The Scenographic Imagination

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The Scenographic Imagination

• The Scenographer and the Physical Stage
• Chapter Two
• Darwin Reid Payne

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Chapter TwoThe Scenographer and the Physical
Space

• Traditional Stage Forms
• New Stage Forms
• The Scenographers Areas of Influence
• The Scenographers Relationship to the Director
• The Language of the Space
• The Building of the Theatre, by Sean Kenny

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Traditional Stage Forms

• The Open Stage

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Traditional Stage FormsThe Open Stage

• The elemental actor-audience relationship
• Movement tends to be circular
• 1) not too much time spent in one position with
  actors back to any one section of the audience
• 2) when speaking to another actor one tends to
  be able to face the actor and audience
• Most popular proponent of the Open Stage in the
  USA, Tyrone Guthrie. From A Director Views the
  Stage ..
• prime consideration of theatrical design is the
  actor-audience relationship
• an all-purpose hall is a no-purpose hall
• was better to be firmly and uncompromisingly on
  one kind of design

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Traditional Stage FormsThe Open Stage

• Argument for open stage
• 1)program of a classic nature
• 2) not creation of illusion but ritual of
  sufficient interest
• 3) an auditorium grouped around a stage
• 4) a staging that stressed the difference between
  movies and TV

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Traditional Stage Forms

• The Proscenium Stage

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Traditional Stage FormsThe Proscenium Stage

• Isolation of the audience from the stage/actor
• Performance is necessarily two-dimensional
• Pictorial settings

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Traditional Stage FormsThe Proscenium Stage

• Elements of the Proscenium Stage
• 1. Proscenium Arch
• 2. Stage Floor
• 3. Apron
• 4. Offstage space
• 5. Orchestra Pit
• 6. Back wall of the theatre
• 7. Grand drape
• 8. Main curtain
• 9. Second Portal
• 10. Gridiron
• 11. Fly gallery
• 12. A back drop
• 13. A cut drop
• 14. Cyclorama
• 15. Scenic Unit
• 16. Ground row
• 17. Footlights
• 18. Light batten

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New Stage Forms

• Antonin Artaud- theatre of action ...a direct
  communication will be re-established between the
  spectator and the spectacle, between the actor
  and the spectator....because the spectator is
  engulfed by it.
• Jerzy Grotowski- began by eliminating the
  superfluous, it can exist w/o autonomic costume
  and scenography, w/o separate performance space,
  w/o lighting and sound effects. It cannot exist
  w/o actor-spectator relationships of perceptual,
  direct, live communion. The synthetic theatre
  is the contemporary theatre, Rich Theatre
• No matter how much theatre expands and exploits
  its mechanical resources, it will remain
  technologically inferior to film and television.
  Consequently, I propose poverty in theatre.
  Jerzy Grotowski

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The Scenographers Areas of Influence

• The Stage Floor
• The General Background
• Specific Units of Scenery
• Furniture and Set Properties
• Things to sit on, lie on, put things on, put
  things in
• Awareness of individual periods
• period styles
• forms of construction
• material used for construction
• finishing materials
• understanding of how time and use affect a piece
• history of a particular piece of furniture
• Hand and Personal Props
• Costume

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The Scenographers Areas of Influence

• Robert Edmund Jones
• machines are not a substitute for imagination
• A stage setting has no independent life of its
  own
• The surprise inherent in the setting is only part
  of the greater surprise inherent in the event
  itself.
• Mario Prazs Three Distinct Steps in providing
  furnishings for the stage
• determining the needs of the scene
• seeking images from outside research
• find items or draw them for construction purposes
• Praz,perhaps even more than painting or
  sculpture,perhaps even more than architecture
  itself, furniture reveals the spirit of an age.

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The Scenographers Relationship to the Director

• From the beginning
• Wagner- 1st articulated concept
• Duke Saxe-Meiningen- insisted on accurately
  researched sets/cost.
• Gordon Craig- father of modern scenography
• Adolphe Appia- father of modern lighting
• Max Reinhardt- first stage director

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The Scenographers Relationship to the Director

• Shared Functions of Director/Scenographer
• read texts
• analyze texts
• interprets text
• research initiated
• research assimilated and assessed
• concrete planning
• instruction to others
• observation and refinement

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The Language of Space

• Real Space- day to day living
• Cultural Space- different societies give specific
  meaning to spatial relationships
• Scenographic Space
• Denis Bablet,...they establish a scenic
  architecture of which each element becomes
  indispensable, brings out the relationship that
  unites the characters, accentuates the
  signification of the actors slightest gesture.
• kinetic and conceptual space
• forms in motion are virtual volume

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The Language of Space

• Scenographer exercises two basic influences on
  the stage environment physical and psychological
• Physical
• floor patterns and level changes
• objects directly used in the action
• barriers that restrict the flow
• of action
• scenic elements that have a visual influence on
  the audience but not directly on the performer
• the effects of light on the physical form

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The Language of Space

• The stage is not just a place where something can
  happen but a place where something specific
  always does........the stage is always in the
  present tense.