Scenography and Semiotics

The return of the unanswered questions.

The main focus for this post will be for that of Arnold Aronson’s book, Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography. For which, from reading the introduction, is simply arguing that visuals are under evaluated in the twenty-first century; also that, like dramaturgy, there is no fixed definition of scenography.

He begins by describing the stage as “the abyss” (Aronson, 2005, 1) using Nietzsche’s famous quote of “[w]hen you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks back into you.” (Nietzsche, 2004). If this is his argument, then I read this simply as you get out of what you see what you put into it emotionally. If you were to go a see a performance with a minimalist set design without any understanding of the performance you may see it simply as its bare essentialness. However, you understand the performance, either previously from viewing or by understanding as you watch, then what you will see will be the finer details creating a whole world in front of you. You will interpret things differently, possibly due to your own upbringing, education or simply from previous pieces of work you have seen doing similar things (oh look, its ghosting again, hello). The scenography of a piece, if done well, will become clearer if you notice the smaller things, the touches of shadow, the angle and position of piece of set, where the actor stands in relation to other actors and set piece around them. It can all mean something.

To try and define scenography you need to understand isn’t just simply the design, whether that be of the set, the lights, the sound. “What is both maddening and delightful is that no two answers are alike, and many are wildly contradictory” (Aronson, 2005, 7). One of the definitions Aronson uses though which I enjoy is in relation to literary critic W. J. T. Mitchell who says:

“Poetry is an art of time, motion and action: painting an art of space. And arrested action.” Scenography, however, is an art of time, motion action, and space.

Aronson, 2005, 5

The reason I like this as a definition is how it relates scenography to both poetry and painting, and therefore fixing scenography as an art for in its own right just as much as the other two art forms.

Moving further into the book Aronson discusses the theatres and venues themselves:

[T]he theatre building and its concomitant technologies has seldom given birth to new forms of dramatic art that have had a life or significance beyond the immediate entertainment and gratification of its contemporary audience.

Aronson, 2005, 67

So, essentially we build new venues to suit our needs, abilities, technologies, but theatre itself has never created any of these new. An example of this, is that the basic ‘look’ of the theatre hasn’t changed in over one hundred years. The proscenium arch is a fixed sign of what theatre should (supposedly) look like and is generally what we come to expect when we go to visit the theatre *cough* ghosted *cough*. But theatres haven’t always looked like this.

We can go back to the old amphitheatre’s, great round venue, seating tiered into the centre where the performance would be and no technology to boost voices, it was all in the design because that’s all that was available. Jump forward hundreds of years to when we had candle light and we’re now much smaller venues in comparison to the amphitheatres but we not had lights on stage. Upgrade to gas lights and we now have more control of them, adaptations were made to theatres (and of course new ones built) to take advantage of this new ability to control the light we create. Jump forward again to electricity, every changes. This of course being a very basic crass example of how things have moved forward, things also changed with the way sets could be made, whether from painted images on board, dropped in cloths, to now projection.

Theatre has to move with the times, but structurally they haven’t changed for a long time.

Scenography within a performance is always changing with technology, this can be seen most recently with productions such as The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time and the Royal Shakespeare Company’s latest production of The Tempest. Curious Incident is essentially just a small box of technology on stage where the actors perform and the whole set then changes around them to demonstrate the mind of the lead character. This makes the performance, not only interesting to watch, but also fairly easy to tour. The visuals for the audience help explain not only geographically where the play is set at times but the way it is then seen by the character within the play. This can help them to relate to him and understand him, even empathise with him, all this is down to the scenography.

For The Tempest, however things were done on a much larger scale, not for touring purposes. Using motion capture and live CGI effects to create the character of Ariel the spirit. Ariel would be projected on either the back canvas or on the large cylinder that is lowered down from the top of the stage. Again, this added atmosphere to the piece and with the effects used could also incorporate scenes directed underwater but it was all for the spectacle. “[S]pectacle theatre is little more than a showcase for technical wizardry” (Aronson, 2005, 70) for which I feel The Tempest here is a fine example.

Finally

 

Work Cited

Aronson, A. (2005) Looking into the Abyss: Essays on Scenography. USA: University of Michigan Press.

Nietzsche, F. (2004) Beyond Good and Evil. Montana: Kessinger Publishing.

Have you read this before or will you simply read this again?

The reading from Marvin Carlson’s The Haunted Stage is probably one of the most interesting ones I have come across recently, particularly being as it was one I found relatively easily to follow and understand (I believe anyway).

“[A]ll plays in general might be called Ghosts” (Carlson, 2003, 1), from this line I was intrigued, what was this ghosting that is apparently in everything and yet I had heard nothing of before? “[W]e are seeing what we saw before” (Carlson, 2003, 1) but what does this mean?

Establishing of course that what it was referring to was our own memories of what we have seen or even heard of, I understood and could then relate this productions, television and films that I had seen. The belief that when we watch an actor playing a new role you will think of him in the last role you saw him in, or possibly just the most memorable one. And when you watch a new production of a play you will think of the last production of that play you saw, or if it’s a new one maybe just the last performance you saw in general, or even just what you saw at that venue. Ghosting in theatre can relate to anything from the production to the actor, from the venue to the set, from the musical score to the script. As you read this now you may have in your head my previous blog post, or even the last blog post on you read on ghosting (whether it was better than mine or not I’ll let to you decide, either way when you read the next one, you may be even by haunted my me) after all, “[t]he present experience is always ghosted by previous experiences” (Carlson, 2003, 2).

However, “every play is a memory” (Carlson, 2003, 2) even brings in how plays potentially (usually) ghost real life as well as other plays. A writer may ‘think of’ a line of dialogue simply because they heard someone else say it in passing, or may create a character or event that is a relation to them. This made me think one thing I was taught in college that has been a constant thought of mine, that no story is ever original.

Christopher Booker states in The Seven Basic Plots that the constant recycled plots consist of: Overcoming the Monster, Rags to Riches, The Quest, Voyage and Return, Comedy, Tragedy and Rebirth. These can of course then branch of into different subplots when elements are mixed between two of course, tragicomedy for example, but essentially these are the only stories we can tell. This also then moves onto the idea that there are only eight or so archetypes of character that will always be reused.

NOTHING IS ORIGINAL!

Even if you move away from the idea of having a limited number of plots and characters, ghosting can still be seen very clearly in modern popular culture. In the film industry for example, the past few years has seen a large increase in remakes, reboots, sequels and prequels (and those based on books and comics). This is to the point where (excluding art house films, though the same rule might apply) there are only 10-20 new releases each year in the cinema that don’t relate to the fore mentioned remakes, reboots, etc. this has at least been my own observation from working in a cinema for the past four years. The reason for the being so many of these ‘unoriginal’ films is due to the fact they are easier to ‘sell’ to an audience. They are already aware of the franchise, they know what to expected, they don’t need much back story and therefore need less advertisement and saves the distributors a lot of money. These distributors depend on ghosting to market their films and it works.

Another example of ghosting in film which I find interesting is in Willy Russell’s film adaptation of his own play, Educating Rita, directed by Lewis Gilbert. It has been made a regular assumption that Michael Caine (who stars in Educating Rita) is known for saying “not a lot of people know that” and is usually a line used whenever someone imitates him for comedic purposes, however until Rita he has never actually said this in any film. It became popular due to a comedy sketch where he was being impersonated and which became so popular that everyone simply associated this phrase with him. Because of this, Willy Russell actually wrote it into the film script for Rita, though it wasn’t in the stage script, just so it could now be said that Caine had now said the line he was so (wrongly) famous for. Caine was ghosted by peoples’ assumptions of something he had never actually said.

Back to the theatre though, as that’s what we should really be discussing, Carlson talks in his book about Noh drama from Japan where a play is “a story of the past recounted by a ghost” (Carlson, 2003, 3). This straight away made me think of Hamlet (because that is how haunted my mind is by Shakespeare). The fact that it is the ghost of his father who really sets the wheels in motion for Hamlet to kill his uncle when he finds out of the murder of his father “[r]evenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (Shakespeare, 1.5.29). Ghosting then comes in again to the play of Hamlet, when the prince of Denmark decides the way to get his uncle’s guilt out in the open is by having a play performed to him that resembles that of the murder he has committed: “I’ll have these players / Play something like the murder of my father / Before mine uncle” (Shakespeare, 2.2.607-608). Hamlet is therefore relying on his uncle to be ghosted by his own behaviour.

The whole concept of ghosting I have found fascinating, something that nearly everyone will be aware of in some respect (even just acknowledging the remakes of films) but will not necessarily be aware of their own awareness.

 

Work Cited

Booker, C. (2005) The Seven Basic Plots. London: Continuum.

Carlson, M. (2003) The Haunted Stage: The Theatre as Memory Machine. Ann Arber: University of Michigan Press.

Gilbert, L. (dir.) (1983) Educating Rita. [DVD] Carlton.

Shakespeare, W. (2008) Hamlet. Basingstoke: Macmillan.

A question that started the module that never really ended in the first week.

After working through the readings on the matter to find a clear definition of the work and what the remit might be of someone within this role, it was soon decided there was no fixed definition, as many writers and practitioners had different views. This appeared to be a running theme through the module, words without a true meaning.

Andrea Bozic, when describing the role of a dramaturg, talks about “someone who is alien” (Bozic, 2009) and has “otherness and distance from the process in order to be able to ask questions” (Bozic, 2009). She then goes on to talk about the importunate of “dramaturgical structures” (Bozic, 2009) and that in her experience a good dramaturg is “someone who manages never to lose sight of the red thread” (Bozic, 2009), this red thread being the connecting line for everything within a performance, to keep everything connected. Overall from her writing I gathered a dramaturg was someone there to keep focus of the aims and connections through a piece and to ask questions about potentially unnoticed elements of performance, seemed simple enough.

Then onto David Copelin, who takes a different approach in telling us what a dramaturg is by telling us what one isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be. Yes, he also states the role of a dramaturg is to ask questions but he puts it more to the reason of to “point out the consequences of the choices” (Copelin, 2009, 18) made. So for instance, the possible outcomes of character A walking off stage left instead of right, what it might mean for character B if they don’t go to their mother’s funeral and how it will affect them in act two, or even what it may come across to the audience to mean if the curtains are red instead of blue.

He states that, as a dramaturg

We care about themes, resonances, a play’s context. We may suggest alternative structure, the rearrangement of scenes, the dramatic (not economic) need for more or fewer characters.

(Copelin, 2009, 18)

And that once it is agreed between the dramaturg and the writer that this can happen, that only then can things run smoothly. Dramaturgs “do not control” (Copelin, 2009, 18).

In his experience, a production would seem to work best with a “partnership” of four roles but ideally only if it has worked this way for some time and not just on the one event, these include “a playwright, a director, a dramaturg, and a designer” (Copelin, 2009, 21).

Finally, Copelin describes the role of a dramaturg as that of a “process critic” (Copelin, 2009, 22) and that they are the “ideal audience” due to them being “connoisseurs of text, staging, production values, acting choices, a play’s philosophy and its place in its artistic context” (Copelin, 2009, 22).

So, overall, Copelin was more a believe that the dramaturg is in fact present through the process of a production to give constant feedback and enlightenment on decisions being made, doesn’t sound to me like someone who would be seen as “alien” or “distant” as Bozic suggests?

The third insight into dramaturgy was from Lehmann and Primavesi, they talked more about the media side of things, a subject the previous two barely touched on. They describe a dramaturg as an “experimentalist” (Lehmann and Primavesi, 2009, 4) who should work with technology, not to be an expert of it or to work against, but to play with it and learn more about what can be done with it within a performance.

They then move onto politics of theatre and within theatre and believe that it’s the dramaturgs role to “educate the people and to build up the cultural identity” (Lehmann and Primavesi, 2009, 5) not only for the audience but for those within the production. A dramaturg isn’t there to simply assist the narrative but to make people think about what they are seeing and what they are doing.

Also Lehmann and Primavesi discuss the belief that dramaturg “should no longer be defined as the controlling power” (Lehmann and Primavesi, 2009, 4). They suggest that they should be seen as a type of “police” or simply as a “literary adviser” or even as an “outside eye”, they are “a negotiator for the freedom of theatrical experimentation and risk” (Lehmann and Primavesi, 2009, 4). Again this seems to go against Bozic’s description of distancing.

So… the one thing they all seem to be able to agree on is that a dramaturg doesn’t have the final say, it always comes down to the playwright or director or whoever may be within that role, a dramaturg is merely there to make suggestions. However, Bozic seems to believe there should be a distance between the dramaturg and the production, to help keep a view the piece as a whole to help with the “red thread” (Bozic, 2009) connected; where as Copelin and Lehmann and Primavesi seem to see a dramaturg as someone fairly hands on throughout the process. Copelin suggests the role is there for someone to add a constant critique through the rehearsal process, which to me sounds a little overbearing and also in my experience something that is generally done by most writers, directors and sometimes actors. Finally, Lehmann and Primavesi talk more about how it’s the role of a dramaturg to experiment and to educate people more than have quite as much control as the previous mentioned writers imply.

From these three readings then, have I ever worked with a dramaturg? Well, between the three of them it begs more the question have I ever worked with anything else? Through college, university, student production, amateur productions, it always comes down to a collaborative process. From this I gather more that I have never really worked with a production that has had a writer, a director, a designer, an actor. Every production has just been filled with many dramaturgs, but doesn’t that then defeat the object of having one, if we are taught that everyone should have their own input? Who will dramaturg the dramaturgs? Who will see the red thread, the connections between everything?

If dramatic writing loses its dominating influence on many kinds of theatrical practice, dramaturgy still remains indispensable for the whole field of the performing arts

(Lehmann and Primavesi, 2009, 6)

So I guess if all else fails, there’s always the dramaturgs.

 

Work Cited

Bozic, A. (2009) On Dramaturgy-Statement. Performance Research, 14(3), 12.

Copelin, D. (2009) Ten Dramaturgical Myths. In: Bert Cardullo (eds.) What is Dramaturgy?. 5^th edition. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 17-23.

Lehmann, H. and Primavesi, P. (2009) Dramaturgy on Shifting Grounds. Performance Research, 14(3), 3-6.

Welcome to University of Lincoln Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!