Theatre Design physical and mental spaces

1
Theatre Design physical and mental spaces

• 3 spheres of practice / enquiry
• Exterior dimension the theatre building /
  performance space in relation to its surroundings
• Social experience what we bring into the theatre
  to make meanings with
• Urban semiotics
• Interior dimension arrangement / articulation
  of building / performance space
• Delineation of physical areas (audience /
  practitioner ...)
• Articulation of performance area / stage (
  onstage / offstage relationship)
• Interior world(s) created operates along own
  logic
• Conceptual dimension spaces evoked / created in
  the mind
• Fictional / illusory locations
• Mental spaces generated by performance, text
• Crucial relationship between physical and
  conceptual spaces largely determines style,
  experience and meaning in theatre

2

• Theatre Space - Interior divisions
• McAuleys terms

Audience Space all areas audience allowed /
encouraged to go into eg front door, box office,
bar / café, foyer, art gallery, toilets
etc Practitioner Space Stage door, backstage,
workshop, dressing rooms, green room, separate
toilets, shower etc Performance Space shared
central space demarcated yet common. Buskers
performance space but no (fixed) practitioner or
audience spaces
Audience Space
Performance Space
Practitioner Space
3
Theatre Design physical and mental spaces

• Space
• The Physical/fictional relationship
• W e watch a physically here-and-now space which
  is usually
• somewhere else at the same time
• Stage Space
• Physical acting area, with own characteristics
  (enforced by
• theatre building), including exits, width
  depth, separation
• from audience area etc
• Presentational Space
• The Stage Space as used in any given
  performance i.e. after
• scenography applied, articulated by light,
  colour, objects etc
• Fictional Place
• The places presented or represented or evoked as
  being
• onstage and/or offstage.

4
Theatre Design physical and mental spaces

• Location and Fiction
• An attempt to deal with the complexity of
• Physical/Fictional Relationship
• Onstage Fictional Place
• That part of the fictional place actually present
  on stage
• before audiences eyes presented or represented
  by
• objects, design elements etc
• performers actions
• performers words (acoustic scenery)
• Offstage Fictional Place
• Parts of Fictional Place not shown onstage but
• represented as being
• immediately adjacent (e.g.next room)
• far away (e.g. Moscow)

5

• Key relationships
• between
• Presentational space and mental landscape evoked
  by it
• Presentational space and real world, the daily
  world of lived experience

Realist theatre tries to create a strong
similarity between all three spaces Symbolist
theatre differentiates between all three spaces
6

• audience-performance relationships

Stages (top right clockwise) Pros Arch Greek
theatre / horseshoe Thrust Traverse Arena
/in the round
7
Exeters set for Tairov production, 1916