Scene - Volume 1, Issue 3, 2013

Building upon Umberto Eco and Jean Baudrillard’s theories of hyperrealism, this article explores hyperrealist theatre through the example of Thomas Ostermeier’s 2004 production of Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck. The article demonstrates that the production’s hyperrealism can be divided into two types: aesthetic hyperrealism and cultural hyperrealism. Aesthetic hyperrealism is the instance of an object appearing as ‘the real thing’, in effect hiding its nature as a sign. The production’s aesthetic hyperrealism is seen in the semiosis of the scenography (i.e. scenography built upon the direct sign). The aesthetic hyperrealism of Ostermeier’s Woyzeck, a feature of the production’s iconicity, is derived from the influence of the televisual iconic sign. Cultural hyperrealism is the cultural desire for things that are more (as in extra or better) than real. Cultural hyperrealism is framed, in Ostermeier’s production, by the social relationships of the fictional world (i.e. sensationalized social interactions that are ‘more’ than real). In Ostermeier’s Woyzeck, cultural hyperrealism is indebted to the influence of TV soap operas.

Would modernist techniques in design help to ground, clarify and (for lack of a better term) unify postmodern texts for a theatrical audience? Given a script like Suzan-Lori Parks’s. The America Play, how have scenographers dealt with ambiguous stage directions like, ‘Place: A great hole. In the middle of nowhere. The hole is an exact replica of The Great Hole of History’?

Using the questions above, among others, I analyse the scenographic choices in four productions of The America Play. Created in different parts of the United States and in theatres of various sizes, these productions demonstrate that not only can the design aspects be modernist while the script/text is postmodern, but that choosing a modernist design approach could be beneficial to the production. I examined several images from each production, supported by interviews with many of their respective designers, to argue that through the use of various modernist design elements each production offered visual elements that might have helped audiences to relate to the text and provide a way in to the postmodern language. Stated another way, these designs were used to bring the text more ‘down to earth’ by leaning towards visual metaphors to which the audience could relate. Since Parks appears to intentionally neglect any mention of design in the play script, there is a certain freedom offered to any design team, but that freedom also creates challenges. If we accept that this play is a landscape in the tradition of Gertrude Stein than could the best practice for this or other postmodernist plays be to surround them with a modernist design? This article will use primarily Park’s play and the works of postmodern theorists, to argue that the answer is ‘Yes’.

This article draws on the ‘TypeBound’ art exhibition (Spring 2009, University of Central Florida) to examine a series of issues that emerge out of renegotiating the meaning of museum space as a performative and creative environment. The article discusses the ways in which ‘TypeBound’ engages in interdisciplinary artistic explorations to approach books as sculpture, writing and typesetting as a visual encounter for both artists and viewers and reading as a performative act. What are the tensions in integrating literal, visual and performative possibilities of ‘book’ art to dialogue with the museum visitor/viewer/spectator/reader? And what are the complications that are triggered by the reimagining of the cultural significance of written word when literary text is viewed as an interplay between literature and visual art in a performative museum space?

This article examines the metaphoric characteristics of Theodoros Terzopoulos’s production of Heiner Müller’s Mauser by analysing its metaphors of space, body and dialogue. It analyses how Greek director Terzopoulos transformed German political theatre rooted in Brechtian aesthetics into Greek political theatre rooted in Greek tragedy. In this adaptation, the director’s utilization of space and sets played an essential role in staging his artistic vision; the utilization of space not only closely restrained the actors’ performance but also defined the historical relations among Greek people in the theatre including the actors, narrators, audience members and their ancestors who were symbolically represented through portraits. To trace the process of this adaptation, this article, first, refers to Terzopoulos’s apprenticeship in the Berliner Ensemble and his relationship with Müller and analyses how these two artists influenced each other through their common interest in Greek tragedy. Next, it analyses how Terzopoulos adapted Müller’s Mauser based on an episode in Greek history, the Greek Civil War, and then recreated it visually through experimental sets and metaphoric movements as an extension of his major Greek tragedy productions. Signifying a microcosm of Greek society, the space and sets revealed veiled meanings one by one as the actors deconstructed the sets and the audience defined their position in the space by observing the change of sets. Terzopoulos’s production ultimately gives us an example of the way directors stage political theatre for spectators in their own time and place.

In this article I intend to provide a short overview of the historically rich interrelationship between theatre and multimedia, up to the present time where a set of similar practical and theoretical questions has reappeared following the influence of digital multimedia on contemporary performing practice. My aim is to trace the roots of multimedia theatre. I will argue that the most important and vital feature of theatre is its ability to absorb all other media, in other words, its totality and multimediality. I will explore the role of the projected moving image used in theatre projects from the invention of cinema to the film-theatre of Josef Svoboda. I will also provide a short historical overview of the development of the concept of ‘total theatre’ and in particular, analyse the role of the projected image in this context.

I will first address the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk – ‘total Artwork’ and Wagner’s understanding of theatre (opera) as total art. Subsequently, I will analyse what influence the invention of film had on the theatre, discussing various approaches to the application of the moving image to the theatre from the first part of the twentieth century, which seems to have been ‘reinvented’ in contemporary multimedia theatre. My examples are drawn from the work of the film pioneer Georges Méliès; the German theatre maker Erwin Piscator; Bauhaus artists Oskar Schlemmer, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, and Frederic Kiesler; and the Czech film-theatre of Josef Svoboda.

Founded by Michael Hollingsworth and Deanne Taylor in the late 1970s, VideoCabaret is one of Canada’s most prolific theatre companies and has become known for its unconventional scenography. Hollingsworth later began a one-of-a-kind historical epic – a 21-part play series, which chronicles over 400 years of Canadian history – The History of the Village of the Small Huts. In 1985, Hollingsworth directed the first play of the cycle, New France and almost every year since, a part of the cycle has been produced throughout Toronto at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Backspace, The Theatre Centre, Factory Theatre, Cameron House, a sold out run at Stratford, and recently at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. This article analyses VideoCabaret’s unique scenographic approach and the impact of the scenography on Canada’s historical narrative. The script is created with a unique scenographic design in mind. Costumes become exaggerated portraits of the figure they represent and immediate triggers of recognition. The show takes place in a black-box theatre with oversized, grotesque or two dimensional props. Actors come and go from the lights without being seen to appear or exit, much the same way these figures come and go in Canadian history. Such an approach contrasts the stark black box with the chaotic happenings of the play. By addressing the costumes, props, lighting and set, we can see how the subversive scenographic choices interact with the audiences’ traditional assumptions of what Canadian history is and how it is told. This article will also show how the scenography of VideoCabaret both constructs and challenges the narratives of Canadian history, and by extension, Canadian identity.

Dmitry Krymov is a Russian artist who has developed an international reputation through work that combines images from paintings, poems, prose, plays, music and popular culture to create phantasmagorical, one-of-a-kind performances. Following no obvious linear narratives and no literary dramaturgy as such, the images built up on Krymov’s stage may be seen as dynamic montages. Montages because they combine visual and aural elements from various sources; dynamic because they are constructed literally before our eyes. Of special interest is the fact that his performance style developed along aside of, and emerged from, his approach to teaching scenography, where designers actually devise and execute the performances.

How many times have we, the museum visitor, stood in front of a display case full of objects and let our eyes glance over them, not really taking in any of them individually? Not understanding why they were grouped as they are, or bothering to read the labels that the curator has painstakingly written and positioned? This is the challenge of temporary (and permanent) exhibitions displays today in our fast moving, social media savvy world. Museum objects have to work hard to be noticed and appreciated. Taking an object out of its ‘natural environment’ is always artificial, even if the museum goes to great lengths to replicate the environment that it would have been used in (e.g. with ‘room sets’). This is particularly the case with functional (and often decorative) objects, like cups and saucers, hosiery, jewellery, barometers, balls of twine or an egg timer. Once they are placed in a case, their use alters. They are elevated far beyond their original function. They become an ‘object’ to be admired, looked at with interest, or with indifference. They have the power to fascinate and inspire. But to do that, they must first be displayed in a way that shows them off advantageously and with interpretation that explains their importance and use without boring or confusing the reader. Add to this an often complex message that the museum wishes to convey to the visitors, and curators really have their work cut out. This was the challenge that I faced when I curated the Enlightenment exhibition at Derby Museums (22 June–25 August 2013). This exhibition was the result of five years of collecting by ourselves, Buxton Museum and Art Gallery and Strutt’s North Mill, Belper. Funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund Collecting Cultures programme, we collected over 100 eighteenth-century objects to enrich our collections, to develop a better understanding of the Enlightenment period in Derbyshire and to help put the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritages Site into context. So although I and the collections team were in raptures over a plate showing a peculiar looking polar bear and were discussing how this one item could be linked to trade, exploitation, fashion, taste, travel and a fascination with natural history, my challenge was how to display this object so the museum’s visitors were excited by it too.

Documentaries represent issues and aspects of the socio-historical world. They do so through a selection and combination of audio and visual components. Inevitably, this practice makes intrinsic claims about documentary’s ability to represent the world both accurately and reliably. Facts, information, balance and reliability are the bedrock of documentary vocabulary. Comparatively few practitioners have genuinely interrogated the veracity of their craft; authenticity, evidence and objectivity remain central to the language of their practice. As the result of a mediated process, a documentary film is, at best, a crafted version of reality and its conventions are designed and developed to convince audiences of the authenticity of their particular representation of the world. Documentary’s traditional journalistic and pseudo-scientific status has hampered its development as a discursive art form capable of exploring a much broader sphere of human experience. Using a selection of still images, this article aims to contextualize, reflect on and illuminate the short, animated documentary Fforest (2009) by G. Bevan and M. Bosward. Drawing on the practice and principles of collage, the film seeks to expand the language of documentary production by deliberately undermining traditional approaches to knowledge, authority and fact. It explores potential new terrain for documentary by generating a non-realist, visual aesthetic that is not bound to traditional discourses of ‘sobriety’, whilst reaffirming the documentary as a composition which must be designed and assembled, in which authorial voice must be constructed rather than simply stated, and in which meaning is not necessarily explicit.

Apollo, 24 Preludes and Aeternum (2013) The Royal Ballet, March

The Oracle (2013), Meryl Tankard (dir.), London: Queen Elizabeth Hall, May

The Perfect American, Phelem McDermott (dir.), Philip Glass (2013) English National Opera, June

LOLPERA, Angela Lopez (dir.), Ellen Warkentine and Andrew Pedroza (2012) Los Angeles: Hollywood Fringe Festival, 24 June

LACE:HERE:NOW, Nottingham, September 2012–February 2013

‘I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America’ (2012–2013) Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 11 September–6 January

‘Visions of The Future’ (2012) the tenth biennial Fleur Cowles Flair Symposium, Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin, 1–3 November