Scenography

From social network to urban intervention: On the scenographies of flash mobs and urban swarms

by Thea Brejzek

published in: International Journal of Performance Arts & Digital Media, Volume 6, Issue 1, 2010. DOI: 10.1386/padm.6.1.109_1

The urban scenographies created and inhabited by flash mobs are participatory, temporary and ephemeral. They are... more The urban scenographies created and inhabited by flash mobs are participatory, temporary and ephemeral. They are designed in online communities and social networks and it is argued here that the grammar of the social network provides the model for the flash mob's spatial figure and scenography. And while digital scenography is usually associated with an image-producing process, its spatial faculties become legible if virtual communities and netwroks are looked upon as social, scenographic spaces. (...) Where the consumerist city and its uphold depend on the perpetuation of eternal mobility, flash mob scenographies form an orchestrated spatial figure of resistance. Relating examples of mob practice (New York 2003, London 2007 and Munich 2009) to spatial and critical theory (de Certeau, Debord), it is argued that the desire to engage with the city forms the central motivation for flash mob activities.
however, whether self-organized or commerically highjacked, the artistic language and agency of relaized flash mobs so far appear largely repetitive, unimaginative and underdeveloped. This article can thus be read as a plaidoyer for contemporary performative, participatory and scenographic practices to ciritcally engage with the flash mob genre in a proposed shift towards urban commentary and critique.

Space and Truth. Monitoring Scenography 2

by Thea Brejzek

Thea Brejzek, Wolfgang Greisenegger, Lawrence Wallen (eds), Space and Truth/Raum und Wahrheit. Monitoring Scenography 2, Zurich: Zurich University of Art and Design (ZHdK), 2009.
A Series on Scenography by the Zurich University of the Arts.
ISBN9783906437279
264p

Illusion, simulation, immersion and appropriation are among the central design strategies in contemporary (mediated)... more Illusion, simulation, immersion and appropriation are among the central design strategies in contemporary (mediated) spatial practice in scenographies of the theatre, architecture and art - with complex relationships to truth/reality, representation and mimesis.

With contributions by:
Thea Brejzek, Greer Crawely, Konstanze Noack, Stephan Günzel, Emile Wennekes, Heiner Wilharm, Sebastian Claren, Franco La Cecla, Alexandra Karentzos, Karen Till, Aldona Cunningham, Pamela C. Scorzin, Alexandra Könz, Gerry Judah, Katrin Sigurdardottir, Lawrence Wallen, Michael Joyce, Peter matussek, Wolfgang Münch, Michel van Dartel, Giorgos Cheliotis.

Expanding Scenography. On the Authoring of Space

by Thea Brejzek

Thea Brejzek (ed), Expanding Scenography. On the Authoring of Space, Prague: The Theatre Institute 2011
ISBN 9788070082560

Scenography, discussed here as a transdisciplinary practice of the design of performative spaces, can no longer be... more Scenography, discussed here as a transdisciplinary practice of the design of performative spaces, can no longer be assigned to a singular genre and a singular author. It is rather its fluid articulation of staging spaces between the disciplines of theatre, exhibition, installation, media and architecture that renders it particularly suitable to formulate speculative spaces of potentiality. The original visual essays and theoretical positions in Expanding Scenography: On the Authoring of Space posit and survey recent scenographic practice. They are fuelled by a commitment to performance as providing a unique and stubbornly critical voice from within our society.
With contributions by: Thea Brejzek, Alan Read, Krétakör, David Tushingham, Ieva Kaulina, Dellbrügge & de Moll, Misko Suvakovic, Claudia Bosse, Rolf Abderhalden Cortés, Randy Martin, Katharina Schlieben, Christian Teckert, Dorita Hannah and Sven Mahzoud 

Embodying understanding: Drawing as research in sport and exercise

by Hannah Gravestock

2012 British Psychological Society Annual Conference

As researchers in theatre and scenography embrace drawing as a means to facilitate new encounters with the performing... more As researchers in theatre and scenography embrace drawing as a means to facilitate new encounters with the performing body in order to reveal and create new knowledge, drawing as a research approach in sport and exercise science has yet to be examined.

In this paper I discuss how drawing, if applied effectively, has the potential to enhance research methods in the field of sport and exercise science.

Focusing on drawings of the performing body I created in response to a range of theatre performances, from ballet to circus, I discuss the external visualisation of an internal thought process.

I outline the strengths and weaknesses of using this approach within training practices, and contextualise this dialogue using Jacques Lecoq’s understanding and application of drawing as mime at Le Laboratoire d’Etude du Mouvement (LEM).

I conclude by suggesting how, through the provision of training in drawing as research both the researcher and participant can examine the performing sporting body and apply this knowledge to the creation and development of sporting performances.

Olympic Ceremony Design vs Lateral Thinking: Spectacular Creativity

by Wichian Lattipongpun

Design Principles and Practices: An International Journal, Volume 4, Issue 4, pp.11-20. (2010)

The Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony has always been a challenge among practitioners in media and installation... more The Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony has always been a challenge among practitioners in media and installation industries. In every four year cycle, it draws a lot of international attention. The creativity and preparation of the opening ceremony must be complex, elaborate and innovative; it results in a uniqueness in each ceremony. Therefore, the ceremonies are usually unpredictable. Significantly, the ceremony is broadcast live through international media networks; however, there is only one chance to exhibit it. Mistakes can occur in the presentation, but they will not be anticipated. In order to generate this spectacular ceremony, creative thinking must be involved. I propose to apply the Lateral Thinking (Creative thinking technique), invented by Edward de Bono, as a research metaphor to analyse the Athens 2004 Olympic Games’ Opening Ceremony as a case study. It is anticipated, the results of this study will illustrate whether or not de Bono’s lateral thinking technique is applicable to approach this mega-tainment ceremony.

Kinetic Synaesthesia: Experiencing Dance in Multimedia Scenographies

by Marc Boucher

Published in 'Contemporary Aesthetics', 2004

The contrasting kinetic values between dancer and projected moving image in multimedia scenographies provide the... more The contrasting kinetic values between dancer and projected moving image in multimedia scenographies provide the viewer with a particular type of synaesthetic experience. It results from the interaction of kinesthesis proper to each medium, the dancing body and the moving image. The extensive use of projected moving images in performing arts is part of a cultural trend that priviledges a fundamental yet little understood aspect of aesthetic experience. Kinetic synaesthesia is a transdisciplinary concept formulated in light of psychological, physiological, and phenomenological accounts of both synaesthesia and kinesthesis.

Lighting on the hyperbolic plane: Towards a new approach to controlling light on the theatre stage

by Nick Hunt

Published in the International Journal of Performance Arts and Digital Media, 7.2 (Autumn 20011)

Lighting control systems for the theatre are generally based on the ‘state/cue’ model, in which static snapshot... more Lighting control systems for the theatre are generally based on the ‘state/cue’ model, in which static snapshot lighting pictures or ‘states’ replace one another at various cue points through the duration of the performance. This way of structuring lighting (and the data that represent it in the control system) derives historically from the ‘preset’ lighting boards that came to dominate the design of lighting controls in the post-war period and is now well established in current computerized controls.
In this article I argue that the data model used to represent the lighting within the ‘state/cue’ conception is a model based on a geometry of straight lines, grids and angles: a Euclidean and Cartesian geometry. I also argue that such a data model privileges the static over the dynamic and the synchronic over the diachronic and that this privileging has consequences for the expressive potential of light on stage. I go on to propose an alternative data model inspired by the geometry of hyperbolic planes and state-spaces, which is structured by an aesthetic logic of lighting. This ‘thread/impulse’ model is intended to promote the lighting designer’s engagement with the temporal dimension of light on stage, but also has implications for other theatre-making practices and personnel that I briefly outline.

[PAISAGENS NEUROLÓGICAS] | [PAESAGGI NEUROLOGICI]

by Isabel Maria Pereira Dos Santos

Theatre for All: the Scenic Contraption in the Work of O Bando

by Filipa Malva

published as an e-book by Inter-Disciplinary

" A Hole in the Paper Sky": Psycho-Scenographic Rifts in Pirandello's Henry IV

by Kyle Gillette

Greed. Love. Wisdom, and Labeling of the Self

by Claudia Westermann

co-authored with Gheorghe Dan in 2004 for the Consciousness Reframed conference in Bejing, China

the paper was re-presented by Claudia Westermann and Gheorghe Dan at the School for Art and Design at the Centre for Art and Media Technology (HfG / ZKM) in 2005

Art and Literature

by Dawn Lewcock

Printed with permission from the Conrtinuum International Publishing Company.

Previously published in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British lLterature. Serafin and Myer (eds) 2003

This article considers artistic representations associated with literature in English or with English links of some... more This article considers artistic representations associated with literature in English or with English links of some kind. For the purposes of argument I am assuming that “literature” encompasses religious as well as secular writing.

English Verse Forms

by Dawn Lewcock

Printed with permission from the Continuum International Publishing Company.

Previously published in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British lLterature. Serafin and Myer (eds) 2003

This article is an overview of the development of English verse from its beginnings to the end of the twentieth... more This article is an overview of the development of English verse from its beginnings to the end of the twentieth century. It discusses the origins and structure of the major traditional forms of ballads, blank verse, sonnets, odes, elegies and modern free-verse. Examples referred to are taken from The Norton Anthology of Poetry 4th Edition (1996)

Restoration Drama

by Dawn Lewcock

Printed with permission from the Continuum International Publishing Company.

Previously published in The Continuum Encyclopedia of British Literature. Serafin and Myer (eds) 2003

This article examines the re-establishment of theatre in England after a gap of eighteen years. It discusses the... more This article examines the re-establishment of theatre in England after a gap of eighteen years. It discusses the influences at work on the kinds of play shown and considers the changes that occurred from 1660 until 1689 when William and Mary took over the throne.

Conversing with the Audience in the Restoration Theatre

by Dawn Lewcock

Published in the on-line journal Particpations May 2006

Conversing with the Audience in the Restoration Theatre.

Summary
This article argues that the... more Conversing with the Audience in the Restoration Theatre.

Summary
This article argues that the Restoration theatre audience were partners in an ongoing conversation, using conversation in the way that Thompson suggests when writing of Wycherley’s plays.
He emphasises the importance of conversation at the time and says,

We need to understand Restoration concepts of discourse in their terms, not ours, for though we judge characters by their words, the criteria for what can or ought to be done with words are too often those of the twentieth century and not those of the seventeenth.

He points out that at this time conversation still had the meaning of ‘living amongst people’ or ‘mode of life’ and not its more specific modern sense of ‘talk’.

This article explores this idea, and suggests that the dramatists at the time exploited varying styles of dialogue with other signifiers of meaning, particularly social connotations, and thus deliberately changed the aural and spatial dynamics of the total theatrical experience, making the audience as much a part of the performance as the action on stage, and causing the audience to react to, or perceive, the play in ways particular to the period 1660-c 1700.


Key words. Conversation. Wit. Repartee. Aside. Soliloquy. Perception. Confidant. Participant.

The Origins of Drama: an Introduction

by Dawn Lewcock

Introduction
The word drama comes from the Greek meaning “to act, do or perform”, and it is in the several... more Introduction
The word drama comes from the Greek meaning “to act, do or perform”, and it is in the several subtle and diverse meanings of “to perform” that drama can be said to have begun.
All communities accept that their later drama has roots in pre-history. Anthropologists have shown that primitive societies used (and in certain cases still use) role-playing in teaching the codes and behaviour required to live and survive in that society; for example, to teach the skills needed in knowing what and how to hunt, the making and use of weapons and the rules of warfare. Performance could be involved in oral repetition to teach the laws and social customs, while enactment of mythical or historical episodes perpetuates and transmits what is thought important to maintain in the race-memory of the tribe.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan

by Dawn Lewcock

The paradoxical way in which we regard Sheridan is oddly typical of way he has always affected public opinion. We... more The paradoxical way in which we regard Sheridan is oddly typical of way he has always affected public opinion. We admire The School for Scandal as one of the greatest witty comedies, we enjoy The Rivals as a better-than-average lighthearted romp, we appreciate the implicit theatrical irony in The Critic. Yet we tend to patronise the man and his work, as if those plays were an aberration on his part for which he could not have been fully responsible because he died as a reprehensible drunken profligate. I believe we do not take sufficient account of his real and serious concern with the moral ethics underlying contemporary society, shown first as a writer of satirical essays and then in his behaviour as an MP. I suggest that his best plays are so good simply because they reflect his concern and are thus rooted in some kind of real truth about human nature. This article is an outline of the exploration of each play in chronological order against his current social preoccupations, political views and contemporary national events, in which I find a deepening moral sense demonstrated as much in the plays as in his political articles and speeches.

The Debt to Mr Francis Drake

by Dawn Lewcock

How Marie Bancroft and Tom Robertson changed the theatre.

Lecture in the History of Theatre Series

Towards the end of 1864 Mr Francis Drake offered to lend his sister-in-law, Marie Wilton, £1,000 to set herself up in... more Towards the end of 1864 Mr Francis Drake offered to lend his sister-in-law, Marie Wilton, £1,000 to set herself up in theatre management. This study discusses how she used the money to set herself up and employed the dramatistTom Robertson., and how between them they changed the then conventional ways of presenting plays towards a more natural style of setting and acting.

The Significance of Cultural Lore in certain plays by Pinter and Ayckbourn

by Dawn Lewcock

A lecture

Across the centuries dramatists have implicitly demonstrated the ways in which people present themselves to others.... more Across the centuries dramatists have implicitly demonstrated the ways in which people present themselves to others. That is, dramatists depict characters who knowingly or not, consciously or unconsciously, inhabit a certain persona and the drama consists of the ways in which these various characters interact with each other. This is similar to types of psychological games-playing or behaviour, what Berne termed “the games that people play” in their interactions with others. However what differentiates one dramatist from another, what makes one dramatist possibly more complex or profound than another, is in the ways in which they present these relationships and in the ways in which they choose to involve the audience’s apprehension of the play, and affect their perception of the characters’ behaviour. The discussion here is about the effect on the audience of drawing on inbred cultural lore in the dialogue and how this affects the audience’s understanding of the theme of the play.

Once Upon a Time: The Story of the Pantomime Audience

by Dawn Lewcock

Published in
Audience Participation: Essays on Inclusion in Performance
Copyright 2003 Susan Kattwinkel
Reproduced with permission of ABC-CLIO, LLC

The English Christmas Pantomime is the quintessential entertainment involving the audience and encouraging their... more The English Christmas Pantomime is the quintessential entertainment involving the audience and encouraging their active participation in the happenings on stage. It has been presented for the past two and a half centuries and has, of course, changed in both form and content over that time, yet still attracts and holds its particular audience. This chapter explores why and how the audience has influenced and participated in the show across the years, causing changes in both presentation and casting while continuing to expect traditional elements. Paradoxically there is little evidence for the ways in which audiences join in a pantomime performance yet there is a tradition of particular kinds of behaviour and modern presenters know they need to include certain characters and dialogue which appear to be rooted in particular actions or ways of presentation in the past. In order to examine audience responses today it is necessary to give some description of the origins of the genre in order to understand the traditions that the present day audiences expect to find honoured. The chapter, therefore, examines the historical background and follows through those links from the past to see both why they have endured and what the expected response is to each manifestation. This can only be relative and conjectural since no direct academic study has been made in this field.