One of the greatest advantages of ethnographic observation lies in the opportunity to ascertain the evolutionary and collective relation between artists and the symbolic and material objects they produce. Through the observation of rehearsals in three acting schools in Paris and Berlin (cnsad, cours Florent and HfS “Ernst Busch”), it was possible to arrive at a more accurate view of the “polymorphic and plurifunctional presence of language” as the central element in the process of the practical appropriation of the theatre script than interviews could have allowed. Linguistic objectivation and the engagement in an action thus do not appear to be two opposing “logics”. They are rather to be seen as two dialectic phases that, in turn, define the instruments and produce results for the artistic process.