In an “interrogation” whose subtitle is “an exercise in self-exorcism,” Patrice Pavis queries: “What is the use of semiology? Is it not just one more technology to be added to the already very advanced technologization of stage arts and theatre studies, a pedantic and tortuous method of weighing obvious facts that every man [sic] of the theatre knows instinctively?” (Languages 195). If these words are pronounced with tongue-in-cheek, Marco de Marinis, in a dialogue with Pavis, touches on the inherent contradiction of the theatre experience that makes it resist semiological analysis:

Roland Barthes, in describing theatre as “a kind of cybernetic machine” and theatricality as “a density of signs,” identifies theatre's ability to draw on a number of sign systems that do not function in a linear mode but operate simultaneously in time and space (“Literature” 261). There have been a number of attempts at classifying such theatrical sign-systems: e.g. Tadeusz Kowzan's pioneering taxonomy of thirteen sign-systems and their possible auditive and visual configurations (73); Martin Esslin's linear extension of that classification to twenty-two (to include cinema and television) but still without space to account for the spectator's role in the production of meaning (Field 103–5); and the 1985 Pavis “Questionnaire,” which not only lists theatrical sign-systems, but also guides the commentator from identification to an analysis of signification by virtue of the sub-questioning-discussion points offered in the categories.

Drama critics and theorists have increasingly noted the limitations of semiotics as applied to performance.