To Think Inside The Box

Every way of defining scenography

When I set out to write about scenography I immediately imagine a potential conversation between Artistic Directors of local Israeli theatres. They must sigh deeply as they observe, in sorrow, the young, mischievous, bohemian generation, constantly coining new words and phrases that don’t even have a proper translation into Hebrew.

‘Poor buggers’, they say to each other, ‘what else do these Beatniks want from us? ‘What’s wrong with “set” and “set designer”?’
‘Besides - we use projectors too.

‘Oh well’, they sigh, it’s tolerable as long as they don’t receive any funding for it’.

And so scenography joins a linage of subversive words such as ‘performance’, ‘site specific work’, and ‘visual theatre’.

One must admit though, that scenography is a bewildering word. It can be understood in more ways than one and used in various contexts. It may be that some of the qualities of the term are still consolidating – that it moves back and forth between one definition to another, that it is slightly behind the practice itself, and is malleable according to what is needed in response to current trends. So instead of an ‘absolute’ dictionary definition, instead of creating a ‘beginners guide’- I came up with a cross-genre list where all the answers are correct, and permission is given to leave the term ’scenography’ evasive and slippery.

One possible way to understand scenography is as the meeting point between stage design and the directorial work. It’s a holistic perception of the theatrical mechanism on all its ingredients: space, light, object, sound. According to this perception – every stage element has its own field of expression and ways in which it affects the work. It’s a meeting point that has been used all throughout the 20th century, and one that sustains a dialogue between the space and the action. The complex light designs created by Adolphe Appia for Wagner’s operas, Vsevolod Meyerhold’s constructivist spaces, Oskar Schleimer’s abstract ballet – all begged to construct a theatre machine that travels along the axis of images and forms. Such a perception of scenography wished to redefine existing hierarchies in occidental theatre:

Structural hierarchies – a director working with a set designer as oppose to collaboration between a director and a scenographer.

Organizational hierarchies – a space that is decided upon in the initial stages of the rehearsal process vs. a space that is formulated throughout the direction process.

Artistic hierarchies – the play and the text as the main elements - that need to be served by the space, vs. visual and physical theatre.

The breakdown of these hierarchies paved the way for a new generation of makers, directors-designers (or ‘Scenographe – Auteur’ as coined by Lescure), who transformed the stage into a world of spectacles and visual images. Robert Wilson, Achim Freyer, Heiner Goebles, sculpting the stage as a plasticized, dynamic world. A world that operates as a total physical experience. An alchemical world where material and image contain their own drama and narrative.

This process of dismantling and re-assembling the theatrical mechanism on all its ingredients is supported by the central and ever-present hierarchy between the stage and the audience. Even in Appia’s early writings from the turn of the century a desire to enable a new relationship with the audience is already articulated. In his essay “Actor, space, light, painting” Appia discusses the event where “we (the audience) desire to be inside the body we are looking at” . It’s a reference point that will later on be taken and developed by Bertold Brecht and Antonin Artaud, each in his own way. Restructuring the performance space begs to reawaken the audience’s dormant ‘social instinct’ and render it active during the theatrical act itself. In Ariane Mnouchkine’s works the entire theatre building is transformed from production to production. The entrance, the café, the auditorium, the stage and even the seats are all integral to the theatrical experience. The transformation begs us to reposition ourselves in relation to the work we’re viewing and allow it to affect us in its own unique way.

 

Scenography - or the tension between theatre and visual arts

While modernism saw theatre as the as the sworn enemy of artistic values such as precision, concreteness, functionality post-modernity arrived and readopted drama. Fiction and narrative became legitimate terms again and the role of the artistic space was again redefined. On one hand we have the canonic white cube, as Catherine Wood writes in her essay Art Meets Theatre: “A pure and timeless space whose aim is to present and frame human presence as a grotesque invasion” (free translation). On the other hand stands the black box – a place of mystery and ritual. A place of a “hypnotic atmosphere where a potential for magic and transformation always exists” (free translation). Scenography is the work that is situated in the tension between the two. It’s “the space which exists between two perceptions of representation, a clash between the white cube’s four walls and the theatre’s fourth wall which expands representational boundaries” (free translation). Instead of neutrality we speak of atmosphere, instead of uniformity we can create sub-plots, and instead of precision we are invited to play. The scenographic installation doesn’t wish to establish a pure, idealistic viewpoint for the audience, but rather sees the audience’s present as a vital component in the work.

In Mike Nelson’s works, behind the gallery doors, a hidden world is revealed. We realize we had invaded someone’s home. Each further step exposes the installation to be a meticulously made set, a fictitious space, almost cinematic, where the viewers follow the various clues left by a mysterious tenant.

The invasion into the gallery space can also be attributed to Christoph Buchel, Simply Botiful. The gallery goers arrive at Hauser & Wirth Gallery, where they are asked to sign a document stating the gallery takes no responsibility on what happens during their visit. It’s a grandiose installation made of endless corridors, abandoned milk bars and run-down room all together creating an abandoned migrants’ town. The audience crawls in dug-out burrows, discovers and sneaks into secret spaces, operates and invades a ghost town.

Such an invasion of theatrical values into a gallery operates the other way around as well. The white cube points the theatre in the direction of operating as a temporary installation, which encourages a stage performance of a different kind. Anna Viebrock, Christopher marthaler’s permanent scenographer, creates hyper-realist spaces, detailed down to the last neon. Spacious offices, staircases, train stations. It’s a stage which offers a space to play for the performance and the director, a space where one can just be and think, sit aside or read a book, a space where no major event or main actor take centre stage. A stage that is an environment, a space that is a place.

 

Scenography – the performative space

Essentially, scenography is a science that examines how a space behaves, and how we treat it. It’s an architectural science, which examines the interference of construction, material and form, in a given space, the way they frame the empty space as well as the full one. Due to its theatrical nature, the interference is ephemeral and transient, bound in a specific time and place that gives up functionality in favor of the speculative act.

In his works, Gordon Matte Clarck carves holes and entrances in existing spaces and etches out hidden functions within them. In buildings where he excavates, new spaces are exposed, revealing hidden and unexpected perspectives of the foundations. It’s an abstract scenographic intervention that exposes the hidden narrative in the urban space, a performative action that exposes contemporary archeology.

The tension between structure and performance also characterizes the works of artists such as Richard Wilson, Rachel Whiteread and Olafur Eliasson, as well as in the architectural research of artists such as Zaha Hadid, Frederick Fisher, and the architectural duo Diller & Scofidio, who also create many works for the stage. In the Blur Building pavilion they designed for the 2000 Expo in Switzerland, the enigmatic construction is revealed to be a pumping machine that suckles water from the lake, turning the entire venue into a cloud of vapor. The construction disappears in the mist and the pavilion turns into an atmosphere, a transient architecture, hundred percent natural whilst being a complete fiction. In the catalogue they write, “since men can no longer claim to be the centre of a controllable universe, the position of the audience continues to be a topic of critical discourse” (free translation).

Between all the various ways in which scenography can be understood, it may be that here we can find the most concise definition, meaning – scenography is a spatial work which is created within the context of critical discourse. It’s another term in the ongoing search after form and ideology, so unapparent in Israeli theatre.