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Graduate Studies The Vault: Electronic Theses and Dissertations
2018-09-18 Emergent Scenography: the collaborative process of Conduct
Manuel, Bianca Guimarães de
Manuel, Bianca (2018). Emergent Scenography: the collaborative process of Conduct (Unpublished master's thesis). University of Calgary, Calgary, AB. doi:10.11575/PRISM/33054 http://hdl.handle.net/1880/108701 master thesis
University of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission. Downloaded from PRISM: https://prism.ucalgary.ca UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY
Emergent Scenography: the collaborative process of Conduct
by
Bianca Guimarães de Manuel
A THESIS
SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES
IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE
DEGREE OF MASTER OF FINE ARTS
GRADUATE PROGRAM IN DRAMA
CALGARY, ALBERTA
SEPTEMBER, 2018
© Bianca Guimarães de Manuel 2018
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Abstract
This thesis is the scenic and costume design of Conduct and the supporting Artist
Statement submitted is a reflection on and documentation of the material constraints, collaboration, design guided dramaturgy, audience effect, and design process involved in the thesis. This Artistic Statement was in an unconventional way, in order to accomplish that I created a website that include the chapters bellow. For a full experience of this thesis, please visit: www.emergentscenography.com
Key words: scenography, costume design, scenic design, artistic statement.
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Acknowledgements
I would first like to thank the people that helped me to complete this thesis research, without them this thesis would not be possible; My supervisor Dr. Pil Hansen for guiding me on strategic thinking and mentoring me not be scared of voicing my opinions as woman in the academia,
My co-supervisor April Viczko for helping me breathe while making me laugh throughout this process, and giving me practical solutions to seemingly complicated problems, Dr. Bruce Barton for teaching me to be patient in this creative process, maintaining the sense of humor, as well as the importance of being generous with my fellow collaborators, Sarah Banister for all the snacks she gave me when she noticed my sugar was low and my accent was stronger,
Colin Wesley for helping me with grammar, Graham Frampton and Travis Hatt for all the help and friendship, Gabriele Kuzabaviciute and Avril Lopes for the understanding friendship, and being locked out of Craig Hall at 03 am floor after painting the stage for 12 hours,
Zach Savage for randomly be walking by Craige Hall at that time and opening the hallway door for us, Amabilis de Jesus, Dorita Hannah and Britt Van Groningen for being inspirational performance designers, and introducing me to materials that helped in the completion of this thesis,
Bon Adriel for checking if I am alive and being mad at global warming,
David Ledo for teaching me about 'coding', All the technical team at SCPA for trying to support my process, especially to Lisa and Halina for understanding me,
To all my cohort of classmates for the journey and coffee breaks, Manuel iv
Raissa Castor, Jessica Souza and Amanda Olsen for the brasilidades in the middle of the winter, All my fellow artistic collaborators for exploring and further developing my proposals, Swallow-a-Bicycle Theatre, Pam Tzeng, and Kodie Rollan for beliving in me, Last but not least I invite you to read out loud this last part as I wish to acknowledge that this research was made on the land of the Treaty 7 People, the Blackfoot Confederacy of the Piikani, Siksika, Kainai and Blackfeet Nation south of the imposed international border. Other Treaty 7 signatories include the Stoney Nakoda- Bearspaw, Wesley, and Chiniki Nations and the
Tsuut’ina Nation. I also acknowledge the people of the Métis Nation here. I acknowledge all treaties; fulfilled and broken. I would like to acknowledge that colonial settler borders and names do not reflect the traditional territories.
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Dedications
Meus avós; Lygia e Guy por me apoiarem com amor e admiração, Bruno, Diego, Tatianna, Paulo, e Renata por todo o carinho e suporte, Javã e Maria Aparecida, a perda de vocês me ensina tanto sobre crescer, Cia Café Preto e Grupo Nômade de Teatro por continuarem a resistir nas discotecagens ad hoc,
Gui por todos afogamentos, Aline por ajudar a me desconstruir, Aos meus professores da Faculdade de Artes do Paraná por todo o pensamento crítico e me terem me ensinado tanto com tão pouco, sem vocês, não seria quem eu sou.
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Table of Contents
1. Introduction…………………………………………….……………………………………..8
2. Material Constraints…………………………………………………………………………10
2.1 Context………………………………..……………………………………………..10
2.2 Concepts………………………………..………………………………………...... 18
2.3 Applications………………………………..………………………………………..19
3. Collaboration…………………………………………………………………………………21
3.1 My Background in Brazilian Theatre as Context for my Collaboration………..21
3.2 Collaboration Between People……...……………………………………………...24
3.3 Thinking No-one’s Thoughts…………………………………………………...... 29
3.4 Roles………………………………..………………………………………………..32
4. Pre-Rehearsal Period.…………………………….……………………………………...…..36
4.1 Preliminary Designs………………………………..……………………………….36
4.1.1 Designing………………………………..…………………………………………37
4.1.2 Costumes………………………………..…………………………………………38
4.1.3 Set Design………………………………..……………………………………...…39
4.1.4 Props………………………………..…………………..………………………….40
4.2 After Preliminaries……………………………………..…………………………..42
4.2.1 Modes of Engagement for the Use of Costumes and their Critical Effect in
Performance………………………………………………………….…………………41
4.3 The ‘Final’ Designs………………………………..………………………………..46 Manuel vii
5. Through Rehearsals………………………………..………………….……………………..49
5.1 Devising Process………………………..……………………………..…………….49
5.2 Case Examples of the Rooms………………………………………...…………….54
5.3 Costumes……………….………………………..…………………………………..63
6. To Performance………………………………..………………………………….………….75
6.1 Invitation…….……………………………..……………………………….……….75
6.2 Who Gets to Say if this is Immersive Theatre?………………………….………..77
6.3 Scenography, Dramaturgy, and Montage……………..………………………….81
6.4 When Scenography and Dramaturgy Meet…………………..…………………..82
7. Conclusion: Design-led Creation………...…………………………………………………85
7.1 Loss of Control……………..…………………..…………………………………..85
7.2 Design Based or Guided Creation?…………………………………....………….87
8. Bibliography………………………………..………………………………………………...90
9. Table of Figures……………………………………………………………………………...96
10. Appendices………………………………..……………………………………………...... 97
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Section 1: Introduction
The interdisciplinary, collaborative, devised piece Conduct, directed by Bruce Barton and presented by the School of Creative and Performing Arts at the University of Toronto in
February 2018, was a complex, non-linear creation. I designed costumes and set, including properties, as my MFA thesis. Although I was assigned the role of designer for these aspects of the creation, I was co-inhabiting this role. I had the enormous support of my fellow collaborators to compose, create, analyze, and design the scenic elements of Conduct. Instead of designing alone, I offered my collaborators a frame and set of conditions for the designs to happen. In other words, we co-designed and cultivated the creation together.
In this Artist Statement, I am elaborating in how we explored the affordances of the source material, the American composer Henry Cowell, in the scenographic elements. This is done while remaining aware of how a production system affects the form and content of a piece. This thesis document is a continuation of my creative process. The writing is inspired by Gillis
Deleuze and Felix Guatarri’s statement, “there is no difference between what a book talks about and how it is made” (4). I invite readers to experiment and read about the different aspects and conditions of our work in an order of their own choice. This invitation and action perform what I perceive as an important characteristic of our creative process and the dramaturgy of Conduct: its multiplicity, its various branches, and its many possible narratives.
The experience of navigation offered by the Artist Statement website establishes relationships between the scenography, the process and conditions of making it, and the show’s Manuel 9
possible narratives. Depending on where you begin your reading experience (the first section you choose), different aspects of the research will be emphasized and affect your next choice. For those wanting a linear experience of this thesis, I purpose the following order:
1. Material Constraints
2. Collaboration
3. Before Rehearsals Started
4. Through Rehearsals
5. To performance
6. Conclusion: Scenography-driven Creation
7. Technical Drawings
The order above establishes a close to linear experience of my lenses, considerations, and areas of contribution as a collaborator. Please be aware that in combination these lenses, considerations, and areas provide a framework that has arisen through a specific process of artistic research. For those of you interested in creating your own structure and experience of this process, please navigate this website freely, allowing yourself to collaborate in the process of producing knowledge through the framework provided.
Bianca
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Section 2: Material Constraints
2.1 Context
My MFA Thesis in Drama at the University of Calgary (U of C) focused on Design and
Technical Theatre and employed Artistic Research (AR). I completed this work in July 2018. My role as the costume, prop, and set designer for the show Conduct was the focus of my thesis work. This show, directed by Bruce Barton, was the first interdisciplinary project devised by and involving the Divisions of Drama, Music, and Dance in the School of Creative and Performing
Arts (SCPA) at the U of C. The Division of Drama produced Conduct within the framework its own production model.
My MFA took place over two years. In the first year, I was free to tailor my courses to my educational outcomes and collaborate on productions that advanced my interests in scenic arts. I received valued guidance from my supervisors, Pil Hansen and April Vickzo, on course selection and the more technical aspects of scenic design. During this year, I was interested in advancing the dramaturgical relevance of scenic elements by developing a method and set of tools to foster awareness among my collaborators of the different approaches one might combine or choose between when designing a costume, prop, or set. I asked the following questions: how might I find and hold space for fluid approaches to design within a production system that anticipated predefined choices and structures? Can a process-oriented approach to design with openness to emergent options generate richer dramaturgical meaning and connections? How can the space conduct, confine and invite audiences? Manuel 11
Every year, the Division of Drama presents three mainstage productions. Undergraduate and graduate students are offered a range of diverse learning experiences in these productions.
These experiences include working with professors, productions teams, and sometimes hired artists from the industry. Each mainstage production typically involves one or two graduate students in roles such as director, dramaturg and/or designer. Undergraduate students predominantly focus on acting, but they can also be designers, stage managers, stagehands and assistant stage managers. In their course work, they are introduced by their professors to the different aspects of the mainstage production system. Faculty members can produce, design, direct, dramaturg, act, supervise students and incorporate the production in classroom instruction. Each show offers distinct learning experiences for the students engaged in the different aspect of the production system mentioned above. Since the students often are supervised or collaborate with their professors, hierarchies are involved in the creative and academic process.
The SCPA is fortunate to have Set, Prop and Costume shops. Each shop has a “Head” who both provides labour and supervises undergraduate student assistants.. The shops are supervised and led by the Production Manager who oversees the overall budget for each show (around
$10,000) and coordinates the calendar for the three Main Stage productions.
The Division of Drama’s production model seems to be inspired by the Canadian regional theatre model with its clear labour divisions and associated hierarchical functions. For example, a Director is expected to articulate what they want to see in the designs. These functions reflect the roles and processes involved in the production of script-based shows, which is generally the style most favoured in regional theatres. Manuel 12
At the SCPA, Drama students are taught to meet the expectations of this model with regard to their different roles. When working on a production that uses an already developed text within this model, the director and designers generally begin by engaging in a conversation about their initial ideas, images and interests as artists based on the descriptions and information provided by the script. Conversation can begin as early as one year or as late as six weeks before a set of preliminary design drawings and budgets are due. These meetings between designers and directors pre-establish the designs and intentions for the actors, sometimes months ahead of when the rehearsal process begins. There is no need to wait for the actors to start creating the visual identity of the show. In the Division of Drama, this conceptual design work is typically completed in advance of a first design deadline determined by the Production Manager, at which point the designer delivers the following preliminary design materials (this list covers my design areas only):
Costumes
• An initial costume plot which contains detailed information about each scene,
each character, quick changes, and whether the designer imagines the costume
being built, bought or pulled from the stock.
• Spreadsheet containing initial budget-lines per costume or performer
• Costume renderings for each character
• Colour pallet (overall or per scene)
• Reference images and specific notations about the elements in each image that
are of relevance to each character.
Set
• Ground plan Manuel 13
• Section plan
• White card preliminary model
• Notes about suggestions of materials.
Props
• Reference images for each prop on the set design
• Spreadsheet describing whether these props are to be purchased, pulled, or
built.
After submitting the preliminary designs to the Production Manager, the creative team
(director, designer, etc.) meets to present the design concepts to the production team (producer, production manager, shop heads, etc.). During this meeting, technical questions are asked and more explanations are given regarding the designs. The production team then has one to two weeks to determine the cost of the designs and inform the creative team. Conversations need to be held and substantial changes must be made to the designs in case the designs for show are costed above the available budget. Approximately one month after the first due date, final design packages which reflect such adjustments are due. These packages require:
Costumes
• Finalized costume plot
• Spreadsheet containing revised budget per costume or performer
• Finalized costume renderings per character
• Revised colour pallet
• Reference images and specific notations about what from each image is of
interest for each character Manuel 14
• Construction drawings for the built costumes.
Set
• Ground plan
• Section plan
• Final model
• Notes about suggestions for materials
• Technical drawings.
Props
• Reference images for each prop on the design
• Spreadsheet describing if these props are to be purchased/pulled/built
• Construction drawings
Once the final designs are revised and approved by the Production Team the construction period of the show starts. This period often lasts two months and is completed shortly before
Tech week. The rehearsal period starts two weeks after the final designs are due, continues for around four weeks and ends before Tech-week. Once full production begins any and all changes of the design must be explained to and approved by the Production Manager.
This model is advantageous for a script-based production. It provides the creative team opportunities to discuss ideas and plan the show in advance of production, which saves time and ensures a smooth process of creation. In the case of an unscripted devised theater production however, the design deadlines can become a substantial material constraint for the designer.
These deadlines require knowing answers sometimes two months ahead of starting rehearsals. As most of the creative responses, solutions, relationships and the script of devised Manuel 15
work will be developed in rehearsal, the designer does typically not have completed dramatic contents or clear staging concepts to design around in advance. Within the labour divided production model, the shop Heads depend on access to concrete answers from the designer and the stage manager. They consider the delivery of such answers with certainty (and few subsequent changes) as an essential precondition for incorporation. The designer and stage management team are also responsible for knowing what is happening in the rehearsal hall and reporting it to the shops in a timely manner while providing the production team with answers to their questions regarding details, safety and the effects of blocking (setting actors’ movement in space) on the designs.
Conduct’s time-line of design deadlines and production schedule:
U of C Drama Department 2017-2018 SUBJECT TO CHANGE Conduct – Rehearsal and Production Calendar Version #4 – November 28, 2017 Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday November 27 28 29 30 December 1 2 3
No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No rehearsal No rehearsal
Conduct Build Starts in Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build all Shops Stage - 7:30 Metamorphoses Stage - 7:30 Metamorphoses Stage - 7:30 Metamorphoses Stage - 7:30 Metamorphoses Stage - 7:30 Metamorphoses Closing Performance – start strike 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal
Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build No Rehearsal No Rehearsal
Stage - Strike Stage - Strike Stage – Restore Reeve Floor Stage – Restore Reeve Floor Stage – Restore Reeve Floor Metamorphoses Metamorphoses End of Classes 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal 12:30pm-5:00pm 12:30pm -5:00pm 12:30pm -5:00pm 12:30pm -5:00pm 12:00pm -5:00pm Day Off Rehearsal in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre 12:00pm -5:00pm First Rehearsal in the Matthews Shops - Conduct Build Theatre Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Stage - Conduct Construction Stage - Strike Seats / Stage - Strike Seats / Stage – Conduct Construction / Restore Matthews Stage - Conduct Construction Restore Matthews Restore Matthews / Restore Matthews and Rigging / Restore Matthews TBA Production Meeting 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal Rehearsal 12:30pm -5:00pm 12:30pm -5:00pm 12:30pm -5:00pm 12:30pm -5:00pm No Rehearsal No Rehearsal No Rehearsal in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre in the Matthews Theatre
Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build Shops - Conduct Build No Lisa Roberts No Lisa Roberts No Lisa Roberts No Lisa Roberts No Lisa Roberts
Stage – Conduct Stage – Conduct Stage – Conduct Rigging Stage – Conduct Rigging Stage – Conduct Rigging Construction and Rigging Construction and Rigging TBA Production Meeting End of Exams December 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Statutory Holiday
University Closed University Closed University Closed University Closed University Closed University Closed University Closed
Figure 1 Production Schedule, (Andrew North, 2017) Manuel 16
Figure 2 Production Schedule (Andrew North, 2017) Manuel 17
Figure 3 Production Schedule (Andrew North, 2017)
2.2 Concepts
The role of the designer is sometimes romanticized. By this I mean that the designer is expected to read a script and arrive at a bright, creative design vision that renders the descriptions of the script visible and embodied while realizing the director’s aesthetic preferences. If only looked at on a surface level, the designer’s role can be perceived as based on
“the inspiration that appears from hidden and unknown places, sometimes coincidental and unintended, that allows the artist to arrive at the genesis of their work” (Hauser 19).
In order to take a critical look at creation, we need to analyze the context in which it takes place and its effects on the final product. Through such an analysis we would become more aware of the systemic and structural conditions of creation that affect the people and things involved in it. We might ask how we are shaped by the spaces, language, people, economy and Manuel 18
situations that surround us and review the extent to which our perceptions and thoughts reflect such conditions. We may also consider the boundaries that organize our lived and shared experiences. Although experiences may be shared, it is also relevant to think about the ways in which they are perceived differently by each person based on their life experiences and past/present surroundings (Candy 1). Maaike Bleeker, in her article, Thinking no-one’s thoughts, explains how collaboration is the result of the relationships between people and between people and things (Bleeker 69). (See the section “Collaboration” for a more comprehensive introduction to this concept.) To better understand such relationships in a given production situation it is helpful to take a close look at its material constraints.
Approaching the subject of material constraints, I turn to the concept of ‘constraints’ as studied in the discipline of social cognition and connect it with a concept of ‘material conditions’, drawn from material theatre theory. Constraints are a set of spatial and external memory clues, social units and expectations, and even economic systems that in concert organize lived behavior, reduce options, and enhance efficiency (Soydan, et. al., 115). Ric Knowles argues in Reading the Material Theatre that we should consider the sociocultural and socioeconomic as the spatial politics of a theater architecture (Jackson 448).
The context of where a theatre piece is created and presented is crucial for its content.
Instead of operating with naïve notions of the instinctually talented and creatively inspired artist,
I propose that we understand creation and inspiration as a result of the constraints given by the surroundings and generated by people and things involved in creative processes. Linda Candy argued in her article, Constraints and Creativity in the Digital Arts, that constraints can have a positive and negative effect on a creative process. They are both limiting and liberating, depending on the case. She highlights that when we choose materials and tools for our processes, Manuel 19
we are also making choices about the constraints that will shape the result of our process. This takes us to the point also made by the philosophers Deleuze and Guatarri in A Thousand of
Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
2.3 Applications
As an international student at the U of C with a background in collaborative and devised creation, the systematic and structural aspects of creation within Drama’s production model are not a naturalized part of my training. I became aware of how the approach to producing affected the final results of the designs and the actors’ ways of engaging with designed elements after participating in four productions at both the mainstage and student-showcase levels. The regional theatre model and the institutional approach described were alienating to me and I realized that their constraints were not directly supportive of a devised and interdisciplinary creation process.
This understanding left me with the problem of how a preliminary design for an unscripted piece could be delivered two months ahead of the beginning of its rehearsal process.
Working off this problem, I started to engage in conversations with Dr. Pil Hansen
(dramaturg and this thesis supervisor), Dr. Bruce Barton (director), April Vickzo (producer and this thesis co-supervisor) and Andrew North (Production Manager) about what I first saw as a harmful limitation to my research and artistic practice. It became apparent after these conversations that only criticizing or comparing the model to my prior experience would neither affect the model, nor provide me with an alternative scenario more suited to devised work. This led to the decision of developing strategies for how to work within the limitations of the existing production system in order to advance some of the interest I had brought from my undergraduate work in Brazil and further developed in my coursework as an MFA student. Manuel 20
Bruce Barton and I decided very quickly that it was not logistically possible nor effective to generate the set from the performer's engagement with space and our source materials, the life and works of the composer Henry Cowell. Thus, we started to think of the set as a structure and decided that the props design would offer more opportunity for feedback relationships with the actors and process-based design choices. At that moment, we did not consciously know that the materials, tools and methods we were starting to develop in response to the material constraints of a regional theatre production model would significantly enhance the agency of design in this creative process.
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Section 3: Collaboration
3.1 My Background in Brazilian Theatre as Context for my Collaboration
I argued in the section on Material Constraints that the people involved in a creative process are shaped by their socio-cultural background. This construct is a significant part of what each collaborator brought to the process of Conduct. I have come to believe that awareness of such constraints and contributions, awareness of the lens through which proposals and situations are perceived, is a precondition for collaboration. Thus I begin my discussion of collaboration on
Conduct with a form of self-reflection. In the following section I contextualize the ‘norms’ that I learned as a student of theatre in Brazil.
The Brazilian Arts Industry is concentrated in the southwest of Brazil between Rio de
Janeiro and São Paulo. Both cities are the richest and more populated regions of the country. Rio contains the big budget Carnaval and the Escolas de Samba (schools of samba).Their production schemes are supported by a combination of public grants, earned revenue, and private investments. The Rede Globo is the world’s second largest commercial TV network (in 2017 it produced $4.4 billion dollars). São Paulo has significant funds allocated from the State to grants.
The city is known for using theatre as a tool to engage with the different social realities. The public grants require theatre groups to inhabit different regions of the city and engage with its urban and social issues.
The other regions of the country fall behind in terms of Federal support and grants from their respective States. I studied theatre in the city Curitiba in the State Paraná, South of Brazil.
Although Curitiba is not part of the Arts Industry, it is home to one of the biggest Theatre Manuel 22
Festival of Latin America, the Festival de Teatro de Curitiba, and it is recognized in Latin
America for its alternative, indie and amateur theatre scenes.
I started studied acting for theatre from 2007 to 2011 at the Teatro Lala Scheneider, a private company created by João Fiani. As well as student work the organization also runs a professional theatre, Cia Máscaras de Teatro, melodramas [comédia de costumes]. It is the only conventional theatre house in Curitiba and its biggest theatre has 140 seats. The productions are low-budget and the company does not have the funds to afford a production team or shops for construction of the scenic elements. The conventional theatre culture in Brazil is comprised of plays suitable for casting telenovela actors from Rede Globo. The spectator’s expectations are different for productions without the involvement of celebrities, leaving the remaining industry open to alternative, amateur and indie theatre.
After graduating from the acting school Teatro Lala, I started my undergraduate studies in
2012 at the Universidade Estadual do Paraná, (UNESPAR) Campus II Faculdade de Artes do
Paraná (FAP). This is a public University without any private investment or tuition fee. The public Universities in the country are suffering with the economic crises.
Since the beginning of 2015, corruption scandals involving the country’s biggest oil company, Petrobras, led to the impeachment of the President Dilma Rusself. This resulted in the rise of right-wing administration trying to close down high-level Public Education. Professors and other employees are very often not paid for more than six months leading to strikes (from
2015 to 2018, FAP has been through three strikes, the lengthiest lasted 4 months) and facilities are not replaced if broken. Besides the lack of structural resources such as discipline specific equipment, there is even a lack of basic necessities such as toilet paper. Manuel 23
The daily financial crisis led to constraints experienced on an educational and professional level in Brazil. They resemble the conditions Caetano Veloso responded to during the rise of
Movimento Tropicalista (tropicalist movement) in the 70’s when he stated: “I deny myself the
‘folklorization’ of the underdeveloped as a means to compensate for my technical difficulties”
(Campos 285). My professors were strict, not accepting excuses such as “but if we had the money we would build this…” We were taught to think of creative ways to stage what we thought was necessary for our piece. The introductory courses of my BA were on post dramatic and performative theatre, performance creation and performance art/installation.
Teaching students how to develop technically well-executed design concepts (artistic renderings, ground plans, models and technical drawings) was not relevant in a context where the largest portion of the industry does not rely on that. Instead it was more important for the scenographers to be trained to propose design for the embodied experience of a spectator while taking into consideration the material resources available, affordances and the pathos for the piece as well as performative tools to make scenic elements afford dramaturgical relevance by embedding them in the creation process. This use of the scenic elements gives the scenographer agency to co-develop the piece while requiring that he/she/they make careful choices.
Brazilian art is complex, multifaceted and multicultural. My experience is limited to the
South, a region with more European Immigrants than elsewhere in the country which unfortunately is perceived by some Brazilians as better and more ‘civilized’ since it has been more ‘white-washed'. My perspective does not include Frevo, Maracatu, Coco, Lundu, Maxixe,
Baião, Xoxote, and Xaxado, nor am I exploring the perspective of the Mulato, Cabloco,
Mameluco, or Cafuzó. I am also not writing from the pain of the Cangaceiros, Lampiões, and
Sertanejos or from the strength of those living in the Favelas (slumbs). Manuel 24
To work on theater in Brazil is always a political act, although it is not necessarily expressed in the theatre’s aesthetics. It is an attempt at resistance and a tool for maintenance of democracy and freedom of expression. I understand all forms of collaboration that question hierarchical and hegemonic models of production as political acts. Attempting to work with a person who does not share your cultural beliefs, aesthetic preferences and political views is an attempt to do something together (Eugenio and Fiadeiro 9) without trying to erase differences and become the same.
3.2 Collaboration Between People
The SCPA’s initial aim for the collaborative interdisciplinary production, Conduct, emerged from conversations between Professors Bruce Barton (Drama) and Jeremy Brown
(Music). Brown has been researching Henry Cowell’s life for the past 20 years. After Barton listened to a presentation by Brown about this extraordinary mid-century American composer, both were inspired to develop the first interdisciplinary mainstage show at the SCPA. Barton invited faculty members, undergraduate and graduate students from the disciplines of Music,
Drama, and Dance to contribute. The following program text lists the final team of collaborators:
Co-created and performed by students from the Divisions of Dance, Drama and
Music, Conduct is a small-audience, immersive performance/event inspired by the
enigmatic life and work of Henry Cowell, one of the most influential American
composers of the 20th Century.
Director and Lead Writer: Bruce Barton
Music Director: Jeremy Brown Manuel 25
Assistant Director: Sarah Bannister
Costume & Set Design: Bianca Manuel
Projection Design: Beth Kates
Lighting Design: Adam Kostiuk
Sound Design: Laurie Radford, Melike Ceylan and Adam Bell
Dramaturgy: Pil Hansen
Collaborating Faculty: Edmond Agopian, Allan Bell, Jean-Louis Bleau, Christine
Brubaker, Laura Hynes, Melissa Monteros and Rod Squance
A first creative experiment on the theme of Conduct was presented at the Spring 2017
Taking Flight Student Festival in the SCPA. It was a tool to learn about collaboration within the constraints of the production system (see the section on “material constraints”).
As faculty members and students, we explored what it means to collaborate across different divisions (music, dance, and drama). We learned that rehearsal expectations are different from discipline to discipline. The role of the designer was new to the music collaborators. They were not used to having someone in charge of their space, lights, or clothing.
For example, they did not consider the impact an item of clothing added to their costume could have on the piece.
The Production Manager, Andrew North, and Barton began developing time-effective strategies to encourage student and faculty participation in the project. Barton and North developed ways to articulate the expectations of a mainstage production and how the three disciplines employ different procedures and terms in the rehearsal hall. The director and Manuel 26
Production Manager were trying to explain the overall framework of the Drama Division’s production model to the collaborators of other disciplines.
Barton decided to have two distinct moments during the play, which he called movements, to show-case each discipline’s strengths. This decision helped the creative and production teams manage different creation and rehearsal norms. The first movement was generated by the actors and the second movement was a concert which included performers from all three disciplines. It was decided that the disciplines would rehearse individually and have an open-door policy for collaborators who were interested in seeing what was being rehearsed.
Starting on January 08th 2018, one rehearsal with all collaborators and their performers would be held per week.
When I began my early conversations with Barton and Pil Hansen (Dramaturg and thesis supervisor) about my collaboration on this devised piece, I did not have clarity about how much agency I would have in the creation process. I knew that the designer typically operates in a role that is secondary to the director within Drama’s production model (see the sections on “Material
Constraints” and “Conclusion” for more information). After some exchanges with Barton, in which I positioned myself as a designer and researcher, Barton and I started to explore where our individual inquires could meet.
My first main focus was on strategies that could educate the collaborators about the effect of different approaches to the scenic elements of the creative process. Without that awareness it would be difficult to enhance the dramaturgical relevance of the design. I wanted the scenography to have impact on and be impacted by the process to a greater extent than predetermined technical drawings and artistic renderings could facilitate. I wanted to explore what might happen if the design, for example, is physically embedded in the process. How could Manuel 27
the design affect and be affected by the collaborators? How would such an effect redefine the role the designer? Such inquiries were aligned with some of Barton’s scholarly research on dramaturgy and collaboration.
Barton and I chose to develop and test our strategies for the actors’ work with things in the context of the course “DRAM 460 Performance Creation” throughout September 2017. He introduced the class to the concept of turbulence, first drawn from Eugenio Barba and since applied to Barton’s own praxis-reflection in his article, “Navigating Turbulence: The Dramaturg in Physical Theatre.” After reading his article, I noticed shared areas of interest and slightly overlapping areas of training between Barton and I that could help me in my exploration with the scenic elements. In his article, Barton explores the different roles a dramaturg and dramaturgy can have depending on the focus of the process:
. . .The distinctions between text-based developmental dramaturgy and developmental dramaturgy within a physically-based devised theatre environment are inevitably exacerbated. Admittedly, “physically-based” and “devised” theatre are sufficiently broad categories to incorporate a wide range of very different objectives, techniques, and styles. However, for the purposes of this argument, the terms identify an approach to theatrical performance for which text is a secondary component—in the sense that text is often secondary both chronologically in the development process and in communicative significance. Rather, the elements of visual and aural presentation, as well as the work’s engagement with narrative, emerge out of a set of processes that are based in movement, improvisation, physical discipline, and the set of creative instruments understood and experienced as instinct and intuition. It is, in a sense, an opportunistic form of theatrical creation which, to a sometimes-alarming degree, relies upon an engagement with coincidence and the unpredictable through a heightened sensitivity to possibility and a rigorous ability to exploit its gifts (105)
The difference between physically-based and text-based dramaturgy could be easily related to scenic design. Scenic designers 1) propose a design concept based on a script and a director’s staging concept; or 2) experiment with design elements as they enter into collision with bodies, stories, sound and much more in the creative process. Barton and I had a shared interest in the dramaturgical relevance of scenic elements. We were both interested in dramaturgical strategies, Manuel 28
critical analysis and the emergent structures of a piece. Our shared awareness enhanced the importance and relevance of the design in this process.
My collaboration with Barton allowed me to suggest that we shift away from the most common understanding of the scenic design as the visual, aesthetic, and sometimes illustrative element of theatre to instead start with a focus on the physical and material design of space; a space that might attract responses from the performers’ bodies through their interaction with the physical surroundings. My goal was to generate stronger feedback relationships, which in turn would give the scenic elements agency and dramaturgical relevance throughout the devising and performance processes. This suggestion worked similarly to Barton’s approach to devised and physical theater. Here, the physical expression and (inter)action carried more significance than the acting style or technique. In concert, our perspectives produced a focus on the emerging physical relationships between performers and spaces.
It is not an easy task to analyze, reflect and elaborate on the process of collaboration in this project. There is a real risk of not doing justice to many of the different realms and instances of collaboration that arose between disciplines, professors, students and technicians. For the purpose of this artist statement, I will center my analysis on the collaborative process that I was directly and mainly involved in.
After a series of initial meetings, Barton and I started meeting with Jeremy Brown who taught us in greater depth about Henry Cowell. These meetings allowed us to combine Brown’s research with our early ideas for the stage design of the two movements. We also began having weekly meetings with Sarah Bannister (assistant director), Beth Kates (projection designer) and
Adam Kostiuk (light designer) to talk about the overall design and to share a more fluid approach to the design elements. We furthermore met with all of the creative team, including Brown and Manuel 29
Hansen, who contributed dramaturgically. In these meetings we mainly discussed the dramaturgy of the scenic elements and how they could prompt the performers’ creation (please see the section “Pre-Rehearsal Period” for more information).
In my experience Drama’s production model compelled the creative team members to become more united in our argument, framework, structure, adopted strategies and rules for process as defined by Barton (see Barton 9). We were aware that this was the first devised and unscripted theater piece that the school was producing within an otherwise script-base production model. In order for the constraints, such as deadlines, of this system to work in our favor, the creative team had to create strategies and arrive at mutual trust faster than a script-based piece would have required.
3.3 Thinking No-one’s Thoughts
It is often stated in scholarly research on collaboration that it has only been accomplished when something emerges out of the process which collaborators are able to recognize as a result which none of the individuals could achieve alone.
In his introduction to the book Collective Creation, Collaboration and Devising, Barton suggests that the essays available in the book offer “an understanding of collaboration that provides a practical bridge and a conceptual separation between the ideology from collective creation and the process strategies of devising” (Barton xiv). Devising requires patience and negotiation between the people involved. Conventional theater models involve collaboration, but it takes place across hierarchical roles and thus does not form the core of the work (Barton xii).
Although collaborative models do not reflect an ideology that is implemented and shared by the artists involved, it nonetheless questions the working relationships that are supported and Manuel 30
imposed in the theatre industry. In the case of Conduct, collaboration also questions the ways in which we work, create and collaborate within individual disciplines.
In her article, “Thinking no-one’s thoughts”, Maaike Bleeker focuses on the role of the dramaturg as the one that shares a friendship in thinking with the director or choreographer (68).
This role is not only limited to the dramaturg. Bleeker argues that, depending on the process, other collaborators might adopt the dramaturgical mode of looking. This approach entails a commitment to investigating the ways in which elements of the performance might be perceived or interpreted (69). The author suggests that creative processes are in fact a form of collaborative thinking. Such thinking is not meant to intellectualize the artistic practice; instead it involves thinking through material practices. With this work, the creation becomes less about the representation and realization of concepts, sources and so on. Rather it becomes about how choices and possibilities to enact ideas generate the performative practice.
It is clear to me that the final results of the set, props, and costume design became extraordinary and complex in part because they emerged between people and things (please, see
“After Rehearsals Started” and “Conclusion” for more information on this topic). I find it important as a designer to state that I fluctuated between the roles of the conventional designer, dramaturg, consultant, planner, and leader, depending on the moment of the process. As a scenographer I did not want to know all the answers to the director’s vision or to have big ideas.
In fact, the methods developed questioned the role, expectations and authorship of the scenography in a devised piece. I wanted to bring a developmental approach to the work of design that, like physically-based devising, is sensitive to emergent opportunities.
There were moments when the input, ideas, suggestions and concepts leading the design came from other people involved in the process (actors, creative team members, dramaturg, or Manuel 31
production team). Each one of these collaborators gave me their suggestions, impressions, and perspectives on the design. These were offered through a lens specific to their role and revealed ways in which the design could impact the creative practices that otherwise were not accessible to me. Such suggestions involved different mediums depending on the persons’ training.
Sometimes suggestions were offered in language, movement, blocking, ground plan, or drawings. As these offers were influencing my ‘territory’ or area of operation, I also influenced the work of my collaborators. The proposals I made through design (materially, technically, or conceptually) affected their roles, behavior and products in creation. Such events happened not only in these two directions, between collaborators and myself as designer, it happened in the most diverse directions between different collaborators; for example between scenographer and performers, music director and performers, director and dramaturg, and so on. The whole network of collaboration in this process was a lot more complex than the exchanges I witnessed and contributed to directly.
That being said, the collaboration established for the design in this process happened similarly to the friendship of thinking between dramaturg and director, proposed by Bleeker. The process of collaboration for the design elements was not work done together, instead it was work done in-between people and things. Each collaborator involved in this production brought different tastes, training and roles to this work. All of the collaborators never shared the exact same and vision for the piece. The designs emerged out of the arrhythmia between the collaborators and the material constraints.
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3.4 Roles
In this sub-section I want to examine the notion of roles in the creative practice. In the performing arts, a role is an area of responsibility or expertise occupied by a collaborator in creative practice. A role also suggests primary authorship of an area. A costume designer has more authorship of the costume design than the director. The costume shop, fitting area, related stores, and wardrobe storage are the costume designer’s territory to a far greater extent than the director or the producer. Training and professional experience also inform and enhance this authorship, thus generating a hierarchy. For example, an actor or dramaturg is usually not concerned with a type of stich chosen to sew a garment, or how many inches are taken from an item of clothing to make it fit the performers’ costumes.
I would argue that a role can be more than the definition described above, especially in contexts of devised, un-scripted and/or interdisciplinary praxis. Roles can also be social forms of interaction and therefore they are more fluid and adaptable than the professional definitions the creative and production teams operate with.
During the process of collaboration on Conduct, the material constraints of the production model directly affected the possibilities of how we could collaborate. This produced a gap between the production team and the creative team. The expectations of collaborators who worked on devising processes or musical concerts were different from the production team’s expectations. The specificity of the information expected in the preliminary design package by the production team was incompatible with a devised process. It anticipated the form of design involved in a script-based piece. The reverse was also true. There was a sense of incongruity experienced by the artistic collaborators, who were used to working on devised pieces elsewhere. Manuel 33
Thus, the artistic collaborators could not easily anticipate the expectations of the production team at the Drama Department.
It became clear to me that a wide range of notions and expectations, which derived from different models of doing and understanding performance, were directly affected by the people involved. Since live art is created by people, the roles are more than just functions in the process.
Roles are social relations and responsive to the expectations of the other as well as individual constraints. The feedback experienced between such behavioral responses may be able to stretch, perhaps even adapt, the constraints of a context and its inhabitants.
I started analyzing the responses of my collaborators (as well as my own) to the constraints of this creative process. For the creative team, the first constraints that became evident were a set of deadlines for the delivery of fully conceived designs, which fell before the devising process would start and were inherent to the production model. The production team were in turn presented with a set of new constraints; that is, a lack of stability, answers, certainty and a script to communicate the needs of the show. In addition, they had to work with designers who were more interested in the process than the result and therefore relied less on artistic and technical drawings representing a finished design vision than the production model anticipated.
I noticed archetypes of behavior depending on how the situation presented constraints to each collaborator, and whether or not they were able to use them positively. The description of these roles is as follows:
The victim: adopted when a moment and the collaborator’s perception of it afforded the
collaborator to position themselves as being wronged.
The guilty: arose when a collaborator felt and/or was perceived by the others as not living
up to the expectations associated with their official role. Manuel 34
The listener: the one who in any given moment was listening more to their collaborators’
opinions, feelings and complaints.
The always-right: when someone positioned themselves as if their perspective on and
perception of the process was the imperative one.
The exempt: when someone had opinions, preferences, or suggestions, but for some
reason decided not to position themselves collaboratively.
The lazy: implicitly assigned when a collaborator wanted others to complete tasks that
were perceived as the responsibility their official role or when they instead attempted to
transfer guilt of failing to complete such tasks.
The bureaucrat: when someone performed understanding, while actually positioning
themselves to work the system strategically and to realize their own preferences.
The leader: the one that in addition to the hierarchical position of their role in the overall
project is more familiar with the process and its possible directions and thus able to keep
the work in progress.
In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) Ervin Goffman discusses the different roles people adopt depending on their situation, and how these roles inform their personality.
Goffman says that whenever an individual interacts they are playing the role that they have perceived and learned to expect from a situation. He states, “We are all actors playing roles in our everyday life and our notion of self is a construct of the compilation of these roles” (Chriss
65). I would like to add that it is demanding to learn such roles.
It may take years to know a person fully, to understand the true complexities of a particular social situation or the sets of situations that comprise a particular institution. Yet most social interactions demand instant judgments, alignments, and actions. (Meyrowitz 67)
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The competence described by Mayrowitz may take two years to achieve in an unfamiliar institution. However, it is even more time-demanding to arrive at a shared social intelligence when collaborating across disciplines in an institutional context that anticipates a discipline- specific mode of working. We had six months to collaborate and create a piece. How can one truly recognize and consider the material constraints of people and things in such a short time?
At different moments, during the process of Conduct, I found myself playing all the roles described earlier in this section. I realized that most of these roles did not support the kind of collaborative contribution I aimed for in this process. When my responses were mainly at a personal level, they disrupted my collaboration and became another negative constraint. I realized that I could not change the institution, the educational program, or other collaborators.
Instead of focusing on the dissonance between my interests and the unfamiliar material constraints, I could attempt to map my responses and my behavior, in order to better see opportunities and unexpected collaborative effects as they arose within the constraints. As a result, I increased my ability to distance myself from my initial responses and personal preferences to support “no-one’s thought” in this process.
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Section 4: Pre-Rehearsal Period
4.1. Preliminary Designs
During our first brainstorming session, three months before the scheduled rehearsal date,
Bruce Barton (director) brought up the idea that a scaffold with broken down pieces might draw associations to the jail in which Henry Cowell was incarcerated. Additionally, it would be effective as the central set piece for the second movement (act two) of the show. At the time, I was interested in an alternative placing of the audience. I wanted them more immersed and less separated from the scenography. Our approach to the scenography focused on how the designs might feel instead of what they might look like (Benedetto 13). The visual must be a consequence of emergent aesthetics embedded in our exploration of the scenic elements during the devising process.
Barton then started thinking of the design through the lens of intimacy and suggested we create a cluster of rooms to form an intimate immersive environment. Each room would contain
1-2 performers and a few audience members at any given time, allowing for a stronger connection between spectators and performers.
Barton suggested a transition between movement one and movement two because he wanted the set design to provide a magical and unexpected experience (Benedetto 4). The curtains that divided the rooms would disappear and show to the spectators that the world changes from one moment to another as it did in Cowell’s life.
We decided that there should be 10 immersive rooms in movement one (act one). In collaboration with Jeremy Brown (music director), each of these rooms would be based on a specific moment from Cowell’s life. Instead of building a narrative representation of Cowell’s life, Barton proposed that the piece should become an experience (McKinney and Palmer 68). Manuel 37
This first meeting with Barton gave me guidance for how to structure my approach to the design task while perusing my interest in process-led design. It helped me begin to explore possibilities that would make space for my interests within the given material constraints.
4.1.1 Designing:
The scholar Teemu Paavolainen discusses the boundaries between scenery, props, costumes and affordances in her article “From Props to Affordances: An Ecological Approach to Theatrical
Objects”. Paavolainen argues that affordances are what one can do with things and the possibilities they might lead to for interaction in an environment (112). Working with this understanding, I proposed to think of the set, props, and costumes as affordances for the performers and audience members. Thus, I considered carefully how the materiality and relations between people and things can become incorporated in the experience of an audience through the performance (McKinney and Palmer 68).
The scenography was conceptualized to focus on embodying the affordances of each moment of Cowell’s life in the designs. For this reason, the scenography should facilitate an embodied experience for the audience member and strengthen the immersive character of the piece. Consequently, I was not aiming to illustrate or represent the selected situations with the room designs.
With the shift from representation to action comes a new focus on the ethical position of the scenographer and their responsibility in ‘not just observing the world but being part of it’. Irwin draws from Barad’s theory of ‘intra-action’, which states that agency arises from the relationships between things, rather than being inherently given to individual things. (McKinney and Palmer 62)
The creative team’s efforts to push past illustrating dramatic text and understand the affordances of moments in Cowell’s life, assigned agency to the relationships that an audience Manuel 38
member might have with the piece. This shift in scenic design approach directly affected other scenic elements. Throughout the process, the scenic elements became woven into each other and the designs were developed taking nonlinear and complicated routes. The way in which costume choices affected the process of selecting ten moments from Cowell’s life serves as a good example of a nonlinear route.
4.1.2 Costumes:
A space designed using affordances from Cowell's life could run the risk of becoming abstract; particularly for an audience member that expects to see a representational approach to scenography. In order to anticipate and accommodate diverse audience members, we decided that the base costumes of the actors should represent Cowell and the people that participated in his life. Most elements of these costumes were thus chosen to establish meaningful representations for the audience members by offering them hints about the characters. These hints were meant to provide information about the characters’ social class and gender and gesture towards the time periods of each selected life moment.
I also wanted the costumes to impact the performer's bodies. I proposed to Barton that we let one element of each costume be determined by a relationship with the performer. The inspiration to make this proposal for Conduct was inspired by Sofia Pantouvaki's seminar presentation Performer-led Costumes: designing through the performer at the Scenography
Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research in 2017 São Paulo, Brazil.
She presented co-designing with actors as a method for costuming research. Barton named these costume pieces “the personal elements”. I hypothesized that the performer’s personal connection to this aspect of the design should affect their embodied perception of the costume. Manuel 39
These conversations about the personal elements of the costumes directed my attention towards the subject of character. Were the actors representing people from Cowell’s life? Were they commenting on them as characters? Were they a combination of themselves and such representative characters? (See the section “Through Rehearsals” for a more in-depth analysis.)
When the preliminary designs were due, I needed to provide the costume shop a list of these personalities accompanied by drawings. I had dramaturgical meetings focused on the costumes with Pil Hansen (thesis supervisor and dramaturg of Conduct). Supported by my collaboration with her, I came up with the preliminary designs (see the section “Technical
Drawings” to view the costume renderings). Since we had not yet selected the contents for the ten rooms for me to work from, I instead asked Jeremy Brown for a list of ten people he believed had the most impactful encounters with Henry Cowell. This collection of people and their encounters with Cowell offered the direction needed to select content for the rooms.
4.1.3 Set design:
To enhance the immersive nature of the production, I suggested that we think of the material qualities and the colours of the fabric walls dividing the space into rooms. I wanted the set design to resemble a stereotypical prison environment and thus recommended grey as the overall tone of the color pallet for the set. The projection designer Beth Kates and I worked together to create a list of fabrics that would be favorable for the projection designs.
In one meeting with the full creative team, I highlighted the importance of the floor design to the immersive experience of the audience. Immersion is paradoxically connected to illusion; wonder is stimulated to create an experience of amazement, which in turn makes audiences unaware of the tricks behind the fictional environment of the piece (Benedetto 3). For Manuel 40
example, between movement one and two the truss lifted all the curtains of the rooms and allowed the audience to see all the rooms at once as a now different yet somewhat familiar environment. At that moment, most audience members were mesmerized by the change of the space and less attentive to of how it happened (see the section “To Performance” for more information). To immerse the spectators, we would have to initially stimulate the wonder and make them forget that they were in a conventional theatre space. Moreover, I proposed to the creative team the use of different materials and textures on the floor of these ten rooms, such as cement, foil, and rocks. My intention was to increase the amazement of our audience with extraordinary textures. Working on the design for the second movement, we started out with conversations about the overall size of the scaffold, how we would like to make use of it and how we could make it safe for a large number of performers.
4.1.4 Props:
According to the production schedule, the set needed to be designed at this stage for the carpentry to budget and then build it. Subsequently, props could be pulled from storage and sourced from thrift stores over time, allowing me to negotiate more time for process. This meant that I could make prop suggestions throughout the rehearsal process, while either inserting them in the devising work with actors to discover how they affect the actors or simply providing materials in response to needs that arise in rehearsal. Instead of providing sketches I thus merely pointed out how much money we wanted to save from the budget for the props.
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4.2 After the Preliminaries
The methods in which actors are trained potentially affect their relationships with design elements. This training is essential when working on an unscripted piece. Their training determines the ways in which performers might engage the performance materials for creation.
The articulation of ideas is a key to collaboration in such a process. I developed strategies to communicate different modes of interaction between performers and scenic elements. This can bring out the affordances, personae, and representations discussed earlier, and it eventually offers the audience embodied, immersive experiences.
During a supervising meeting with Hansen, I explained my need to articulate clearly the dramaturgical impact of scenography. Awareness of different perspectives involved in the relationships between actors, costumes, props, set, and space was crucial because different perspectives often affect outcomes. I noticed that the performers struggled in engaging with the scenic elements as physical materials with potential performative effects. Without this ability, the affordances of the scenic elements remain implicit to the actors. Thus, through exchanges with
Hansen, I developed and articulated modes of engagement for the actors, by paying attention to the costume design. Note that the sources on which I based my understanding and development of these lenses are cited here, however they were not provided in the articulations I shared with my collaborators and the actors.
4.2.1 Modes of Engagement for the Use of Costumes and their Critical Effect in
Performance
Costume design is a powerful tool for the construction of a character, persona and a piece, as well as for the interpretation/experience of an audience member. Costume Manuel 42
designers often use an aesthetic and representational lens when costuming. The following describes a broader range of tools we can bring to our performance when choosing costume critically.
Representational: The costume is designed to build and represent a character.
This way of designing a costume focuses on connotations, and on what we signal about this character with our choice of visual elements. The approach embeds semiotic information into the clothes for the audience to receive and interpret. This information exposes who the character is and situates her in a historical period and social context. For example, one can represent a character’s age with wigs, makeup and a specific style of clothing. A senior woman with a scarf suggests a specific body to the performer.
Depending on the other elements of the performance this body can be related to social class (e.g., add a crown or rags). It can also be made to express the inner emotion of the character (e.g., if the woman is crying, she might carry a tissue in her blouse’s pocket).
Aesthetic: The costume aims to expose the concept of the piece and fictional elements of it. Colours are used to help establish the fictional world of the story.
Aesthetic design is commonly based on the idea of beauty and what is pleasing to the eye. It is often used in movies and TV series, in which an overall pallet generates the emotional tone of the film or show. For example, characters can use contrasting colors if they have a disagreement. Colours drawn from the pallet of a character are then changed to expose and underline the character’s changing inner feelings or conflicts they are experiencing. This tool is focused on the visual message with reference to color theory and psychology (Best 51). Manuel 43
Performative: The costume affects the performers’ body directly. If we worked with a performative costume for the senior woman, we would be interested in exploring how the costume can make the performer older by choosing clothes that affect the physicality of the body. A performative costume can affect the performer’s balance or change their posture and the sound that they produce. It can challenge the performer’s strength and it might be uncomfortable. It is important to choose what the costume should do to the embodied mind of a performer as well as the concepts the artists aim to explore in their piece.
Physical material/object: The costume becomes a prop and its physical limitations and features are considered. It might produce sound, fall or catch, stick or move, fold and unfold, take shapes, and so on. The costume has its own agency. It is an approach that asks: can this object/clothing respond? For example, a designer working on a site-specific piece in an abandoned house decided to use contaminated clothing from the space, a garment that had animals inhabiting it (Manuel 9). The material had radical agency over the performer’s body; it could give them a disease. To offer another example, the costume could be composed of elastics that react to the performers’ movement with its own tendency to stretch, retract or snap. This approach is mainly interactive and responsive, and it is often combined with cognitive and performative approaches to costuming which direct our attention to how the material affects the embodied mind of performers and audience members (Irwin 43).
Relational: The costume comes into being through relationships; the actors’ relationship with the costume and the conscious connection they can have with an outfit.
To facilitate such connections through experiences, the costume can be worn outside of Manuel 44
the theatrical context. It can be something the actors own or have a memory of from a more personal context. The costume should be or become a piece of their history, a relational and situated part of the performer’s reality and something they have a relation to beyond the rehearsal room. For example, Theatre Replacement devised a show based on clothing donated along with a note about its personal significance to the donator
(Yamamoto 42). (See the section “Through Rehearsals” for more information.) Through this tool, the personal stories and experiences associated with clothing transcend the rehearsal room and extend into the lived pasts and futures (Shearing 10).
Cognitive/constrained: The costume gives clues about a character. A costume constructed from a cognitive lens limits who the character might be and how they are likely to act. In other words, such a costume provides cognitive constraints. Instead of designing a costume based on a description in a script, we wanted to choose a blouse and explore the clues this blouse gives us about whom this persona could be in terms of what the clothes invites them to do. From there, a pair of pants provides us with additional hints. Then, when the actor starts to explore this costume, the character already has a frame for to how to behave, determined by the constraints of the clothes. As explained by
Evelyn Tribble in her introduction to distributed cognition, our environments typically contain cognitive hints and constraints that limit our possible actions and make us function more efficiently. For example, a restaurant kitchen has tools in specific places to make the process of cooking easier. The chef does not need to think about where the knives are, their memory is triggered by the built environment (134). I argue that costumes provide similar cognitive constraints, and thus shape embodied behavior. In my examples, the actor draws on constraints embedded in costume pieces. Manuel 45
Every design of a costume can be approached through one or multiple lenses by the designer and by actors. The clarity of the approach chosen can be fundamental for the work if the creative team wants the costume to have a critical effect (Hann and Bech 4). This effect can be on the narrative, on/in the performer’s body and so on. Such awareness makes us think more carefully as creators about every clothing piece and what we want from it when relating it to our concept. It also makes us aware of what it might offer a spectator who is unfamiliar with the design and creation process.
This breakdown of possible ways to engage with scenic elements allowed for different outcomes and methodologies throughout the process. Barton drew on the breakdown when planning different methods to teach his students in the 460 Performance Creation class. In this class, he developed a prototype approach to use when rehearsals commenced for Conduct. I used the breakdown of the approaches to develop charts for the design of each of the ten rooms. These charts helped us consider the strategies and tools we could emphasize in each of the rooms. In extension, they also forced us to become aware of naturalized theatrical approaches, which in turn lead us to make active choices about how to immerse audience members in the scenography while considering their interaction with the space and performers.
For some of the rooms, I had clear ideas of scenarios that would accommodate sets of relevant tools and could be charted right away. The selection of tools and their associated lenses would provide the actors with a limited, but freely explorable space for creation. However, I did not have predetermined ideas for the other rooms. Thus, I decided to approach the remaining rooms as open research spaces and respond to the suggestions of actors and collaborators.
The charts helped communicate with the artistic collaborators and the dramaturg in a more effective way than a drawing would have. This allowed us to discuss and clarify ideas of Manuel 46
exploration for each room collaboratively. It prompted us to view the spectators and performers as scenography materials (see the section “Through Rehearsals” for examples and more detailed explanations of these charts).
At times, it felt almost impossible to be a designer with an interest and investment in research and process-based creation while also as attempting to meet the technical requirements of the production system. After the preliminaries deadlines, I had to develop methods to keep the designs responsive to the process (i.e., the charts) and try to make the designs realistic within a limited budget. When the production team returned their costing of the preliminary designs, the expenses added up to 65,000 dollars and had to be reduced to 10,000. During the three weeks left before the final designs were due, I mainly worked on excel sheets, calculations and meetings with the artistic team to determine what could be cut or adapted in order for Conduct to meet the required budget.
4.3 The ‘Final’ Designs
When the deadlines for the final designs arrived, we did not have ground plans, sketches, or conventional models for each of the rooms. The Production Team required them. At this point, we knew which moments of Cowell’s life each room would be based on, and I wanted to explore the affordances of each moment through the scenic elements and audience interaction of the different rooms.
When working with a more process-oriented approach to scenic elements, it is often more important to know ‘how’ than ‘what’. In other words, how to develop the design is more essential than knowing what the design is (Gaspar 209). In the case of Conduct, the approach we proposed for the creation of the scenic elements was incompatible with the production model. The creative Manuel 47
and production team often had rather different understandings of what needed to be ‘known’,
‘concrete’ and ‘clear’ at this point. Thus, the feedback I repeatedly received from the production team was that the designs were not consistent enough and changed too much while the creative team depended on the ability to adapt to devise the show.
As discussed in the section on “Material Constraints,” there is a commonplace understanding that to be a designer you need to envision something and be able to realize exactly what you envisioned. For devised creations, this perspective reduces the possibilities for and relevance of the scenography. In a devising process you are working with emergent ideas and materials through exchanges with collaborators, there is no script or finalized directorial vision to work from. It makes the process complex.
April Vickzo (this show’s producer and co-supervisor of this MFA thesis) gave me a significant amount of support and taught me important tools for how to navigate these two teams.
I had multiple meetings with her throughout this process, during which she advised me on how to improve my communications skills and bridge between the creative and production teams while sharing clear ideas and solutions for the designs. Vickzo offered me tips on how to work with the budget before the ‘Final’ designs were due. She continuously suggested new alternatives to help execute my artistic vision and research. Having Vickzo’s help allowed me to feel more confident when the creative process of Conduct was messy. The technical abilities I gained after taking her courses in design in my first year also helped me anticipate the expectations of the production team. These skills and this support allowed me to negotiate deadlines and deliverables and find openings in the production model for a more process-responsive design praxis.
For Conduct, the ‘Final’ Designs I submitted did not comprise the end of the design work as the Production Team might have expected. Although, many elements were as complete as they Manuel 48
could be prior to solving practical concerns during the construction of the set, the design remained a stepping stone for the creative team – a beginning. The real boundaries of the design process became defined by our decisions about budgeting and the scheduling of production labour. Both factors made the final design deadlines significantly reduce our options and rendered some design elements unresponsive to the devising process. These limitations also provided a structure, which can serve a positive factor in devising. Owning some decisions that have already been made throughout the process provides constraints and direction for the collaborative creation of the piece.
The storage resources that were available for the prop and costume shop at the U of C rendered these decisions less limiting than first imagined. Both of the school shops have large storage spaces filled with prop pieces and furniture that I could pull and return to try out options and make changes until a week before the opening.
I think that the collaboration challenges which emerged between the creative team and the production team were increased by the impact words have on the mindsets of people. Our words frame the world we live in and how we perceive our environments (Bazerman 311). “The Final
Designs” imply that things should not change after the deadlines, which is unrealistic in a devising process. Different terminology might help provide everyone with an alternative perception of the design and construction process and thus bridge the different expectations of the production and creative teams on devised pieces.
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Section 5: Through rehearsals
5.1 Devising Process
During the first two weeks of rehearsal, the director Bruce Barton had to teach the student actors the difference(s) between a devised and conventional process as well as the importance of collaboration for this type of creation. Most of these actors had either never been in a mainstage production or worked on a devised and unscripted piece before this project. Barton taught them about tool kits, and how crucial they are for creation. At the same time he emphasized the importance of considering the audience as active participants, and the different lenses through which we aimed to approach scenic elements. In order to accomplish this, Barton adopted the description of lenses that I developed with Pil Hansen (dramaturg and thesis supervisor). (See the section “Before Rehearsals” for more information.)
Barton decided that for this project, the actors’ interaction with the scenic elements should focus on the material, representational and performative approaches. He developed his methodology in the Drama 460 Performance Creation class, after consulting with Sarah
Bannister (T.A for the class and his assistant director) and I. After the experience with 460, he further developed his method and presented a condensed version in the first workshop sessions for the actors of Conduct.
Below are the assignments developed by him for the 460 class: Manuel 50
Figure 4 460 assignment (Bruce Barton, 2017)
Manuel 51
University of Calgary School of Creative and Performing Arts Division of Drama
DRAM 460: Performance Creation II / Fall 2017 Instructor: Bruce Barton
ASSIGNMENT #3: Collaborative Creation Presentations: Dec. 4 Reports Due: Dec. 6
The final assignment of the semester builds upon your work with solo performance creation based on historical research and costume/prop development in Assignment #2 and extends that exploration into a collaborative creation context. For Assignment #3 your task is to develop a short performance (approx. 10 minutes) with 2 – 3 other members of the class.
The Details
• The performance will bring each of your historical figures from Assignment #2 into a shared space and time and explore the potential in their meeting. • You can choose the actual historical context of one of your characters, or you can transport them all to a separate historical context. But you need to place them somewhere/when—that is, you need to locate their meeting in a specific historical moment. • The objective of the performance is not to mimic a realistic portrayal of this period or location, but rather to evoke the specific attitudes, ideas, and preoccupations of a moment in social and cultural history. As such, you are encouraged to choose a historical moment that you feel has strong resonance within our current context in Calgary, 2017. • The time and place of the meeting should be chosen and created to be particularly effective for imagining your specific figures, to bringing them to life through movement and sound (including, if you so choose, words, music, song, etc.). • Each group can utilize one piece of costume and one prop for each member of the group. For example, a group of four students can use up to four pieces of costume and up to four props. These can be selected from the costume pieces and props already in use from Assignment #2—but they need not be. The group, as a whole, can choose to work with other costume pieces and props, providing you do not exceed these numbers. • As with Assignment #2, these costume pieces and props should be selected and used carefully and specifically, with an explicit awareness of the range of relationships with the objects we’ve explored in class (representative, performative, relational, material). We will discuss these again in class; if you still have questions about the differences between these relationships, arrange to speak to Bruce and/or Sarah and/or Bianca.
Figure 5 460 Assignment (Bruce Barton, 2017) Manuel 52
The actors rehearsed six days per week and after the introduction to devised theatre, they were divided into their rooms. One of these six rehearsals contained the full cast of actors and other performers (musicians and dancers) that participated in the second movement of the show.
The structure of the ten rooms forced us to rehearse differently than the usual. Because of our tight time-frame (approximately one month) we had to develop and rehearse several rooms simultaneously. Three rooms had to be created to accommodate this situation. The idea that
Barton came up with, after many brainstorming sessions with the creative team and production manager (Andrew North), was that each room would contain a group of 8 audience members, last six minutes and be repeated 9 times for different groups. All audience groups would travel to their next room at the same time.
Barton, Banister, and Danielle White (the stage manager for the show) divided the rehearsal schedule into 2 hours per 2-3 rooms. Therefore, we rehearsed 6 rooms per day. This rendered it impossible for one person to keep track of what the actors and other collaborators were doing in each room. In the rehearsal hall, we taped the footprint of the 10 spaces in order to start the rehearsal process. While Barton was in one ‘room’, Sarah rehearsed in another. When there were more than 2 ‘rooms’ rehearsing at the same time, other collaborators (Pil Hansen,
Beth Kates, and/or I) would be working a room. Most of the time, I tried to watch the rehearsal process of the room that Barton considered more important to me.
Approximately half way through the rehearsal process, I realized that I needed to be careful with my participation in the creation of the scenes. Considering the leadership the scenic elements provided pre rehearsal period and the impact we wanted them to have in the devising process, the scenic elements could easily become too directorial. Manuel 53
Thus, the extent to which each artistic collaborator could impact each other’s roles became clearer. We often contradicted each other when addressing the performers. Someone would give instructions and in the next rehearsal someone else would be rehearsing with that room and ask the actors to do the opposite, adding new ideas that suggested a different path for the room. At times, that supported the creation and the students’ learning experience within a complex creative processes by teaching them to navigate the divergent opinions collaborators can have about the same thing. By example, they learned to propose solutions of their own.
When Hansen attended rehearsals, I observed her method of engagement with the actors.
At the beginning of the rehearsal period with each room, she told them what she knew about their work and asked them what Barton’s instructions to them were. After this initial conversation, the actors would start to rehearse. Instead of giving answers, she asked questions about what she saw. From the actors' answers, she offered multiple options and choices, leading to different directions for the creative process. Thus, instead of contradicting the suggestions made by previous collaborators and polarizing the options for a piece, she would highlight the many possible paths.
I decided to explore the combination of a designer/dramaturg. Rather than pointing out multiple directions, I saw it as my task to point out the different relationships they could have with the props, space and audience members. I did so while trying to avoid voicing personal opinions and aesthetic preferences that did not work along the lines of what the creative team aimed for in the process.
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5.2 Case Examples of the Rooms
Wild Flowers
Between 1905 and 1910 and as a child, Henry Cowell had to deal with the separation of his parents, an Earth Quake in his neighborhood in Chinatown San Francisco, his neurological disorder and the experience of dragging himself home after being beaten up severely by boys in his school (Sachs 20). Cowell had a natural ability to memorize flowers names (21). These were the main points from Cowell’s life initially raised by Barton and Brown that I used to create a chart of possible scenic lenses and elements for the room (see the section “Before Rehearsals
Started”). Later, Barton distributed a chapter from Joel Sachs’ book The Men made of Music as source material for the actor’s creation of this room.
Figure 6 Chart for Scenography development (made by the author, 2017) Manuel 55
The events described above gave me a clear idea of how to make the scenic elements perform the core of that moment in Cowell’s life. After researching this moment, I was struck by how all of his relationships and his environment were radically changed in a very short period of time: his physical body, family and built space collapsed. The word ‘collapse’ affords an action that suggests more than a representation of a space, but rather what it may do (Baktir 107).
Beth Kates (projection designer) had suggested alternative materials for projections, one of which was sand. Thinking of her interest and extracting from the image bellow of the debris the earthquake left behind in Chinatown.
The idea was that at the same time as the actor would be selling flowers to the audience, the cork would start to drop. Through the nine repetitions of the performance presented each evening a massive amount of sand would gradually accumulate, offering every audience group a slightly different experience of the process. When the world around Cowell changed in each performance, Cowell’s physical body would start to collapse. The drop of the body and the sand would become both performative and representational of that moment in Cowell’s life, rather than illustrative of his original historical and geographical context.
The production team had turned down an earlier request for sand on stage. They considered it too messy and impossible to be cleaned. As nothing was mentioned about the use of cork, the idea of using cork to represent sand and dust instead of the real materials seemed like a good solution with projection benefits. Unfortunately, the sand-drop we created also ended up being considered unrealistic by the production team, because of its price and the safety hazard it might cause (spectators could be harmed by the cork when it dropped from the grid above).
Furthermore, there were technical issues associated with cork because it was deemed too heavy for the grid, which already had to support the curtains for all the rooms. Finally, we did let go of Manuel 56
the idea of the drop and worked with a permanent pile of cork that would change in shape as it was handled by the actor over the duration of each evening.
The fact that the audience would spend half of the show on stage made the Production
Team worry from the outset of the project. Conversations about procedures to make the audience safe increased in frequency throughout the process and we were always reminded to address safety concerns. The artistic team’s interest in an agency of the scenic elements that located the performers’ interaction with space and objects outside the representative approaches was a significant challenge for the production team.
During a brainstorming session around the charts with the artistic team (see the section “Before Rehearsals Started”) we were all intrigued by how Cowell was selling flowers during the period of his life that room 2 was based on. With reference to images I brought to the discussion, we envisioned a flower arch that the audience would have to move through. I suggested that the flowers should be half real and half artificial, so that part of them would decay throughout the run of the show. This decay was intended to foreshadow and symbolize the collapse of his sexual blooming and creative exploration later in his life.
Historically, post-modern scenography and shifts in creators’ approaches to scripts led to discussions about materiality and representation in scenic design (Aronson 149). By far preceding this development, Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Graig were instrumental in advancing the 1880’s scenography to bypassing the conventional two-dimensional backdrop paintings that used to give the audience the illusion of a space described in a script. In 1888
Andre Antoine marked the end of illusionism when using real rotting meat on stage in his production The Butchers to provoke the different narratives that the use of real instead of representative materials could generate on stage (Banes 354). Today, centuries later, popular Manuel 57
theatre forms and the post-dramatic theatre have shifted many aspects of theatrical praxis; such as audience placement in theatrical settings. It has given rise to innovative scenography approaches that also have affected the relevance of physical objects on stage. When I decided that the use of artificial flowers should not only be the materiality of the flower but also a symbolic representation of it, it was with awareness of the labour of artists through history that has made such advances possible.
I attempted to use real materials on stage to produce greater material responses, such as the decay of the flowers. Once again, Andrew North (production manager) attempted to discourage Barton and I from proceeding with the flowers with reference to the potential allergies of audience and crew but he did not initially veto it from the production. North wanted to make the designs possible, but this production already presented many more changes and unknown components than the school is used to. Approximately one week prior to the opening of the show, White mentioned she has a serious allergy to flowers, potentially affecting her ability to call the show. Thus, if we were to proceed with the real flowers, the production risked provoking an allergic reaction and losing its stage manager mid-run. The Production Team decided that in order to test whether or not she would reaction, she needed to help with the physical construction of the flowers strings. White thus had direct contact with the flowers in a way that would not have happened when calling the show cues from the grid; and she did, predictably, experience an allergic reaction. We therefore had to work with plastic flowers.
As a designer intending to work with real materials on stage, this experience provided me with a useful learning experience. Next time I attempt to use real and performative materials on stage, I will ask all of the artists and crew involved about allergies or other medical conditions in advance. Manuel 58
Because of the production schedule, Lauren Brady (the actor in the flower room) did not have the flower arch and cork as materials for her creative process until the last week before the show opened. In order to support her work, we had to find other materials to support her process.
Working on the idea of selling flowers to the audience, she came up with a list of scientific flower names and descriptions to give to audience members. Hansen was interested in the traces that each room could leave with the audience members. Taking off from this suggestion, Barton proposed that audience members could receive feminine pink clothing pieces in the room.
Discouraged by the Head of the Wardrobe and the Production Manager, due to the logistic issues the idea could present, we decided to instead offer spectators flowers. Because of the absence of them in one rehearsal period, Brady started playing with giving ribbons (used in room 6 “Catch”) to the audience members. While watching her do that, I suggested that she try to tie them in flower shapes and name the flowers. Barton, then, suggested that she would look at the audience members when they enter the room to determine which flower they each resembled, give them the name as a present, and then attach the ribbons to their wrists.
Figure 7 Wild Flowers (Tim Nguyen, 2018) Manuel 59
Figure 8 Interaction with the cork (Tim Ngyen, 2018)
Figure 9 Flower Arch (Tim Nguyen, 2018)
Release
In 1940 Henry Cowell was released from prison into the custody of his colleague Percy
Grainger (Sachs 358). Cowell changed after prison. Brown described that although Cowell became more productive as a composer, his works became rather conventional during and after prison.
The intriguing part of this period of Cowell’s life was that he moved to Grainger’s house, which barely mimicked a standard lifestyle at surface level. Grainger had odd, private, sexual Manuel 60
habits and he kept his sadomasochistic praxis documented. The material was so condemning that he only allowed his Private Matters to be made publicly available well after his death.
Figure 10 Initial Chart room 7 (made by the author, 2017) To invite the artistic collaborators to use these charts, I organized and filled some of the fields with reference to previous meetings and exchanges. As stated by Joslin McKinney in her article “Scenographic materialism, affordance and extended cognition”, affordances are not merely related to the utilitarian invitation of an object, instead they are the reciprocity of ‘agent and world’. These are the offers apparent in the way that the perceiving body detects changes in the environment (81). With this statement McKinney further develops the concept of affordances of James Jerome Gibson and Teemu Paavolainen. Aiming for the reciprocity described by Manuel 61
McKinney, I took what was at the core of a moment from Cowell’s life and elaborated on what it could do to the scenography with attention to how it might constrain and affect the perceiving body of the participants – that is, performers and audience members (85).
In the case of Room 7, “Release”, we were all intrigued by the contradictions of Cowell being released in the custody of Grainger to ensure he would not reoffend given that Grainger was hiding sexual habits that were unaccepted at the time. Previously, Barton had shared that he wanted this room to be a naturalistic living room. After brainstorming with Hansen, I proposed that under the common living room surface the space would reveal private matters and secrets for the audience members to explore.
Initially, we considered that the discovered objects might be sadomasochistic tools.
However, to effectively hide and reveal tools, we needed a bigger room than our floorplan made possible. This limitation led us to consider miniatures that could generate the same effect.
Ground plan for room 7 as of December 15th, 2017
Figure 11 Room 7 ground plan (made by the author, 2018) For budgetary reasons the room sizes had to be smaller than we first imagined. In the case of room 7, this meant that the audience members had insufficient space for movement.
Thus, we first decided that they would be seated and served tea in cups with tiny sadomasochistic tools. Although that was a great idea, we had to change it to make it work Manuel 62
within our budget and to solve the logistic problem of how these objects would be cleaned.
Instead, we came up with the idea of erotic stickers to be attached to the bottom of the teacup.
Building on the cognitive suggestion of the initial chart for this room, the actors started to work with real physical constraints of hiding and being cloistered. Thus, the actor performing
Cowell (Jaden Sullivan) was hiding from the audience members, who were guests at a tea party welcoming him back to society, while Grainger (Rylan Strachan) talked to the audience members making them uncomfortable while touching them or sitting very close to them.
Figure 12 Room 7 Performance (Tim Nguyen, 2018)
Figure 13 Room 7 Performance (Tim Nguyen, 2018) Manuel 63
Sullivan devised a journey of hiding under the sofas, and surprised the audience members with interactions (knocking under the sofa, passing them teacups from below their seat, dropping handcuffs and whips). He also had the cognitive and performative task to hide in the cloistered spaces under all the sofas until the end of each scene repetition.
During the rehearsal process, both Sullivan and Strachan were able to use the initial frame proposed in the charts and add their own visions of their scene. The text spoken by
Strachan was generated through experimentation and edited by Barton. In other words, the initial suggestion for the scenography generated lenses and pointers for their creation, which in turn produced dramaturgical relevance. Developing the scene on the actual physical elements with the chart, allowed them to discover how the affordances of the environment invited them to create (McKinney 81).
5.3 Costumes
Henry Cowell’s costuming evolved with the set design, as it was related to each room
Cowell appeared in. The final ground plan design determined that the events selected by Jeremy
Brown (music director) for room 2-10 would be organized in a chronological order. Thus,
Barton, Bannister and I decided in a brainstorming meeting that we would apply color psychology and theory to Cowell’s costumes. Our thoughts were organized by Lisa Roberts
(head of the wardrobe) as the following; the youngest and naive Cowell would be lighter, bolder, and brighter while the oldest Cowell would be darker.
I decided that the actors performing Cowell would be wearing orange colors, while the other characters would be in grey and blue tones. This choice was meant to make Cowell seem out of place in the world created, just like he did not fit into societal expectations in his life. The color pallet of the set was grey, neutral, and easy to match anything to. Both oranges and blues Manuel 64
fit the set design pallet. At that time we did not consider that blue is the complementary color of orange, and thus the result of the costumes ended up being different from the dramaturgical intention. Because blue and orange complement each other, Cowell remained distinguishable, but did fit the world. The colour pallet of costumes and set made the design aesthetically coherent and pleasant (Albers).
The budget did not allow for all of the costumes to be created, so they had to be pulled from Drama’s storage or bought from second hand stores. The limited selection these options provided meant that Cowell’s costumes had to become shades of browns, oranges, and creams.
As for the other characters and performers, the color pallet remained the intended blues and greys.
Barton, Banister, and I had several meetings to decide on how to approach the actors’ personal element in the participatory design. Barton wanted this element to be subtle and small.
He also suggested that we find a strategic way to avoid making the personal elements too preciously attached to the actors’ own memory in order to ensure that the actors remained connected to their respective personalities in the work.
Regarding the matter of clothing and memory, Maiko Yamamoto explores in her article
Undressing a devised creation by Theatre Replacement that is based on donated clothes. The use of clothing in this piece motivate their creation, and they integrate into their work with costumes a series of stories that was either provided by the donors of the clothes or sourced in the performers’ own personal memory. Just as they “try on people’s clothes, they try on people’s stories” (42).
Johanna, who had donated clothing to the piece, was asked about her reaction to watching her personal memory performed by the company in front of an audience. She said that you “find Manuel 65
out as much about the memory itself as about the person who is telling it and their attitude towards the story” (42).
Applying the reflections from Yamamoto to Conduct made me think that the personal items brought by the actors would have relational stories behind them; connections to memories.
If these elements provided pieces of the actors’ personal stories, it might give them more agency regarding their costume design. The intention with the personal elements was to remind these actors during rehearsal and performance of the fact that they were as much personalities as they were themselves in a presentational state.
This mixture of personality and self, reminded me of the scholarly research of Amabilis de
Jesus who discusses the role of costume throughout history in her PhD dissertation Figurino-
Penetrante: um estudo sobre a desestabilização das hierarquias da cena (Penetrative-costume:
A Study on Destabilization of the Scene’s Hierarchies).
Jesus problematizes the role of costume in a piece and discusses how it relates to the performing body. She establishes through a historical analysis that the conventional costume is based on semiotic signs to visually inform a character and denominates a figurino-involucro
(costume-shell). In Greek theatre, for example, the main costume piece was the mask. The clothing was used to make the figure of the mask verisimilar, to provide proportion to an audience watching the piece from distance (30). She states that in that period, “the habit makes the monk” (the costume makes the character) (30). Drawing on Roland Barthes, Jesus states that the mask in Greek theatre did not only hide, it exhibited.
A question is established: the persona (invisible) manifests itself on the mask (visible), instead of on the performing-body (that is hidden by the costume). The body is a vehicle, a kind of channel, or ‘mask- characterization’ support. That is, the body of the persona is an extra body, "outside" of the performing-body (…) However, Jean Chevalier emphasizes that the theatrical mask, derived from the Manuel 66
sacred dances, is a modality of the universal Self, serving as protection of the personality of its bearer, being that the Self is immutable and is not affected by contingent modifications. The notes of Girard and Ouellet make sense the moment they reveal the distance between the characterization made by the mask, willing to separate the body of the actor from the body of the character, and the characterization made by the costume, glued to the body of the actor, and, moreover, making no distinction between performing and character body, it is not a matter of between bodies, but rather it is a matter of between the Selfs. (30)
The author then highlights the uses of costume in Constantin Stanislavski’s practices.
Although it did not include masks, it did not differ as much from the Greek theatre as one could imagine: “The use of costume is still the one of composing a body that is not of the actor. It is composing an extra body” (31). The actor would look for ways of embodying the characteristics of the costume described in the text. For example when working on how a moldy coattail informed a body, a Stanislavski trained actor searched for symbolic or semantic meaning to imagine a character instead of exploring the costume’s materiality or cognitive constraints.
Although the costuming approaches during that period separated the performing-self from the character-self, the acting method at that time did inquire and approach subjectivities that connected these selves, such as ‘emotional memory’, ‘subconscious’, and ‘I am…’ (31). All of these methods are described in Stanislavsky’s book An Actor Prepares. During naturalism, the
“habit also makes the monk” (33).
Jesus moves away from masks and figurino-involucro (costume-shell), elaborating on costuming as a tool to unite the character’s body/self and the actor’s body/self, and from their relationships and responses constitute a persona that is present in the encounter between body, self and costume. For example, her case-study is a costume piece supervised by her, performed by Leo Fressato, Débora Vecchi and Elenize Dezgeninski, that was part of the Extreme Costume
Exhibition in the Prague Quadrennial of 2011. The costume was “made of ice – a material that Manuel 67
necessarily melts in proximity to the body warmth’s – it played with the notions of ephemerality vs. eternality” (Prihodova 82). The garment contained an ice bra and a 10cm high clog. The piece’s subject matter was dramaturgically affected by the performers’ constant interaction with the material of the costume. It became about sexual violence, and the costume was performative as it was penetrating, hurting, and burning the performing-bodies (Silva 153). There, another notion and concept of costume is established. This costume, named figurino-penetrante
(penetrative-costume) by the author, penetrates the performing body while constraining their movements and ability to control and rationalize relationships.
Amabilis de Jesus’ works reflects the principles of critical-costume although she does not reference it directly. This concept is derived from a network of costume designers attempting to enhance scholarly costume research beyond examining visual meaning. As defined by Rachel
Hann and Sidsel Bech; costume is critical and a “means of critically interrogating the body” (3).
Dorita Hannah further develops; “it is high time we do speak of how design elements not only actively extend the performing body, but also perform without and in spite of the human body”
(Hannah and Mehzoud 103). The newly combined terms proposed by Jesus: such as costume- shell, costume-penetrative, and freezing-costume (figurino-involucro, figurino-penetrativo e figurino-penetrante), highlight to the reader how the role of costume was changed in the making of a piece. Indeed, these terms invite the reader to change their conception of and expectations regarding costumes accordingly. An invitation is also extended to question the body in ways that character representation does not engender.
With this perspective in mind, I started to reflect on the impact the costumes of Conduct would have in the performance. They were not meant to represent a character through naturalistic integration of costume and actor, but instead help generate a personality from the Manuel 68
common point between the actors and Cowell. The costumes were also meant as a potential comment, voicing each actor’s opinion on his emblematic figure. The costumes should be connecting Cowell’s body (representational costume), the actors’ bodies and relational memories triggered (their personal element) while maintaining a productive difference between these layers.
The framework I offered the actors to help them pick these personal elements was inspired by Tim Etchell’s chapter On Performance Writing of the book Certain Fragments: Texts and
Writings on Performance, in which he performatively demonstrates his approach to found text in the context of devising:
1. A text to be whispered by the bedside of a
sleeping child.
2. A text to be willed aloud by a single performer
in a car park at dawn.
3. A text to be left on the Ansa phones of
strangers.
4. A text to be spoked while fucking secretly a
partner of a good friend.
5. A text for a megaphone.
6. A text that could be used as a weapon. (98)
Etchell’s chapter On Performance Writing is not only referring to written texts as script and dramaturgy, but rather as language –found, broken, used out of context—that can become a tool in creation. Instead of giving his actors texts, Echells gives them procedures and invitations to collaborate. He does not give them ‘what to say’, rather Etchells gives his actors ‘how to say’. Manuel 69
He states; “for me writing was so often about collecting, sifting, and using from bits of other people’s stuff – copied language like precious stones” (101). With that in mind, I proposed to
Barton the following list of instructions to help the actors select their personal element:
Room 1: Cage: something to wear being sarcastic towards an audience. Room 2: Cowell: something you have from your childhood, or what would you would wear if you had a drag persona as a child, or what would you take from your wardrobe if you had to evacuate your home. Room 3 Cowell: something that is extraordinary from your wardrobe. Sidney: something that is exceptional to you in your wardrobe Room 4: Cowell: what would you take with you on a long walk? Varian: what would you wear if you were crating your own cult?
Room 5: Cowell: do you have something it took you time to find? Theremin: what would you wear to invent something new? Room 6: Cowell: if you hid a small item from your wardrobe in your prison cell, what would it be? Graham: what would you wear if you were visiting a friend in prison? Room 7: Cowell: what would you wear on your first day out of prison? Or do you own something that makes you feel clustered? Grainger: what is best to hide things in? Or what do you own in your wardrobe that you hide? Room 8: Cowell: a small item to take when traveling abroad. Room 9: Cowell: what do you have in your pockets? What do you wish you had in your pockets? Room 10: Cowell: something you own and wear that is not yours. Sidney: What item makes you remember something you forgot?
Barton considered the list too limiting for the actors and thought we should let them bring their personal elements without any framework. The process went on and we postponed the final decision of how to approach this method of costuming. The costume shop did not allow us to Manuel 70
rehearse with the real costumes, because they might be harmed and add labor time to the shop.
This material condition demotivated us and strengthened Barton’s concerns as the actors might become too attached to their personal elements if they were the only material costume pieces they had worked with in rehearsal. Thus, we did unfortunately never have the chance to implement this important idea.
Nevertheless, when I continue to reflect on this method of co-costuming with performers it is for the purpose of implementation in future projects. Looking back at my list, there was a form of engagement with memory that might be interesting for the performers, but it also might be too rational and thus block their creativity. The sentences I wrote resembled a Stanislavskian approach to costumes; my questions about what the actors would wear had some similarity to
Stanislavski’s ‘what if’ approach to the construction of a character (Sawoski 13). If I could re-do it, I would change any verbs that imply thinking and imagining to actual verbs that could inform an action to be realized by or with the costume Thus, suggesting to performers how to choose their personal item, rather than what to choose:
Room 1: Cage: a sarcastic item of clothing.
Room 2: Cowell: an item from your childhood, or a gendered piece of clothing reflecting the opposite gender of what you were assigned at birth, or take the most important item of clothing you own (do so quickly and just before leaving your house).
Room 3: Cowell: an extraordinary piece of clothing. Sidney: an exceptional piece of clothing.
Room 4: Cowell: an item for a long walk. Varian: an item for believing.
Room 5: Cowell: a found item of clothing. Manuel 71
Theremin: invent an item of clothing.
Room 6: Cowell: hide a precious piece of clothing on your room (scenery). Graham: a clothing to visit someone in prison.
Room 7: Cowell: a tight or cluster piece of clothing. Grainger: an item of clothing that hides things in it.
Room 8: Cowell: a small item that traveled abroad. Room 9: Cowell: a silent item of clothing.
Room 10: Cowell: an item of clothing that is not yours. Sidney: an item of clothing to remember someone.
Without the personal elements, there was a real risk that the costumes would be perceived by the audience as merely illustrative of these historical figures. Barton’s aesthetic preference was for subtlety, thus I decided that for the costumes not to be merely representative I would add subtle details that produce dissonance. I wanted something that made the audience think “did I miss this?” thus making them reflect on the costumes and question the personality experienced.
I went through all the accessories from the costume shop to find something that there would be multiple of to give to all the Henry Cowells. I found that the shop had multiple clip-on flower earrings and flower brooches. Both were a reference to Henry Cowell’s childhood. He was selling wild flowers when he was a kid to help his mom pay for their food. While he was selling plants, he met the educational psychologist Lewis Theremin who was impressed by
Cowell’s knowledge of botany. He was recruited by Theremin to be part of his studies and considered ‘gifted’. Cowell also had a drag persona as a child and his mom allowed him to dress- Manuel 72
up in women’s clothing. He was always performing to his neighbors and considered an attraction in his neighborhood. (Sachs 20)
Elaborating on this element of Cowell’s personality, and buoyed by the fortunate accident of the stock of flower accessories in the Costume Shop, I pulled a flower brooch and earrings for each of the Cowells. To assign these accessories, I returned to the principle of colour shades used for the selection of clothes: the youngest would wear bolder and bigger accessories and the older
Cowell was assigned smaller items. In addition to the childhood references, the earrings were a tactic to comment on the aspect of Cowell’s life I found more interesting; namely his sexuality.
This aspect was otherwise not explicitly showed, discussed or problematized in the rooms.
After a late rehearsal, Barton and I went to the costume shop. I had to show him the fabrics I had choose for Percy Grainger’s costumes. At that moment, I also showed him the brooches and earrings and he loved them and told me to look for more subtle details/comments for the other characters. We were only able to see the full finalized costumes with the brooches and earrings at the first dress rehearsal. Barton liked the brooches, but had some concerns about the earrings. To him they stood out, attracted attention and worked against his aesthetic preference for subtle choices. He was even concerned that they might overdetermine the audience’s interpretation.
In Conduct, ten performers were cast as Henry Cowell, half of them were women. No male actor was performing a female role. During the process of pulling costumes, I became aware of how clothing is gendered and can gender. Since we were not trying to enact the character of Cowell and it was not the focus to hide the actors’ gender, I understood that we could pull jackets, suits and shirts based on each performer’s gender identity.
Before making that decision, I had a meeting to discuss it with Bruce Barton, where he Manuel 73
told me that women’s clothing might make the actresses look stylish, something that would not fit the piece. During that conversation, I did not inquire about his definition of ‘stylish’. This was a significant mistake as in that moment it stopped me from continuing to develop my work on gender in costume and performance. I became more aware of the costuming culture at the
Division of Drama, perhaps in the Calgarian theatre scene, possibly even beyond Calgary. Seeing women dressed in men’s clothing nowadays is common, thus also becoming more verisimilar and acceptable in theatre, whereas men using a small women’s accessories can change the whole aesthetics of the piece to a ‘drag show’. This reminds me of what has been mentioned earlier in this section, “how design elements not only actively extend the performing body, but also perform without and in spite of the human body” (Hannah and Mehzoud 103). In this case, the design element of the earing did not perform without or in spite of the human body, but it did perform on the body, adding a layer of dissonant discourse to the costumes.
I interpreted Bruce’s response to the earrings as an example of ‘the conflict of the drag- show’ described above. On the one hand, this conflict can seem paradoxical, particularly when reflecting on it through costume history: men commonly cross-dressed as women in Elizabethan theatre because the moral standards of that society prohibited women from performing on stage.
On the other hand, the conflict might show how masculinity and femininity evolved. As woman gained professional territory in the patriarchal system, perceived threats to heteronormative male dominance and image shifted.
Judith Butler elaborates in Bodies that Matter on how bodies are constructed (x). Mark
Edward suggests that “the practice of drag offers means of queering the conventional notion of costume to expose how gender is performed, and reperformed, through the practice of dressing.”
(Hann and Bench 7). The ‘drag’ aspect was not a choice that I made consciously when choosing Manuel 74
the earrings to comment on the assumption of gender and sexuality (the actors’ and Cowell’s) in
Conduct. Rather, it was a position taken to create a dissonance for the audience and performers.
But again, design elements can perform discourses on the performing body.
Initially Barton did not accept my choice of earrings and thought they were introduced too late in the process. After the first dress rehearsal, he asked for time to think about the earrings. After more conversations, we decided to keep only one earing for the right ear of all the
Cowells, allowing the audience to see it in some moments, and not in others depending on the performer’s movement. This decision made space for my artistic input as costume designer alongside Barton’s aesthetic preferences for the show as director. It further developed, and perhaps even shifted, my initial intention regarding elements of disruption in the costume. The question about Cowell’s sexuality and gender identity was raised. The discomfort for an audience member in seeing an earring on a male-identified actor revealed the inherent duality of this emblematic figure, perhaps disrupting the recognition of a naturalistic character for the audience and inviting them to reflect for a moment.
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Section 6: To Performance
6.1 Invitation
As the audience entered the lobby of the Reeve Theatre, they were invited to download the
Conduct app on their phone which contained all the soundtracks required for each of the rooms.
While waiting for the play to start they were able to watch and interact with the lobby display. The display was designed by Gabriele Kuzavabiciute (computation and media designer), Pil Hansen
(dramaturg and thesis supervisor) and me (costume and set designer).
Figure 14 Lobby Display (photo by the author, 2018) The display contained information about each of the rooms: the personalities it contained, its position on a historical overview of Henry Cowell’s life, the performers working the room and a prop that would be in the room. Audiences were given the option to look for each prop in Manuel 76
its specific room, making it a point of reference that might be triggered later when the audience members saw these objects during the play. This reference also invited them to come back and read the display in order to reevaluate their experiences of each room.
Two design options initially explored for the lobby display:
Figure 15 Display Technical Drawing (made by the author, 2018)
Close to the beginning of the performance, audience members were divided into groups of eight and were asked to choose a room number. The selected room number indicated where they would start their journey through Henry Cowell’s life. After they were divided into their groups, the director, producer, or assistant director read a set of instructions for the audience.
These instructions were required by the production team in order to make the audience aware that they would be standing for part of the performance and in enclosed environments. After the rules were read out load (a praxis that reminded me of the safety instructions that are delivered Manuel 77
before the departure of an airplane), the audience members were blindfolded and taken into the selected room by an actor portraying Henry Cowell.
Once every group entered the space, the curtains on the perimeter of the rooms closed.
This served as a metaphor of prison gates closing and Cowell’s imprisonment. The audience members were still blindfolded at this point. After a lighting change that gave a visual cue, all the performers asked their groups to take their blindfolds off. The performance started simultaneously in all rooms after a second light cue.
6.2 Who Gets to Say if This is Immersive Theatre?
In the sections “Collaboration”, “Pre-Rehearsal Period” and “Through Rehearsals” I mention that my initial interest was in creating a design that would minimize separation between the audience members and performers, be more responsive to the process and have greater impact on the audience’s perception of the piece. Bruce Barton (director of the piece) and I defined these characteristics as immersive theatre. The definition offered by Josephine Machon in the book Immersive Theatre suggests that immersive experiences “combine the act of immersion – being submerged in an alternative medium where all the senses are engaged and manipulated – with a deep involvement in the activity within that medium” (21-22).
Reflecting on the perspective presented by Machon, I started to question whether or not the design in Conduct was immersive scenography. As mentioned by Machon, immersive practices are not necessarily dependent on a space and an environmental frame alone.
Repositioning the audience as the center of a space may not in and of itself render the work immersive. An example of such an attempt would be to move an audience from the auditorium to Manuel 78
a dining set in a ‘real’ apartment. However, immersive theatre also seems to rely on the audience’s engagement with the performance.
In the chapter “Audience Immersion, Mindfulness and the Experience of Scenography” from the book Scenography Expanded, David Shearing discusses his performance of The
Weather Machine. This production differed from Conduct in that it “had no human performers except the presence of an audience within the space” (4). Shearing’s reflections do nevertheless offer notes of relevance to understanding the immersive nature of Conduct’s design. He argues that present day theatre encounters are often positioned between binary principles of spectatorship: passive and active. The first refers to sitting and watching a show without affecting its plot, whereas the second position can affect a plot and render the spectator a collaborator in a show. The Weather Machine is a show where audiences had to make their own decisions. As they did so, they perhaps “become aware of their own individual shifting requirements as a participant in relation to the scenographic space” (2). Shearing continues by claiming that this kind of “scenographic encounter could enlarge the binary of active and passive spectatorship that is more commonly seen in contemporary theatre” (6).
One small example of this dilemma became explicit from my exchanges with audience members after designing for both Conduct and the work Invisible by the Handsome Alice theatre company. I was surprised by the audience feedback regarding their experience of immersion in the plays. Invisible was presented in the Matthews Theatre at University of Calgary, a small black box theatre which we filled from wall to wall with AstroTurf (synthetic grass). On this turf we placed beds for audience seating and as set pieces for the performers. Although my approach to scenography was to include the room as a whole in the theatrical space, the stage location was still separated from that of the audience by who was and was not allowed to occupy the central Manuel 79
stage space. Therefore, performers had a space that was their own in ways that conventionalized the relationship between audience members and performers. The dramaturgy and script also defined the role of spectator as ‘passive’ to the performers’ storytelling. To my surprise, many of the audience members defined this performance as one of their most immersive experiences.
During Conduct, audience’s had a wide range of immersive and presentational experiences depending on the room or movement of the show. On this range were experiences like watching a dialogue between personalities, experiencing a music concert, helping a performer to complete a task, being touched, and drinking tea.
My experience as an observer was that each viewing of the piece could be completely different depending on the composition of the people in my group. I watched the show many times as a scenographer-audience member. During performance runs I made sure I was part of different groups with people I did not know. This allowed me to watch their behavior among the group members and to develop an informed hypothesis about the group’s influence on the whole experience of the piece. Depending on my fellow audience members in a group, each experience of the piece was completely different.
In one example, I was part of a group composed mainly of family members who allowed themselves to whisper to each other and share their thoughts of each room. Their intimate relationships allowed them to not only have large reactions, but also to laugh when they knew one of their relatives was feeling uncomfortable with something such as being touched by a performer. Other groups I was part of were comprised of shy students who watched all the rooms passively. Others by audience members that would interact unexpectedly depending on which room, I hypothesize, attracted more of their interest and attention. Manuel 80
After the experience of designing these works, which seemed immersive because of the holistic design of space, I realized that the characteristics of immersive works also are affected by social contexts (Irwin 49). (See the section “Material Constraints” for additional information.)
Depending on their access and exposure to theatre, audiences will be trained to perceive immersion differently.
Returning to Shearing, he states: “any understanding of immersion needs to take into account the relationship between body and its environment, body is not just an object to be placed on a background or structure” (18). The term ‘immersion’ involves a risk of presenting the idea of a homogenous medium, in which a body is saturated or engrossed (19). Shearing proposes that immersion is a heterogenous concept that refers to a subjective experience which is a result of a set of conditions (19). The definition of what is immersive or not depends on how the piece affects the perceiver beyond its spatial conditions; it relies on the subjective perceptions of an audience member. Therefore, the line between immersion and the physical space experienced of an audience member is blurred and expanded to a set of complex relationships between narratives, sensory stimulations, interaction, illusion, perception, reception and the cultural and economic conditions that determine audience members’ exposure to theatre.
There is no consensus among scholars and researchers about the boundaries of expanded approaches to scenography as a concept. Arguments for different ranges of application provide rich sources for the critical thinking of scenographers and for the development of the field. But in the case of immersion, I would argue that the final say needs to be less conceptual and theoretical than the knowledge presented in the literature. It needs to be manifested in the piece’s effect on the embodied subjectivity of an audience member.
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6.3 Scenography, Dramaturgy, and Montage.
While developing the scenography for Conduct, we reflected constantly on interdependent connections between performers, audience members and scenic design elements. From my initial meeting with Barton, both dramaturgical and scenographical decisions were made with reference to how they might affect the audience (see the sections “Collaboration”, “Pre-Rehearsal Period”,
“Through Rehearsals” for additional information).
As an example, I will discuss the creation of the ground plan. It changed many times to accommodate logistical needs and conceptual interests. Although the production team wanted us to determine the content of each room prior to the ‘Final’ Designs deadlines, we pushed the unknown as long as it was required (see “Pre-Rehearsal Period” for more information). We knew that this was one of the things we could not give away in response to the pressures of the production system. We had to make sure that prior to worrying about the contents of each room, we had analyzed the order of the events from Cowell’s life with attention to how such an order would affect the dramaturgy and the experience of the nine groups that would see the performance from different starting points.
Many possibilities for establishing the order of the rooms were debated between the creative team and the dramaturg. Finally, we decided that the piece needed a chronological approach to the montage of the events that might allow the audience members to grasp a narrative and a timeline from Cowell’s childhood to after his death. This expansion of dramaturgy to the area of the scenographic ground plan successfully enhanced the impact and agency of the scenic elements in the piece’s structure.
Sergei Eisenstein was a pioneer in his film, Film Studies, when he theorized how the composition of what we see affects our production of meaning. In his book Film Form (1977), he Manuel 82
developed the concept of montage and offered the reader different methods of composing events
(i.e., montaging frame lengths based on different criteria). Eisenstein paid particular attention to the possible effects on the viewer’s perception (72). Whereas cinema and film practices have screenwriters and editors propose different montage possibilities, thereby twisting a story-line completely during the post-production phase, theatre does not have the same possibility because it is ephemeral and still relies on the live presence of an audience to be completed (Biao 16).
Therefore, all aspects of montage and composition need to be considered during the rehearsal process and in collaboration with the dramaturg. Conduct comprised at least nine different plays within a whole. Each group had experienced a different montage of the piece. For example, group 9 began the show when Cowell was dead and ended on his childhood. Group 6 began with
Cowell in prison and ended before he was arrested. Many variables could influence the production of meaning of an audience member: one’s fellow audience members in the group, the room in which the group started, the audience member’s contact and experience with immersive theatre or theatre in general.
The scenography offered a dramaturgical structure for the order of the events and the audience members became the editors and screenwriters of the show. They chose a group, directed their perceptual attention towards small gestures and details, and chose the duration
(length of frame) of attention, interaction, participation and observation.
6.4 When Scenography and Dramaturgy Meet
The role of the dramaturg in the creative process often involves allowing the playwright or creators multiple choices and paths for creation, as well as considering the spectators’ arrival Manuel 83
at interpretation in the performance (Hansen 107). In her article “Perceptual Dramaturgy:
Swimmer (68)” Hansen breaks down the task of the dramaturg as follows:
(1) understanding the collaborators’ habits of perception at the stage of project initiation; (2) proposing principles and sources of inspiration that can either challenge or establish connections between artistic approaches in the workshop phase; and (3) preparing for the final production phase by analyzing compositional possibilities with a focus on how they can be realized through the spectators’ potential perception. (108)
Inspired by Hansen’s research, I applied this orientation to many of my proposals as scenographer at diverse phases of the creative process of Conduct (see the section “Through
Rehearsals” for more information). In the section, “Collaboration,” I compare text-based and physically-based dramaturgy to expanded approaches to scenography (McKinney and Palmer 5).
The constant awareness, discussions and analysis of how the scenography might affect the spectators’ potential perception of the piece is not, in my opinion, the responsibility of the dramaturg alone. It is also the responsibility of the scenographer who is interested in fully engaging and considering the audience member’s embodied perception of an immersive piece.
As a member of the creative team, the collaboration of a scenographer proposing to expand design elements might, at moments, appear similar to that of the dramaturg. In contrast, the designer has their own interest and artistic preferences for the show whereas the dramaturg does not. As I mentioned in the section “Collaboration”, I mapped my own habits of perception rather than understanding my collaborators’. In collaboration with Hansen, I developed methods and strategies to realize my interest as artist and researcher in this project. These methods and strategies helped me establish connections between the preliminary design phases, rehearsal process and performance period. I continuously attempted to analyze how our decisions (also regarding material factors like budgets and safety) affected the affordances of what we were attempting to create. Thus, the process was non-linear. The creative team was tireless, attempting Manuel 84
to be truthful to the experience of Cowell’s life we wanted to facilitate for audience members.
We made changes and tried new things when something did not fit the budget or was considered unsafe with regard to the regulations of the school. We needed to keep adapting in order to achieve our artistic goals. As a result, we did realize the intention of inviting the audience members into an immersive and complex set of relationships, full of the unstable narratives and experiential possibilities that Conduct offered spectators and performers.
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Section 7: Conclusion: Design-led creation
7.1 Loss of Control
In his paper presentation, Ungovernability of the Scene, Dieter Mersch elaborated on performativity and representational possibilities for scenography. He stated that, “composition should be the key term for all construction and designing”, therefore; ‘composition has the ‘com’ or ‘cum’, that means ‘together-with’ and ‘position’ the act of setting something” (3). He further suggested that instead of scenography being understood as “a big machine or a fascinating technological device, scenographic practices should focus on the oscillations between governability, unavailability or the loss of control of the scenic elements” (7). In this Artist
Statement, I could have reflected on the results of Conduct as a big and fascinating machine.
Instead, I decided to offer the reader an opportunity to understand the multiple conflicting forces involved in this creative process.
To paraphrase what Bruce Barton (the director of the show) said in a ‘talk-back’ about the creative process of Conduct: “one of the most important aspects of devised theatre is not knowing, pushing to keep not knowing and trying to feel comfortable with it.” Rather than controlling the creative process, Barton said that it is important to provide conditions that allow it to happen.
Barton’s perceptions align with Tim Ingold’s suggestions in Textility of Making: “as practitioners, the builder, the gardener, the cook, the alchemist and the painter are not so much imposing form on matter as bringing together diverse materials and combining or redirecting their flow in the anticipation of what might emerge” (94). Manuel 86
My approach to design in Conduct was to combine, redirect and accompany the flow of the practice and findings of the creative process. The intention behind “composing” with diverse materials was to bring them together. This intention provoked a ‘crisis’ within a conventional production system that anticipates representational design approaches. The process of my approach was more chaotic than what is common at the SCPA (see the section “Through
Rehearsals” for more information.) The creative team did not formally anticipate the results of the scenography. The process was the creative driving force. To make room for this process we adjusted and pushed the expectations, deliverables and deadlines of the SCPA production model.
Throughout the process we were primarily interested in what relationships between people, affordances and things had to offer. We were interested in the multiple complex scenographic landscapes and environments that could potentially arise within these relationships (Mersch 5).
Consequently, Conduct’s scenography could not have been imagined or designed by a single person at the outset of the process.
I had vast support from my fellow collaborators, performers and creative team. They were able to expand, co-create and co-design my initial ideas. The conflict between the production team’s demands and deadlines and this process increased both the complexity of the scenography and the dramaturgical agency of design. Many of the subsequent process choices were made with reference to foci and frameworks arrived at when working collaboratively towards design deadlines; deadlines that initially felt premature for the process. The hegemonic notions established by the Drama Division were, at various moments, stressful. We (creative and production team) had incompatible expectations for the participation of a designer in the creative process. For example, the production teams worked with the idea that a good designer executes Manuel 87
exactly the same as proposed in the design package. The creative teams worked with the understanding that if a design is too finalized it will not be responsive to the devising process.
The many challenges caused by these different expectations allowed me to learn how to, and when to, push the boundaries of established models for designing. I also discovered how to make use of such boundaries to enhance the dramaturgical contribution of design while operating within the given conditions. The differences resulting from divergent interests and expectations also broadened my analyses and perceptions of the creative practice.
A designer does not necessarily need to have a final objective, a clear vision, or technical mastery. They do not need to have control or know all the answers. In devised, unscripted, alternative and contemporary theatre-making praxis, a scenographer can be more interested in
“not giving effect to a preconceived idea… but to join with and follow the forces and flows of material that bring the form of the work into being” (Ingold 216).
7.2 Design Based or Guided Creation?
Conduct’s source material was the emblematic life of the Twentieth century American composer Henry Cowell. The design elements emerged in relationship with and from research based on his life which was done by performers and an artistic team. Accordingly, the creation was not based on scenography, nor did it start or ignite the creation. In the section “Through
Rehearsals”, I mention Theatre Replacement’s Undressing. That show was devised from clothing given to the group by donors and is a good example of design-based creation as the whole creation of the show was based on the design element of clothing.
The scenic design significantly impacted the creative process and methods of Conduct.
This impact included the ways scenic design prompted us to rehearse and the decision-making it Manuel 88
imposed. We did, for example, have to narrow down the devising process due to design deadlines (see “Material Constraints”, “Pre-Rehearsal Period”, “Through Rehearsals” and “To
Performance” for more information). The scenography did not drive the whole creation like the costumes did for Theatre Replacement’s show. Rather, I would prefer to say that the designs guided the creative process.
Devised theatre provided us, as a creative team and cast, with collaborative modes and approaches to designing. Without the dramatic text dictating the creation, there was the urge to modify the function of designs and designers in the creative process. As Kathleen Irwin states in the chapter “Scenographic Agency: A Showing-Doing and a Responsibility for Showing-Doing” in the book Scenography Expanded:
I propose that scenography, its processes and materials, have come to be perceived, at the turn of the millennium as demonstrably agential in engaging and affecting outcomes. This represents an amplification in the role of the scenographer from that of adjunct to a director, primarily concerned with filling and decorating the stage, to being an equal contributor in a collaborative artistic vision, to conceiving and realizing alternative genres of performance that engage with social issues in non-conventional spaces. This shift increasingly foregrounds the scenographic elements. (6)
The principles Irwin offers of how this shift in the role of scenography and the scenographer is manifested in praxis, relate to the process of Conduct as described above. The changes that this shift entails may in part have been affected by a concurrent increase of innovative scholarly research in the field, including the books Performance Design (Hannah and
Harsløf 2008) and Expanded Scenography (McKinney and Palmer 2017). New changes can afford confusions in scenographic processes. What can scenography do within and to creative processes? (Irwin 20). The designs in Conduct had greater impact on the making of the show, its aesthetics and its relational effects than usual. It is this observation that encouraged me to reflect Manuel 89
on and further develop discussions of design processes and the role of scenic elements in this
Artist Statement.
The relatively new space expanded scenography occupies in performance creation and theatre requires continually evolving terminology to describe and position the role that scenic design can have in creative practices (McKinney and Palmer, 15). It is important to note and continually teach collaborators (directors, producers, etc.) that scenography can lead, base, influence, guide, determine and drive creation.
In the case of Conduct, I prefer to argue that the scenography guided creation. We (the creative team) did not initially intend for it to do so, rather it was a result of the material constraints and strategies we invented to respond to the presented conditions. Inspired by post- humanist perspectives, I would like to propose that we consider that “the scenographer, spectators, (and collaborators) are all situated within an interactive network of material things”
(McKinney and Palmer 60). (Refer to the section “Collaboration” for more information.) Thus, when the scenography is guiding the creation it does not mean that it directs the piece. Rather, the designs enable the collaborative team, materials and things to keep moving, evolving and arriving at unexpected places.
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To Performance
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Machon, Josephine. Immersive Theatres: Intimacy and Immediacy in Contemporary
Performance. London: Macmillan International Higher Education, 2013. Manuel 95
Mckinney, Joslin and Scott Palmer. “Introducing 'Expanded' Scenography.” Scenography
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Conclusion
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49.
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Academy of Fine Arts Munich/Aula (Main Building), Akademiestr. 2, D-80799 Munich.
18 November 2016.
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9. Table of Figures
Figure 1 Production Schedule, (Andrew North, 2017) ...... 15
Figure 2 Production Schedule (Andrew North, 2017) ...... 16
Figure 3 Production Schedule (Andrew North, 2017) ...... 17
Figure 4 460 assignment (Bruce Barton, 2017) ...... 50
Figure 5 460 Assignment (Bruce Barton, 2017) ...... 51
Figure 6 Chart for Scenography development (made by the author, 2017) ...... 54
Figure 7 Wild Flowers (Tim Nguyen, 2018) ...... 58
Figure 8 Interaction with the cork (Tim Ngyen, 2018) ...... 59
Figure 9 Flower Arch (Tim Nguyen, 2018) ...... 59
Figure 10 Initial Chart room 7 (made by the author, 2017) ...... 60
Figure 11 Room 7 ground plan (made by the author, 2018) ...... 61
Figure 12 Room 7 Performance (Tim Nguyen, 2018) ...... 62
Figure 13 Room 7 Performance (Tim Nguyen, 2018) ...... 62
Figure 14 Lobby Display (photo by the author, 2018) ...... 75
Figure 15 Display Technical Drawing (made by the author, 2018) ...... 76 Manuel 97
10. Appendices
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