Beyond Scenography

Focused on the contemporary Anglophone adoption from the 1960s onwards, Beyond Scenography explores the porous state of contemporary theatre-making to argue a critical distinction between scenography (as a crafting of place orientation) and scenographics (that which orientate acts of worlding, of staging).

With sections on installation art and gardening as well as marketing and placemaking, this book is an argument for what scenography does: how assemblages of scenographic traits orientate, situate, and shape staged events. Established stage orthodoxies are revisited - including the symbiosis of stage and scene and the aesthetic ideology of 'the scenic' - to propose how scenographics are formative to all staged events. Consequently, one of the conclusions of this book is that there is no theatre practice without scenography, no stages without scenographics.

Beyond Scenography offers a manifesto for a renewed theory of scenographic practice for the student and professional theatrical designer.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Scenography as theatre-making

Theatre after cinema

Scenography after performance

Chapter outline

Chapter 1: Place Orientation, Scenic Politics and Scenographics

Scenes and Scenic Politics

Scenographics

Othering Tactics

Chapter 2: Scenography and the Anglophone theatres

The first adoption of scenography

Continental differences pre-1960

The second adoption of scenography

Sound and costume as scenography

Chapter 3: Scenography beyond scenographers

Mise en scène and scenography

Whose scenography?

Beyond dramaturgy and choreography

Expanded scene design?

Chapter 4: Scenography Happens

The time of scenography

Scenography is not set

Gecko’s MISSING set

Chapter 5: Scenographic Worlding

Stage Geographies

Stage Ideologies

Scenography beyond stages?

Stage-Scenes beyond vision

Chapter 6: Scenographic Cultures

Installation Art and Scenographic Scale

Interior Design and Scenographic Behaviours

Marketing and Scenographic Seduction

Gardening and Scenographic Curation

Protest and Scenographic Activism

Chapter 7: Scenographic Architecture

Fast Architecture

Trompe l'oeil and Scenographic Propaganda

Potemkin Villages and Scenographic Placemaking

Conclusion

Dr. Rachel Hann is Lecturer in Scenography, University of Surrey, UK.