Scenography

Definition

Scenography — classically, the visual, experiential, and spatial design of the stage — is redefined in Dorita Hannah's chapter as interior architecture's medial model: the discipline "could be approached as a kind of scenography that structures experience and interaction through open-ended spatial dramaturgies orchestrating material and immaterial elements as temporal, interconnected, and mutable phenomena." Her note 1 supplies the expanded definition: scenography "generally associated with the practice of theater design, concerns the visual, experiential, and spatial composition of an event, as well as how these integrated elements are presented (via the production) and received (by the audience), although the boundaries have become increasingly blurred through interactive and immersive theater practices." The concept therefore has two clauses: composition (the orchestration of material and immaterial elements — bodies, materials, technologies, objects) and circulation (presentation/reception — the event's meaning completed in the audience's reception). Its horizon is not the stage: "the boundaries have become increasingly blurred," and Hannah's spatial-design usage covers "gaming, cinematic, object, urban, landscape, and event design."

As a disciplinary claim, the definition repositions interior design: "Discrete from – yet implicated 'within' – architecture, the design of interiors can be regarded as a discursive practice that falls anywhere on a trajectory 'between' architecture's claim to enduring structures and the dynamic flux of theatrical performance." The scenographic interior is thus the interior as set-for-action — the room understood through what it structures, stages, and receives rather than through what it contains.

Key Thinkers

• Dorita Hannah — the concept's architectural champion: interior architecture "as a kind of scenography"; the open-ended spatial dramaturgy; the presentation/reception circuit (2018; also Performance Design, 2008, co-ed. with Olav Harsløf).
• Joslin McKinney & Philip Butterworth — Introduction to Scenography (2009) and McKinney & Scott Palmer, Scenography Expanded (2017) — the "expanding field" literature Hannah cites (note 1; not yet paged — see log).
• Thea Brejzek — Expanding Scenography: On the Authoring of Space (2011) — the authorship-of-space frame (note 1; not yet paged — see log).
• Jon McKenzie — the performance-imperative background: "we 'perform or else!'" (via Hannah; see log).

Related Concepts

• spatial-dramaturgy — the concept's temporal art: scenography composes; dramaturgy sequences — "time-based dramatic composition" adapted from theatre to sociology and now to space.
• event-space — the composed whole: the event-space is what scenography structures; every interior is an event's set.
• spatial-performativity — the condition scenography answers: how "socially prescripted and aesthetically devised performances in everyday life affect and influence spatial performativity, its fabrication, and its impact."
• interior-architecture — the discipline re-framed: the interior as "discursive practice" between architecture's enduring structures and performance's dynamic flux.
• ephemeral-interior — the scenographic interior's native temporality: "between the seemingly eternal and the ephemeral."
• installation — the scenographic interior's art-cousin: Odom's "accessible territories for emerging methodologies to be tested."
• atmosphere — the immaterial element scenography orchestrates: the event's lighting, sound, scent, and temperature as designed media.
• spectacle — the concept's pole: scenography operates "between the everyday and spectacle."

Source Support

Sources in the wiki that discuss this concept:

• Event-space: A performance model for spatial design (Hannah 2018) — the concept's definition (the opening paragraph and note 1: composition, presentation/reception, the blurred boundaries of immersive practice); the trajectory thesis (between architecture and performance); the places-and-things that "perform rather than describe. As dramaturgical scenography – enacting multiple narratives – they are not mimetic (copies) but authentic elements inherent to the event."
• Event-space: A performance model for spatial design (Hannah 2018) — the concept's definition (the opening paragraph and note 1: composition, presentation/reception, the blurred boundaries of immersive practice); the trajectory thesis (between architecture and performance); the places-and-things that "perform rather than describe. As dramaturgical scenography – enacting multiple narratives – they are not mimetic (copies) but authentic elements inherent to the event."
• Productions: spatial practices, processes, and effects (Odom 2018) — the concept's practice-genre complement: "contemporary art installations, scenography, and temporary interior interventions are of particular interest because they have become the most accessible territories for emerging methodologies to be tested"; scenographer Robert Lepage named among the effects-oriented designers. See installation, productions.
• Domestic Doyennes: Purveyors of Atmospheres Spoken and Visual (Turpin 2003/2006) — the concept's Victorian prehistory, the staged interior before the scenographic model: "The aura of elitism found expression on elaborate stages where the significance of the actors' visual performance surpassed their verbal utterances" (p. 372) — the drawing room as theatre, the guests as actors, presence outranking speech. The built machinery: Mentmore's Grand Hall ("a pretentious metaphor communicating the superior status of the host and hostess") with its announcement choreography ("After a momentary glance from other participants, the primary function of the guest had been accomplished. They were seen"), the Lady's staged descent "from the Grand Staircase axially aligned with the Grand Hall," and the room sequence "arranged in a manner that permitted guests to mingle from room to room continuing their performance on the grandest of stages" (p. 372; see drawing-room). And the stage-set as the performance's rule-system: "Count D'Orsay's rules of conversation are supported by the stage set" — conversation's anti-focus rule (no long stories) mirrored in the set's anti-rest decor ("the eye of the guest is never permitted to rest," p. 372; see conversation). Where Hannah's scenography structures open-ended dramaturgies, Turpin's Victorian stage scripts its actors completely — the precedent that shows what the performance model gains by going open-ended: the inhabitants' improvisation against the set's total choreography.
• source-notes/baudrillard-1983-fatal-strategies
• source-notes/rice-2006-rethinking-histories

Open Questions

• If interiors are scenography, who is the audience of an inhabited room — its occupant, its visitors, or the occupant-performer as both (the Goffman dramaturgy of everyday life McKenzie extends)? See everyday-life, occupant-as-designer.
• Does the scenographic model dissolve the interior's client relationship (a set serves a production, not a dweller) — or re-found it (the inhabitant as the production's author, the designer as its scenographer)? Cf. interior-design-vs-architecture.
• Hannah's scenography is "open-ended" — a dramaturgy without a script. What, then, does the design brief specify: the event's repertoire, its possible dramaturgies, or the space's capacity to receive (Massumi's "what elements it lets pass")? See event-space, spacing.
• The note-1 literature ("Scenography as an expanding field," McKinney/Butterworth; Brejzek; McKinney/Palmer) is the concept's own disciplinary canon — should the wiki build the performance-design cluster around it, or does the Marinic Reader's interior frame suffice?