Scenography Expanded - An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design

It examines the potential of the visual, spatial, technological, material and environmental aspects of performance to shape performative encounters

It analyses examples of scenography as sites of imaginative exchange and transformative experience and it discusses the social, political and ethical dimensions of performance design

The international range of contributors and case studies provide clear perspectives on why scenographic design has become a central consideration for performance makers today

The extended introduction defines the characteristics of 21st-century scenography and examines the scope and potentials of this new field

Across five sections, the volume provides examples and case studies which richly illustrate the scope of contemporary scenographic practice and which analyse the various ways in which it is used in global cultural contexts

These include mainstream theatre practice, experimental theatre, installation and live art, performance in the city, large-scale events and popular entertainments, and performances by and for specific communities

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Illustrations

Contributors

Foreword ~ Arnold Aronson

Introducing 'Expanded' Scenography - Joslin McKinney and Scott Palmer

Section 1: TECHNOLOGICAL SPACE

1. Devices of Wonder: globalizing technologies in the process of scenography ~ Christopher Baugh (University of Leeds, UK)

2. Screen Space: Bearing Witness & Performing Resistance ~ Dorita Hannah (University of Tasmania, Australia)

Section 2: ARCHITECTURAL SPACE

3. Between Symbolic Representation and New Critical Realism: Architecture as Scenography and Scenography as Architecture ~ Thea Brejzek (University of Technology, Sydney, Australia)

4. City as Site: Street Performance and Site Permeability during the Festival Internacional Teatro a Mil, Chile, 2012-2015 - Marcela Oteiza (Wesleyan University, CT, USA)

Section 3: AGENCY

5. Scenography Matters: Performing Romani Identities: Strategy and Critique ~ Jane Collins (University of the Arts, London, UK) and Ethel Brooks (Rutgers University, NJ, USA)

6. Scenographic Agency: A Showing-doing and a Responsibility for Showing-doing ~ Kathleen Irwin (University of Regina, Canada)

7. Thinking that Matters: Towards a Post-Anthropocentric Approach to Performance Design ~ Maaike Bleeker (Utrecht University, Netherlands)

Section 4: AUDIENCES

8. Audience Immersion, Mindfulness and the Experience of Scenography ~ David Shearing (University of Leeds, UK)

9. Cognitive Approaches to Performance Design, or How the Dead Materialize and Other Spectacular Design Solutions ~ Stephen Di Benedetto (University of Miami, FL, USA)

Section 5: MATERIALITY

10. The Matter of Water: Bodily Experience of Scenography in Contemporary Spectacle - Neboja Tabacki (University of the Arts, Berlin, Germany)

11. Ecologies of Autism: Vibrant Space in Imagining Autism - Melissa Trimingham (University of Kent, UK)

Bibliography

REVIEWS

"[An] excellent and comprehensive collection [that's] suitable as introduction for undergraduates and for developing ideas, histories and approaches for researchers" ~ Paul Geary, University of Birmingham, UK