 The most influential attempt of this kind rested on a popular set of theories about language owing much of their provenance to the work of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1916 [1977]) and to certain literary theories that Saussurean linguistics informed as well. This attempt was made in the form of semiotic theories of theater (Ubersfeld 1976 [1999]; Eco 1977; Elam 1980; Pavis 1982; Fischer-Lichte 1983 [1992]). These theater or performance theories involved applications from language, conceived as a sign-system, to the theatrical event, which was conceived of as either a single complicated sign-system or as a complicated conjunction of various sign-systems. And these theories continue to be influential in reflections on theater. But it soon became evident that the materiality of the actor’s body marked a limit of what can be analyzed in terms of semiotics, in terms of signs and meanings. For in some performances bodies seem not to mean something but to be something, namely, themselves (States 1985; Sofer 2003). Treating material things, such as props, as “signs” not only makes it difficult to say what is and what is not a material object, it also renders inexplicable the pleasure that spectators find in props and theater sets qua material objects. However, the materiality of the performer’s body and of props, while challenging to semiotic analysis, is not, at least according to some, a fact that presents an insuperable barrier to a more sophisticated semiotic theory. A standard (although partial) argument here is that, since anything can function as a prop for anything else in a theatrical performance, then anything just does act as a “sign” when it appears in a performance (Elam 1980).