The Routledge Companion to Scenography

Arnold Aronson, Arnold Aronson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317422266
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre

The Routledge Companion to Scenography is the largest and most comprehensive collection of original essays to survey the historical, conceptual, critical and theoretical aspects of this increasingly important aspect of theatre and performance studies.

Editor and leading scholar Arnold Aronson brings together a uniquely valuable anthology of texts especially commissioned from across the discipline of theatre and performance studies.

Establishing a stable terminology for a deeply contested term for the first time, this volume looks at scenography as the totality of all the visual, spatial and sensory aspects of performance. Tracing a line from Aristotle's Poetics down to Brecht and Artaud and into contemporary immersive theatre and digital media, The Routledge Companion to Scenography is a vital addition to every theatre library.

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PART I

Scenographic elements

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1

STAGE AND AUDIENCE

Constructing relations and opportunities

Beth Weinstein

You head to a place designed for performance in order to attend an event. After crossing a threshold, you enter the space of the event – an amphitheatre in a landscape, the horseshoe-shaped balconies of an opera house, a black box. The architecture of this place conditions relations between you, as a member of an audience, and the action, in relation to others in the audience, and in relation to itself as spatial construct. This space constructs, contains, and controls relations between the audience and action, between audience member and audience member, and it may also suggest alternative inhabitations, and afford the shifting of these relations over time.

How does this theatre architecture construct relations through the siting of the audience in space in relation to action and to other audience members? How does this theatre architecture, and its construction of relations, condition the seeing and sensing of the performed event? How do the designed spatial relations of the theatre prescribe, suggest, or perhaps inadvertently offer alternative staging opportunities and, through that, contribute to the experience of the event?

As an architect interested in the performance in and of space, I come to understand performances of a given space through the analytic drawing out, literally and conceptually, of the spatial and relational, or formal, structure of the architecture and its link to an architectural type and the performance-event type with which it is affiliated. As a designer, rather than historian, I am interested in potentials latent within space, and therefore the purpose of my analysis is to identify and understand the conventions of relations between space and event in order to go beyond that to uncover potentials for other spatial performances that the theatre architecture affords.

What follows is a discussion of stage and audience space, first through the lens of theatre architecture and the conventions that are associated with dominant types, and second through alternative propositions to the conventions of stage–audience relations through both unbuilt speculative works and built works. The chapter concludes with several examples in which conventions of stage, auditorium, or the relation between them, were critically re-interpreted through designs for theatre buildings or the contribution of the architecture to particular performances.¹ As such this chapter is concerned with how the architecture of stage and auditorium contributes in a leading or supporting role to the event. It is concerned with scenographic designing that consciously works with and pushes up against the conventions of theatre architecture types. It is concerned with taking advantage of what a work of theatre architecture has to offer to augmenting consciousness of the performance with the aim of creating a truly eventful spatial experience.

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In architectural terms, buildings may be categorized and discussed through the framework of program – the uses and activities intended to occur there. For instance, we might discuss performing arts buildings in terms of programs such as opera houses, play houses, chamber music halls, and so on. As a counterpoint to program one may examine works of architecture according to type described as “a group of objects characterized by the same formal structure . . . It is neither a spatial diagram nor the average of a serial list.” (Moneo 1978, 23).

Figure 1.1 “Space Relationships,” after Bowman. Above, left to right: (a) proscenium, (b) central, (c) peripheral. Below: (d) thrust and (e) open. (Drawings: Beth Weinstein.)

Within the programmatic subcategory of theatre we commonly group these architectural objects according to the qualities of stage or stage–audience relations, such as arena, proscenium or thrust, or by the absence of a structured relationship within a spatial container as found in black box spaces. In discussing theatre architecture, many authors of theatre histories intertwine specific performance genres (programs) with their affiliated formal structures (types), such as associating Shakespearian drama with a thrust stage (particularly in a circular courtyard) (see Brewster and Shafer 2011; Mitchley and Spalding 1982). While this approach is useful for identifying conventional links of performance type to architectural type, it may obscure other performances latent within spatial relations. Another model for discussing theatre architecture is through conceptual frameworks such as the cave (for projection and illusion) and cosmic circle (participatory ritual) (Wiles 2003).² Still others focus in on the details of space that are of pragmatic concern to scenographers, such as viewing distance and intimacy,³ while others focus attention on ambiance or the symbolism of theatre décor. At a level more diagrammatic than architectural type as defined above, Ned Bowman, in his article “The Ideal Theatre: Emerging Tendencies in Its Architecture” (Bowman 1964), homed in on the topic of “Space Relationships” – proscenium, central, peripheral, thrust and open – captured in a diagram redrawn here (Figure 1.1). We may gain a more critical perspective on constructed-relations by adopting theatre-neutral language such as split, surrounding, surrounded, projecting, and interspersed.

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Conventions

How do these space-relationships control, contain and construct the event and the audience experience? While the theatre, the theatron as the spectator area was called in ancient Greece, is literally a viewing place, the space and what it contains is not necessarily limited to a singular sense (vision) perceiving a singular action (on a stage behind a frame) within a narrow perceptual field. The stage–audience relationship can be shaped and inhabited so that it is focused or it can be a multi-sensory experience. It may construct focused attention or facilitate distraction; it may offer comfortable relaxation or oblige energetic engagement.

Each theatre architecture type carries with it assumed conventions about the site for the action, scenographic contribution to the performance, and the place of the audience; as well as the audience members’ sensory and spatial awareness of the action, other audience members and the building itself. By unpacking the conventional and specific relationships through case studies we can speculate about the audience experience – whether audience members experience the work as a distant image; as visual environment, or through an embodied, multi-sensory experience; as a static and isolated body, a dynamic or mobile body, or as a body within a collective; or as an observer or a participant with agency.

To start we must first analyze the relationship of stage to audience. These generally fall into two categories – those in which the audience and performers share an undivided volume of space and those in which performers and audience occupy a space cleft, by the proscenium arch, into performatively and architectonically separate spaces. All conventionally contain a single stage, either split off from the audience, projecting into the audience (thrust) or surrounded by the audience (arena). A second level of relationships that we must consider is the three-dimensional organization of the audience in the house – in plan (horizontal) and in section (vertical). One should ask how the scene will be seen and sensed. Is the audience clustered in one place as a singular body? Or are they split or distributed, either along the horizontal plane or vertically within the theatre volume? If in a single horizontal plane, is the arrangement of audience members in parallel rows facing forward, or in a fanning shape that allows sideward, oblique glances? If divided into balconies, or “circles,” are these parallel to the stage front or wrapping, affording views across to other audience members? Or is there no view anywhere but to one’s box-neighbors? How different is the view from balconies, which privileges the planimetric experience of movement patterns on the stage floor, to the view from the orchestra, privileging the elevation, or vertical surfaces, and perspective? Are balconies a continuous space or divided into private boxes? Do audience members sit on individual fixed seats or mobile chairs, shared benches, or in a recumbent position on pillows? Depending upon the spatial arrangement of the audience and audience member’s situation (seated, standing or reclining), the design may assist in focusing the audience attention on the action occurring on stage or may draw awareness towards other members of the audience seated across the house or stage, to the company within one’s box, the shared bench beneath one’s behind or the room that holds all of this in tension.

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I want to examine stage–audience relationships in a few examples of well-known theatre architecture types in order to reveal the conventional assumptions about space relationships that we might overlook out of familiarity, drawing from both first-hand, embodied experiences of performances in theatres as well as understanding of spaces through drawings. After addressing a number of dominant space-relationship types, I will consider experiments that took on or deviated from these conventional space relationships, exploiting plan, section, and volume in ways that yielded new arrangements of audiences in relationship to stage(s). I will consider the impact of theatre architecture space on the audience experience, how spaces construct intimate engagement or distanced overview, establish potentials for participation, and shape perception as image-dominated or multisensory and immersive. To convey the relations between performer-spaces and audience-spaces, the case studies are presented in parallel projection drawings, a form that communicates overall volumetric relations rather than an embodied view from a singular vantage point.

The first example is an amphitheatre in a landscape, in which the audience, along a single, sloped and fanning surface, nearly surrounds a stage.⁴ Some obvious points: this space is outdoors, unconditioned, and thus without the controlled environments to which we are generally accustomed today. The physical comfort of audience members is contingent on physical wellbeing and garments worn in relation to constantly changing weather conditions, and contingent on the cushioning (or lack thereof) beneath one’s seat. Wind and rain, daylight and darkness, heat of day and cool of night all inform who and what performs, detracts, and distracts attention, or adds to and augments the experience. We, the audience, are undeniably bodies exposed to elements of time and weather, tempo and tempus, while following the unfolding events on stage before us. Within this open space, the fan-shaped configuration of the audience space points us towards the orchestra and stage while keeping the collective audience within view. The scale of physical and visual gestures on stage aim to overcome the distance that may lie between us. The continuity between the environment as image and context for the action, and that which envelops us as audience members, assists in bridging between the time and space of theatre and life. Beyond the skene we perceive the connection to and distance between ourselves in this theatre space and the city where we conduct our lives. Does this bring to our attention this moment dis-placed from our habitual space of action? These exterior spaces, due to their siting and unconditioned environments, augment, rather than suppress, the embodied full-sensory attendance at the event. The shifting time and tempos call attention to fleetingness. The containing or continuity of space connects or severs this moment from the space-time around us.

Attending an event in the reconstructed Globe in London today situates the audience in a relationship that is slightly more focused and protected from natural elements than the amphitheatre. Standing in the yard one is exposed to rain and jostling by fellow theatre-goers. The circular courtyard and wrapping galleries in section set up an intimate and contained space, and unavoidable gazes across from one side of the yard to the other. The galleries, each one gently cantilevering out over the level below, bring audience members closer to the action on the raised stage that projects into the courtyard. The sense of proximity is furthered by actors crossing the yard, literally rubbing elbows with the audience, blurring the lines of division between the audience’s space and performers’ space. The heavy timber structure that contains the yard and holds the balconies flexes with the audience movement; wooden bleachers register and dissipate vibrations of laugher between those seated in the gallery. Though hierarchy of place in society is articulated through the distinction between yard and gallery, the collective experience is inscribed and contained in the space relationships of the architecture.

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How different are the space relationships in these exterior theatres from those of fully enclosed, interior theatres? The proscenium theatre, with its picture frame, supported the construction of illusory images of...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Routledge Companion to Scenography
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: Scenography or Design
• Part I Scenographic Elements
• Part Ii Scenographic Theory and Criticism
• Part Iii History and Practice
• Index