoric and compositional fields. This inquiry begins at
such a crossover.
Out of the entirety of the theatrical production process, there is only a singular textual
source that is shared across the production team (director, stage management, technicians, etc.)
and cast (performers, dancers, musicians, etc.): the script. Whether in a bound book jacket or
a three-ring binder, every person involved in staging a work of theatre is connected through
this one printed text, which in turn governs what will be presented on the stage. Moreover,
the particular version of the script that this study is concerned with is the prompt script. The
prompt script is the paper copy used by the director and stage management to plan, make
notes, and alter the performance during rehearsal, prior to its debut before an audience. A
typical practice includes handwritten notes on acting, blocking (planned stage movement),
technical cues (sound, lighting, designs, scenery, property, etc.), and any other alterations
deemed necessary in real-time rehearsal of an individual production of the scripted work.
It is in this way that the prompt script serves as a reference for the culture that founded the
aforementioned production, and this functionality proves that the prompt script is a codex.
Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Max Pinsky, [Link]@[Link]
Citation: Pinsky, M. (2021). The Prompt Script as Codex: Defining Rehearsal Marginalia as Rhetorical
Practice. Academia Letters, Article 4089. [Link]
1
Therefore, it is the hope of this project to enforce to both the disciplines of theatre and rhetoric
and composition that the prompt script is a rhetorically-active genre, part-way between both
fields of study.
Generally, the genre of a codex employs a combination of text and images on a bound series
of paper pages. Benjamin Harnett in “The Diffusion of the Codex” notes that codices gained
popularity for their ability to easily find information and visual formulae (202). A codex
provides visual demonstration to the text of the manuscript; this is furthered by Damián Baca
in his analysis of Latin American codices, purporting that “[b]y knowing the basic conventions
and the meanings of the symbols and recognizing their arrangement, readers interpreted the
pictographic messages” (569).
Nevertheless, Baca moves to differentiate between the European conception of the codex
and the Mesoamerican. He describes:
“Notably, this writing practice fuses into a single symbolic account diverse ele-
ments that, for [European] minds, are separate and hierarchical concepts of an-
notation and illustration” (569).
Again, similar to the modern division between the theatre and rhetoric and composition
disciplines, the European mindset has difficulty accepting that the production of a codex is
not simply writing or illustrating. This may largely be attributed to the European reliance
on alphabetic symbolism for linguistic meaning-making. On the other hand, Mesoamerican
cultures relied more heavily on pictography as the method of communication and idea dis-
semination.
Nevertheless, the genre of the codex remained the same, despite the variety of linguis-
tic cultures that employed it. Regarding the reading of codices, Gary Frost reports that it
“…required two separate scans: an oral sounding out of the continuous string of syllables that
revealed words which, in turn, enabled an oral recitation of the text” (69). The first read fa-
miliarizes the reader with the features of the page and necessitates the second read that allows
the reader to adhere the images and text together into a full narrative fit for cognition.
Now, returning to the genre of the prompt script, the same features apply to this kind of
rehearsal text. It very obviously contains text, and the director and stage management add in
the images with pen, pencil, and even crayon. Their practice of creating visual additions to the
text also brings into consideration the discussion of marginalia, defined by Rabia Aslam as
“making ownership indicators [and] inscriptions” (2); however, the combination of the printed
word and the added imagery do, in fact, require the audience to follow Frost’s process outline
of how the mind is able to read a codex. Without the words, there is no context for the images
Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Max Pinsky, [Link]@[Link]
Citation: Pinsky, M. (2021). The Prompt Script as Codex: Defining Rehearsal Marginalia as Rhetorical
Practice. Academia Letters, Article 4089. [Link]
2
and marginalia; without the images, there is no particular production culture to which the text
can be assigned.
Marginalia, the handwritten and drawn commentary within the script, are indicative of
the performative relationship process between the actor and the director. In these inscribed
additions, the reader is provided a moment in which the printed text was recited by a person
onstage, surrounded by and moving through a setting, and how that recitation was understood
by an audience of one director and their stage management. “[T]he marginalia,” as Samuel G.
Kamara notes, is “reflective of the process involved in reaching that understanding” (21). Part
of the process of rehearsal marginalia is that the recorded notes are forward-looking for future
performances; the marginalia of rehearsal is always intended for something coming next.
To remove the marginalia from the prompt script would be to displace its purpose for ex-
istence. This correlates to the proposition of Jean Baudrillard in “Simulacra and Simulation:”
“The real is produced from miniaturized units, from matrices, memory banks and
command models—and with these it can be reproduced an indefinite number of
times. It no longer has to be rational, since it is no longer measured against some
ideal or negative instance. It is nothing more than operational. In fact, since it is
no longer enveloped by an imaginary, it is no longer real at all. It is a hyperreal:
the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace
without atmosphere” (167).
The markings and additions that are unique to the particular director of a particular pro-
duction of the text at a particular time bind the text to a specific period of human history, no
matter how modern or ancient. Costume sketches within one prompt script are unique to that
production; they will not be serviceable to any other theatre’s production, even if it shares
the same designer(s). By stripping away this binding, the text of the script is a free-floating,
amorphous piece of literature without any ownership by creators (aside from an author) or
audiences. A prompt script needs marginalia to contain its potential for a given production.
The act of reading a prompt script is a process of associating meaning between the printed
text and its inscribed imagery—the same process as reading a codex. Harnett qualifies that
the imagery included in a codex are only those necessary for the audience to establish a con-
nection to its purpose, specifically “…every practical detail is employed for maximum impact
from a minimum of expression” (210). Baudrillard furthers this by explaining that “the transi-
tion from signs which dissimulate something to signs which dissimulate that there is nothing,
marks the decisive turning point” (169). Being bound to the limitations of a specific time and
place of a given production also binds the marginalia of the prompt script to the resources
Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Max Pinsky, [Link]@[Link]
Citation: Pinsky, M. (2021). The Prompt Script as Codex: Defining Rehearsal Marginalia as Rhetorical
Practice. Academia Letters, Article 4089. [Link]
3
available in said production. If they were to elude the given means, the ability of the prompt
script to make meaning would be jeopardized.
The dependency that a prompt script shares with its production to define space, directorial
and stage management authors to introduce marginalia, and the reading audience to interpret
meaning from the printed and hand-drafted inscriptions enforce that this “codectical” genre is
rhetorical. When read, the prompt script provides a glimpse into the processes that produced
the instance of one performance run of a dramatic text, as conceived by the artists involved
in developing it. Just as one might approach reading the Codex Alimentarius, the reader
must draw associations between the printed text and marginalia in order to stimulate meaning-
making within the confines of the production at hand. Perhaps now with prompt script codices
in tow, the fields of theatre and rhetoric and composition are not so disparate after all.
Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Max Pinsky, [Link]@[Link]
Citation: Pinsky, M. (2021). The Prompt Script as Codex: Defining Rehearsal Marginalia as Rhetorical
Practice. Academia Letters, Article 4089. [Link]
4
References
Aslam, Rabia. “Attitude and Practices towards Marginalia: An Exploratory Study.” Library
Philosophy and Practice (e-journal). Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln. 2018
Baca, Damián. “The Chicano Codex: Writing against Historical and Pedagogical Coloniza-
tion.” College English, Vol. 71, No. 6, Special Topic: Writing, Rhetoric, and Latinidad.
National Council of Teachers of English. July 2009, pp. 564-583.
Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulation.” Chapter from Jean Baudrillard, Selected
Writings, ed. Mark Poster. Stanford University Press. 1988, pp. 166-184.
Frost, Gary. “Adoption of the Codex Book: Parable of a New Reading Mode.” The Book
and Paper Group Annual, Vol. 17. American Institute for Conservation of Historic and
Artistic Works. 1998, pp. 67-74.
Harnett, Benjamin. “The Diffusion of the Codex.” Classical Antiquity, Vol. 36, No. 2.
University of California Press. October 2017, pp. 183-235.
Kamara, Steven G. “Exploring Marginalia: The Intersection between Reading and Cogni-
tion.” Grassroots Writing Research Journal, Issue 4.2. Illinois State University. Spring
2014, pp. 19-25.
Academia Letters, November 2021 ©2021 by the author — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0
Corresponding Author: Max Pinsky, [Link]@[Link]
Citation: Pinsky, M. (2021). The Prompt Script as Codex: Defining Rehearsal Marginalia as Rhetorical
Practice. Academia Letters, Article 4089. [Link]