The DRAWN ABSENCE: An Embodied Spectatorial Encounter with the Post- dramatic Scenographic Drawing
Susan Field (Sue Field)
A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
School of Art & Design
Faculty of Art & Design
September 2018
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Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Inclusion of Publications Statement Originality/ Copyright/ Authenticity Statement Acknowledgments
I would like to express my appreciation and thanks to both my extraordinary supervisors Associate Professor, Dr Vaughan Dai Rees, Associate Dean
International/Engagement in the Faculty of Art & Design and Dr Michael Garbutt
Senior Lecturer, Faculty of Art & Design. A very, very special thanks to my father
Dr Geoffrey Field, my mother Janice Field and my daughter Lucy because without their unrelenting support this amazing journey would never have happened. In the spirit of a theatre-going spectator, this was a long and challenging quest in pursuit of adventure and discovery, of wonder and astonishment.
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Abstract
My scenographic design and art practice are inextricably linked: one informs the
other. Both are supported by drawing as a process and as an artefact. My practice-
based research was undertaken to investigate unexplored intersections between the
scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing as an art
practice. My primary aim was to create a hybrid genre which manifests a mobile
spectatorial experience through an embodied sensory encounter with an absent
presence. This is presented as an expanded drawn work, underpinned by
scenographic tropes and associated with the immersive, spectator-centric space of
post-dramatic theatre. In other-words, the spectatorial presence is prioritised over
narrative meaning, plot structure, and the presence or absence of the ‘actor’. The
ghostly presence inherent within the expanded drawn space provokes a ‘heightened
awareness for one’s own presence’.1 The spectator’s encounter with this absent
presence within the expanded drawn space becomes a form of post-dramatic
theatre. My research investigates the nature of this experience and the ways in
which it can be enriched through creative engagement, thereby developing and
deepening my practice, and providing insights into the spectatorial presence and
gaze.2 In this context, my thesis is driven by a single question which is of growing
significance for the contemporary practice and understanding of the fields of
scenography, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing:
How can a drawing, underpinned by post-dramatic scenographic strategies, produce a spectatorial encounter with an absent presence?
1 (Lehmann 2006) 122 2 (Field 2016) 11
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The scholarly interrogation of my drawn works, underpinned by the research question, enhances and contextualises both my scenographic and my art practice.
This research employs a reflective model which I have identified as the transformative spiral of research. The model produces a means to frame and drive experimentation and testing, adopting cycles of making and reflecting so that a spiral of knowledge and understanding is constantly evolving. The research methods, primarily freehand drawing, performative writing, the monologue, and the scenographic scale model, propel the research through multiple iterative processes in the creative production. Therefore, what results from this research is not a definitive answer, but rather a proposal presenting possibilities for future scholarly endeavour. It is this outcome that presents a new starting point to rethink the expanded drawn space.
Keywords
Scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre, expanded drawing, spectatorship, absent presence, thinking drawing, scenographic model.
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Table of contents The DRAWN ABSENCE: An Embodied Spectatorial Encounter with the Post- dramatic Scenographic Drawing ...... 1 Acknowledgments ...... 2 Abstract ...... 3 Table of contents ...... 5 List of Illustrations ...... 9 CHAPTER ONE: Drawn to the Stage ...... 33 1.1 Introduction ...... 34 1.2 Scenography ...... 35 1.3 Scenographic drawing ...... 36 1.4 The thinking drawing ...... 41 1.5 The scenographic thinking drawing ...... 44 1.6 The Peacham Drawing ...... 45 1.7 The Curse of the House of Atreus ...... 46 1.8 The Oresteia ...... 51 1.9 The scenographic autonomous drawing ...... 55 1.10 An emergent field: expanded drawing ...... 57 1.11 TRACEY: Drawing and Visualisation Research ...... 59 1.12 Key practitioner in the field of expanded drawing ...... 62 1.13 The field of post-dramatic theatre ...... 64 1.14 Defining post-dramatic theatre ...... 66 1.15 Anti-theatricality ...... 68 1.16 Theatricality ...... 70 1.17 Drawn beyond the fourth wall ...... 71 1.18 Albertian one-point perspective ...... 71 1.19 De la poésie dramatique ...... 74 1.20 The multiplication of frames ...... 75 1.21 Punchdrunk ...... 75 1.22 All Of Me ...... 79 1.23 The ideal spectator in the post-dramatic space ...... 83 1.24 Research question ...... 83 1.25 Thesis outline ...... 84 1.26 Drawing conclusions ...... 87 CHAPTER TWO: Creating a Scene ...... 88 2.1 Introduction ...... 89 2.2 Transformative spiral of research ...... 89 2.3 Practice-based research as a reflective practice ...... 90 2.4 Cognitive surprise ...... 91 2.5 The Double-loop of Learning ...... 94 2.6 The double helix ...... 94 2.7 Paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop ...... 95
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2.8 Helical concept ...... 96 2.9 Research methods ...... 97 2.10 A taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic strategies ...... 98 2.11 The sketch journal ...... 99 2.12 The journal’s thinking drawing as the source of cognitive surprise ...... 102 2.13 The ‘mind’s eye’ ...... 106 2.14 Performative Writing ...... 107 2.15 Pollack’s six terms defining performative writing ...... 109 2.16 Scenographic writing ...... 110 2.17 A phenomenological approach ...... 111 2.18 Monologues ...... 112 2.19 Drawing conclusions ...... 115 CHAPTER THREE: Staging the Mise-en-Scène ...... 116 3.1 Staging the mise-en-scène ...... 117 3.2 The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii ...... 117 3.3 Scholarly speculations ...... 118 3.4 Post-dramatic scenographic traits ...... 120 3.5 The painterly qualities of the frieze ...... 120 3.6 The panoramic performativity of the frieze ...... 121 3.7 The medieval Mystery play and panoramic tapestry ...... 124 3.8 Medieval performance ...... 126 3.9 Theatricality and spectatorship in medieval tapestry ...... 129 3.10 Medieval presence ...... 133 3.11 Sympathetic magic and the Doctrine of the Real Presence ...... 134 3.12 Inigo Jones (1573-1652) ...... 136 3.13 Italian influence ...... 137 3.14 The Court Masque ...... 138 3.15 Similarities between the Court Masque and post-dramatic theatre ...... 139 3.16 The Court Masque as a promenade performance ...... 140 3.17 Jones’ proscenia ...... 142 3.18 The Panorama: View of the Cities of London and Westminster (1792) ...... 145 3.19 Leicester-Square ...... 148 3.20 I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE: Futurama ...... 151 3.21 The American Dream ...... 152 3.22 Promenade performance ...... 153 3.23 Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller ...... 156 3.24 The Slow House (1990) ...... 157 3.25 Theatrical architects or illusionists ...... 159 3.26 The Desiring Eye: Reviewing the Slow House (1992) ...... 159 3.27 The Slow House Drawings ...... 160 3.28 William Kentridge ...... 162 3.29 Black Box/Chambre Noir (2005) ...... 163 3.30 Black Box/Chambre Noire (MOMA, 2010) ...... 164 3.31 Soundscape ...... 165 3.32 The trompe-l'œil curtain ...... 165 3.33 Taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic tropes ...... 167
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3.34 Drawing conclusions ...... 170 CHAPTER FOUR: The Chairs ...... 171 4.1 Introduction ...... 172 4.2 Performative drawing ...... 173 4.3 Definition of presence ...... 174 4.4 The unrepresentable ...... 176 4.5 Constraints ...... 177 4.6 The dramatic text as a catalyst ...... 178 4.7 Absent presence ...... 179 4.8 Selecting the text ...... 180 4.9 French absurdist/existentialist texts ...... 181 4.10 Théâtre de l'Absurde ...... 181 4.11 The consciousness as a labyrinth of memory ...... 187 4.12 Illuminating the spectre of drawing ...... 188 4.13 Tadeusz Kantor ...... 191 4.14 Kantor’s ‘happenings’ ...... 193 4.15 Medieval theatricality and spectatorship in The Chairs ...... 194 4.16 The Chairs’ beginning as a thinking drawing ...... 195 4.17 Monochromatic memories ...... 197 4.18 The panoramic drawing: The Chairs ...... 199 4.19 Absent presence in The Chairs ...... 200 4.20 Meta-theatrical tropes ...... 204 4.21 Empty chairs ...... 207 4.22 Kantor’s chair ...... 210 4.23 Drawn to the door ...... 213 4.24 The world seen and the world unseen ...... 214 4.25 A single door of milky, semi-opaque glass ...... 216 4.27 Drawn to reveal ...... 223 4.28 The trompe-l’œil of the baroque red curtain ...... 225 4.29 The trompe-l’œil baroque red curtain in The Chairs ...... 227 4.30 Exhibiting The Chairs ...... 228 4.31 The video of The Chairs ...... 229 4.32 Drawing conclusions ...... 231 CHAPTER FIVE: No Exit ...... 234 5.1 Introduction ...... 235 5.2 The observational drawing ...... 236 5.3 The dérive ...... 239 5.4 Arcades Project ...... 247 5.5 The Other ...... 252 5.6 Being and Nothingness ...... 253 5.7 Huis Clos ...... 254 5.8 The ‘look’ as an action of grasping ...... 255 5.9 No Exit and the Other ...... 257 5.10 The voyeuristic gaze in Sartre’s Huis Clos ...... 258 5.11 The voyeuristic gaze of the theatre-going spectator ...... 258 5.12 No Exit, produced by Electric Company and Virtual Stage ...... 261
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5.13 No Exit and a surveillant presence ...... 262 5.14 Paris ...... 266 5.15 The objects in No Exit are symbols of Hell ...... 269 5.16 The Gap or ‘in-between’ space ...... 273 5.17 The creative process of No Exit ...... 275 5.18 The embodied cognitive hand ...... 275 5.19 The thinking drawing in imaging the early conceptual phase of No Exit ...... 277 5.20 The gap ...... 278 5.21 In a blink of the eye ...... 279 5.22 The drawing as apocalypse ...... 283 5.23 Drawing out memories as a trace in the drawing ...... 286 5.24 A journey into self/memory: the dramatic script of monologues as a trace in the drawing ...... 286 5.25 Flow ...... 290 5.26 The vaudevillian dreamscape of post-dramatic theatre ...... 294 5.27 Drawing conclusions ...... 296 CHAPTER SIX: Drawn to Perform ...... 298 6.1 Cognitive surprise ...... 299 6.2 A different scenographic ideation tool ...... 299 6.3 Definition of a scale scenographic set model ...... 303 6.4 Model-making process ...... 305 6.5 The post-dramatic scenographic tropes ...... 309 6.6 The absent ‘actor’ ...... 310 6.7 Explorations ...... 311 6.8 The ‘Room of Imagination’ and the ‘Room of Memory’ ...... 321 6.9 Model making ...... 322 6.10 The Chippendale chair in the model box ...... 325 6.11 The set model of the hypothetical mise en scène within the black model box ...... 326 6.12 The model as an epistemic tool ...... 330 6.13 The model as a performative object ...... 331 6.14 The scenographic set is the protagonist in the post-dramatic theatrical space ..... 333 6.15 The Drawn Absence: A speculative scenographic mise en scène ...... 334 6.16 Drawing conclusions ...... 349 CHAPTER SEVEN: Drawn Beyond the Fourth Wall ...... 350 7.1 An unending search for the key to the secret of creativity ...... 351 7.2 The research question ...... 352 7.3 The Drawn Absence ...... 355 7.4 Drawing as the primary research method ...... 356 7.5 Jean Baudrillard and the Three Orders of Appearance ...... 358 7.6 The Drawn Absence in the Third Order of Simulacra ...... 359 7.7 The performative scale model, within the scale model, within the scale model ..... 363 7.8 The monad ...... 364 7.9 The scenographic scale model as Deleuze’s monad ...... 365 7.10 Drawing conclusions ...... 366 Bibliography ...... 368
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List of Illustrations
CHAPTER ONE: Drawn to the Stage
Figure 1.1: Scenographic thinking drawing in the script for Stags and Hens (Sue
Field, 1990).
Figure 1.2: Scenographic thinking-drawing on yellow Post-it notes for Stags and
Hens (Sue Field, 1990).
Figure 1.3: Scenographic drawing for Stags and Hens: black pen and coloured pencil on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1990).
Figure 1.4: Photograph of NIDA’s production of Stags and Hens (Marco Bok,
1990).
Figure 1.5: Photograph of NIDA’s production of Stags and Hens (Marco Bok,
1990).
Figure 1.6: Thinking drawing of the Guggenheim Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain) (Frank
Gehry). http://hero-magazine.com/article/89958/charting-frank-gehrys-architectural- revolution/ (Accessed 03.06.2017).
Figure 1.7: Guggenheim Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain). http://hero-magazine.com/article/89958/charting-frank-gehrys-architectural- revolution/ (Accessed 03.06.2017).
Figure 1.8: The Peacham Drawing: black pen executed in 1595 during a rehearsal of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peacham_drawing. (Accessed 3.3.2013).
9
Figure 1.9: Scenographic thinking drawing for The Curse of the House of Atreus: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1998).
Figure1.10: Scenographic thinking drawing for The Curse of the House of Atreus: black pen, gouache and collage on bond paper, 50 x 50mm (Sue Field, Journal,
1998).
Figure 1.11: Scenographic drawing for The Curse of the House of Atreus: black pen, coloured ink, and gouache on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal,
1998).
Figure 1.12: Costume design for Iphigenia for The Curse of the House of Atreus
(Sue Field, 1998).
Figure 1.13: Photograph of the production of The Curse of the House of Atreus
(Branco Gaica, 1998).
Figure 1.14: Thinking drawings: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue
Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 1.15: Thinking drawing for The Oresteia: black and red pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 1.16: Thinking drawing for The Oresteia: black and red pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 1.17: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen, collage on watercolour paper,
594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
Figure 1.18: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen, collage on watercolour paper
(Sue Field, 2010).
Figure 1.19: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen collage on watercolour paper,
594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
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Figure 1.20: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen collage on watercolour paper,
594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
Figure 1.21: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen, collage on watercolour paper,
594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
Figure 1.22: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen collage on watercolour paper,
594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2012).
Figure 1.23: More Sweetly Play the Dance (William Kentridge, 2015; Marian
Goodman Gallery, London). http://europeinsider.com/index.php?option=btg_news&idnovost=443&Artist-
William-Kentridge%27s-incredible-refugee-premonition (Accessed 20.09.2016).
Figure 1.24: Het Land Nod (the Antwerp collective FC Bergman for the Festival d’Avignon, 2016). (Christophe Raynaud de Lage, 2016).
Figure 1.25: Palais Garnier (Opera National de Paris). https://www.getyourguide.com/paris-l16/hidden-treasures-of-paris-from-palais- royal-to-opera-garnie-t10580/ (Accessed 16.03.2016).
Figure 1.26: Palais Garnier (Opera National de Paris). http://artstheanswer.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/curtain-call.html
(Accessed 16.03.2016).
Figure 1.27: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
Figure 1.28: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
Figure 1.29: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
11
Figure 1.30: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
Figure 1.31: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and Royal
National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
Figure 1.32: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and Royal
National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
Figure 1.33: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and Royal
National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
Figure 1.34: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and the Royal
National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
Figure 1.35: Scenographic thinking drawings for All of Me: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1993).
Figure 1.36: Scenographic drawing for All of Me: black ink and watercolour on paper, 420x 594mm (Sue Field, 1993).
Figure 1.37: Production photograph for All of Me (Sue Field, 1993).
CHAPTER TWO: Creating a Scene
Figure 2.1: Diagram of research model: the transformative spiral of research: black pen, gouache and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal,
2015).
Figure 2.2: Double Helix of the DNA structure.
12 http://lifewell-lived-two.com/what-you-need-to-know-now-about-stem-cell- research/#iLightbox[gallery334]/0 (Accessed 16.05.2016).
Figure 2.3: Scenographic thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by
Edward Kemp: black pen on A4 photocopied script, 40 x 60mm (Sue Field,
2010).
Figure 2.4: Thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on bond paper, 80 x 60mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 2.5: Thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on bond paper 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 2.6: Thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on bond paper 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 2.7: Autonomous Drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward
Kemp: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 841mm (Sue
Field, 2009).
Figure 2.8: Autonomous drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward
Kemp: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 841mm (Sue
Field, 2009).
CHAPTER THREE: Staging the Mise-en-Scène
Figure 3.1: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy). https://au.pinterest.com/pin/410601691003912352/ (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure 3.2: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy):
Reconstruction of the Triclinium. https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/pompeii/villas-outside-the-walls/villa- of-the-mysteries (Accessed 13.08.16).
13
Figure 3.3: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy). https://dailyreview.com.au/pompeiis-villa-of-the-mysteries-unveils-ancient-cult- rites/21770/ (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure 3.4: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy):
The young, frightened maenad. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii- villa-EU-deadline-looms.html (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure 3.5: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): The young frightened maenad. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii- villa-EU-deadline-looms.html (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure 3.6: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): The hideous mask. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii- villa-EU-deadline-looms.html (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure 3.7: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy):
Ferocious winged demon. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii- villa-EU-deadline-looms.html (Accessed 130.09.2016).
Figure 3.8: Thinking drawing of the spectatorial engagement within the Villa del
Misteri Pompeii, 60BC: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue
Field, 2016).
Figure 3.9: Jean Fouquet: The Martyrdom of St. Appollonia (1460), depicting the staging of a mystery play Musée Condé (Chantilly, France).
14
https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-fouquet/martyrdom-of-st-apollonia (Accessed
11.12.16).
Figure 3.10: Setting for the Valenciennes Mystery play, Hubert Cailleau (1547)
(The Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris).
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medievaldrama.htm (Accessed 11.10.2016).
Figure 3.11: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol
& Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.3
Figure 3.12: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: Saint Michel slaying the Dragon
(Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382);
commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.4
Figure 3.13: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: The Fall of Babylon (Château
d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by
Louis I, Duke of Anjou.5
Figure 3.14: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: The first trumpet sounds, a deluge of
hail and fire destroyed a third of the earth (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol
& Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.6
Figure 3.15: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: The Fall of Babylon: The first seal
releases the divine justice (a crowned man on a white horse (Château d'Angers,
Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I,
Duke of Anjou.7
Figure 3.16: Britannia Triumphans (Inigo Jones, 1637).
3 (Delwasse 2008) 2 4 (Delwasse 2008) 2 5 (Delwasse 2008) 2 6 (Delwasse 2008) 24 7 (Delwasse 2008) 20
15
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Houghton_EB65_A100_B675b_v.5_-
_Magna_Britannia_triumphans.jpg (Accessed 23.08.2016).
Figure 3.17: Scenographic drawing of antimasque costume characters for Sir
William Davenant's production of Britannia Triumphans (Inigo Jones, 1637).8
Figure 3.18: Title page of first edition of the Haddington Masque (1608).
http://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/locations/the-banqueting-house.html (Accessed
23.08.2016).
Figure 3.19: Scenographic drawing of a hunting scene, identifying the merging of
the proscenium and the performance space (Inigo Jones, 1621).9
Figure 3.20: Thinking drawing of the promenade performance of the 17th century
Court Masque: pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal,
2016).
Figure 3.21: Key to Barker's Panorama of London from Albion Mill [undated
c.1792?], 301×228 mm (St Paul's Collection, Guildhall Library, City of London).
https://wwweuppublishingcom.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/doi/full/10.3366/
E1354991X0800024X (Accessed 01.05.2017).
Figure: 3.22 Interior of Barker’s panorama building, located at Leicester-Square
(Published 15 May 1801, London); Etching.
https://www.bl.uk/picturingplaces/articles/the-spectacle-of-the-panorama
(Accessed 15.06.2017).
Figure 3.23: Scenographic model for Futurama (Norman Bel Geddes, 1939)
(The workmen provide a sense of scale).
8 (Peacock 1995) 153 9 (Peacock 1995) 217
16 http://exhibitions.nypl.org/biblion/worldsfair/enter-world-tomorrow-futurama- and-beyond/story/story-gmfuturama (Accessed 31.08.2016).
Figure 3.24: Photograph of the entrance to Norman Bel Geddes (1939) Futurama design (Eero Saarinen). http://westread.blogspot.com.au/2011_08_01_archive.html (Accessed
31.08.2016).
Figure 3.24: Photograph of the entrance to Norman Bel Geddes (1939) Futurama design (Eero Saarinen). http://westread.blogspot.com.au/2011_08_01_archive.html (Accessed
31.08.2016).
Figure 3.25: The spectatorial presence within Futurama (Norman Bel Geddes,
1939). http://www.wired.com/2010/04/gallery-1939-worlds-fair/ (Accessed 31.08.2016).
Figure 3.26: Button pins handed out to the spectator at the conclusion of their
Futurama experience (Norman Bel Geddes, 1939). http://archinect.com/news/article/81153290/major-exhibition-on-polymath- designer-norman-bel-geddes-to-open-at-mcny. (Accessed: 31.08.2016).
Figure 3.27: The Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller, 1991). https://secrethesis.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/pecha-kucha-one/slowhouse_dsr/
(Accessed 05.07.2016).
Figure 3.28: The Slow House (Photo by Mitsumasa Fujitsuka, 1992). http://www.toto.co.jp/gallerma/hist/en/exhibi/diller.htm. (Accessed 14.05.2016).
Figure 3.29: Model of Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller). www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/un-privatehouse/Project_19.htm.
17
(Accessed 03.06.2015).
Figure 3.30: Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller).
www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=6028437 (Accessed 02.01.2013).
Figure 3.31: Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller; FRAC
collection).10
Figure 3.32: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2005); Deutsche
Guggenheim, Berlin.
http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/2005/12/29/2005_12_william_kentrid/
(Accessed 19.09.2016).
Figure 3.33: Installation view of Black Box/Chambre Noire; (L to R) Learning
the Flute and Preparing the Flute (William Kentridge, 2010); music by Philip
Miller (2005); exhibited at MOMA (2010).
https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-
five-themes/ (Accessed 03.04.2016).
Figure 3.34: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2010); exhibited at
MOMA (2010).
https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-
five-themes/ (Accessed 03.04.2016).
Figure 3.35: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2010); MOMA
(2010).
https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-
five-themes/ (Accessed 03.04.2016).
10 (Wood 2005) 7
18
Figure 3.36: William Kentridge in his Johannesburg studio during preparations
for Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005).
http://www.deutsche-guggenheim.de/e/ausstellungen-kentridge01.php (Accessed
21.09.2016).
Figure 3.37: William Kentridge (2005).
http://www.deutsche-guggenheim.de/e/ausstellungen-kentridge01.php
(Accessed 21.09.2016).
Figure 3.38: Set model for the opera production Die Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute
(William Kentridge); Theatre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels, 2005).11
Figure 3.39: Set model for the opera production Die Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute
(William Kentridge); Theatre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels, 2005).12
CHAPTER FOUR: The Chairs
Figure 4.1: Journal handwritten extract: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm
(Sue Field, 2014).
Figure 4.2: Colour photographic slide of a derelict Georgian mansion, Cottrell
Manor, Wales (Geoffrey Field, 1969).
Figure 4.3: Detail of me (aged 4 years) on the far right (Geoffrey Field, 1969).
Figure 4.4: Thinking drawing for The Chairs; black pen on bond paper, 148 x
210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
Figure 4.5: Generative drawing: black ink and collage on watercolour paper, 297
x 420mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2011).
11 (Kentridge 2007) 53 12 (Kentridge 2007) 135
19
Figure 4.6: Eustachy Kossakowski and Tadeusz Kantor’s Panoramic Sea
Happening; performed on the Baltic Coast. (Osieki, 1967); (B/W photo, 11 parts, each 45 x 44 cm; collection of Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich).
Figure 4.7: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and lead pencil on yellow Post-it note (Sue Field, 2013).
Figure 4.8: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
Figure 4.9: One of twelve panels for The Chairs: black and red pen; collage on watercolour paper; 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.10: Panoramic drawing, The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script and sheet music, approximately 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.11: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.12: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.13: One of twelve panels of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.14: Detail of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.15: Detail of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.16: Two of twelve panels of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2015).
20
Figure 4.17: Two of twelve panels of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm. (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.18: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.19: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.20: Kantor sitting with a jumble of folding wooden garden chairs and many folds (the curtain and the hanging objects behind him). http://www.fotopolis.pl/newsy-sprzetowe/wydarzenia/18733-tadeusz-kantor-na- fotografiach-czlonkow-krakowskiego-zpaf/21477/25364 (Accessed 16.03.2016).
Figure 4.21: An Impossible Monument: a colossal chair photomontage in Kraków square (Tadeusz Kantor, 1970). http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/tadeusz-kantor (Accessed
14.05.2014).
Figure 4.22: Cambriolage, Foksal Gallery, Warsaw (Tadeusz Kantor, 1971).
(Photo: Jerzy Borowski, courtesy of Foksal Gallery). (Accessed 14.05.2014).
Figure 4.23: Tadeusz Kantor’s house in Hucisko, Poland. http://culture.pl/en/article/a-virtual-tour-of-kantors-summer-residence-in-hucisko
(Accessed 14.03.2014).
Figure 4.24: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.25: Generative drawing for Posieres: ink on watercolour paper, 420x
594mm (Sue Field, 1990).
21
Figure 4.26: Production photograph for Posieres (Marco Bok, 1990); set and costumes by Sue Field).
Figure 4.27: Generative drawing for Passion (Griffin Theatre Company): gouache on journal paper, 210x297mm (Sue Field, 1996).
Figure 4.28: Production photograph for Passion (Griffin Theatre Company) (Sue
Field, 1996).
Figure 4.29: The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x
941m (Sue Field, 2014).
Figure 4.30: The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x
941mm (Sue Field, 2014).
Figure 4.31: The Fold (Gilles Deleuze, 2006); translated by Tom Conley (A&C
Black).
Figure 4.32: Photograph of the National Theatre, Detroit (David Kohrman, 2004).
Figure 4.33: Photograph (Reginald Van de Velde, 2008) of Emile Claes’ early
1910s’ abandoned Cinéma Theatre (Varia, Belgium). https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d0/8b/4e/d08b4e8305ebf0be627da5c47ec47b77.jpg
(Accessed 23.05.2017).
Figure 4.34: Apple’s concealed Upper West Side store. (Tuesday 27 October,
2009; 12:45 pm PT (03:45 pm ET). http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/27/fourth_manhattan_apple_store_shrouded
_with_red_curtain (Accessed 16.03.2016).
22
Figure 4.35: Unveiling of Shanghai Apple Store. http://www.archdaily.com/author/karen-cilento Photo credit CNet. (Accessed
16.03.2016).
Figure 4.36: The Chairs: two panels of twelve; black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2014).
Figure 4.37: Panoramic drawing The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script and sheet music, approximately 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2014).
Figure 4.38: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm. (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
CHAPTER FIVE: No Exit
Figure 5.1: Observational drawing of the exterior of the Cité Internationale des
Arts, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field,
Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.2: Observational drawing of the exterior of the Cité Internationale des
Arts, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field,
Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.3: Observational drawing of meandering along the Seine, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal. 2015).
Figure 5.4: Observational drawing of meandering along the Seine (Paris): black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.5: The Naked City (1957), Guy Debord & Asgar Jorn. https://situationnisteblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/the-naked-city-illustration- de-lhypothese-des-plaques-tournantes-en-psychogeographique-sic-1957/
(Accessed 12.05.2017).
23
Figure 5.6: Handwritten journal extract: black pen on bond paper (Sue Field,
2015).
Figure 5.7: Drawing and collage of a map of Central Paris (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 5.8: Observational drawing of Jardin des Tuileries, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.9: Observational drawing of drifting through the cobbled streets of Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal,
2015).
Figure 5.10: Observational drawing of the Pompidou Centre, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.11: Observational drawing of an arcade, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.12: Observational drawing of an arcade, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.13: Observational drawing of an arcade, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.14: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.15: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.16: No exit, 2008 (photo by Tim Matheson). http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/show/no-exit/ (Accessed 12.05.2017).
Figure 5.17: No exit, 2008 (photo by Tim Matheson). http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/show/no-exit/ (Accessed 12.05.2017).
24
Figure 5.18: No exit, 2008 (photo by Tim Matheson). http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/show/no-exit/. (Accessed 12.05.2017).
Figure 5.19: Thinking drawing, No Exit: 120x150mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 5.20: Observational drawing of the interior of the Paris Metro: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.21: Observational drawing of Belleville, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.22: Detail from one of nine panels of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.23: Photograph of the running man at NIDA (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 5.24: Photograph of a French running man in the Pompidou Centre, Paris
(Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 5.25: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.26: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.27: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.28: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.29: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.30: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
25
Figure 5.31: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour
paper (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.32: Thinking drawing for No Exit: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210
mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
Figure 5.33: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media
on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.34: Thinking drawing for No Exit: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210
mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
Figure 5.35: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media
on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.36: Detail from the Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (1377-1382).13
Figure 5.37: Observational drawing of the rooftops of Montmartre, Paris: black
pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.38: Incomplete panel of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media
on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2016).
Figure 5.39: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media
on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2016).
Figure 5.40: Production photograph for the theatre production of The Curse of the
House of Atreus, (directed by Helmet Bakaitis (Branco Gaica, 1998); set and
costume design by Sue Field.
Figure 5.41: Production photograph for the theatre production of The Curse of the
House of Atreus, (directed by Helmet Bakaitis (Branco Gaica, 1998); set and
costume design by Sue Field.
13 (Delwasse 2008) 49
26
Figure 5.42: Detail of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.43: Flow drawing: collage, black pen, ink and wash on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.44: Flow drawing: black pen, ink and wash on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.45: Flow drawing: black pen, ink and wash on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.46: Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper,
9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
CHAPTER SIX: Drawn to Perform
Figure 6.1: The spectatorial presence within Futurama (Norman Bel Geddes,
1939). http://www.wired.com/2010/04/gallery-1939-worlds-fair/ (Accessed 31.08.2016).
Figure 6.2: Section model of Scofidio and Diller’s Slow House (1991) : Les
Turbulences - Frac Centre (France). http://www.frac-centre.fr/collection-art-architecture/diller-scofidio/the-slow- house-64.html?authID=60&ensembleID=143 (Accessed 12.03.2017).
Figure 6.3: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2005); Deutsche
Guggenheim (Berlin). http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/2005/12/29/2005_12_william_kentrid/
(Accessed 19.09.2016).
Figure 6.4: Thinking drawing of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017): black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
27
Figure 6.5: Empty black model box of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017),
showing all of its four walls (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.6: Plan of The Space Theatre (NIDA).
http://my.nida.edu.au/course/view.php?id=124§ion=7 (Accessed
02.05.2017).
Figure 6.7: Empty black model box of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017), with
one wall removed (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.8: A model of the spectator (painted black) in the empty model box of
The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017).
Figure 6.9: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond
paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.10: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond
paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.11: Thinking drawing for The Chair: black pen and collage on bond
paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.12: Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille’s Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse
(Château d'Angers, Paris); commissioned by Louis I, the Duke of Anjou (1377-
1382).14
Figure 6.13: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond
paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.14: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond
paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
14 (Delwasse 2008) 2
28
Figure 6.15: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.16: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.17: Thinking drawing for No Exit: black pen and collage on bond paper,
148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.18: Journal thinking process of modelling Chippendale chairs (Sue
Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.19: Photograph of model of Chippendale chairs: the making process
(Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.20: Photograph of model of Chippendale chairs: the making process
(Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.21: Photograph of model Chippendale chair in model box of The Space
Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.22: Photograph of model Chippendale chair in model box of The Space
Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.23: Photograph of the use of the Isonic 800hd Portable Pico Projector to project the digital video of the original panoramic drawing No Exit onto the black walls of the model box.
Figure 6.24: Photograph of the corridor exhibiting the original panoramic drawing The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.25: Photograph of the corridor exhibiting the original panoramic drawing The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
29
Figure 6.26: Photograph of the spectator as the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.27: Photograph of the spectator as the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.28: Photograph of scenographic scale model within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.29: Photograph of scenographic scale model of No Exit within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.30: Photograph of scenographic scale model within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.31: Photograph of scenographic scale model of No Exit within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.32: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
Figure 6.33: Plan of the dimensions and layout of the six components within the gallery of AD Space, UNSW Art & Design (Sue Field, 2018).
Figure 6.34: Observational drawings from life during a three-month art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 6.35: Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper,
9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.36: The two digital videos are projected on the walls to the left of the space, No Exit and The Chairs.
Figure 6.37: Panoramic drawing, The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script, sheet music and watercolour paper, 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2015).
30
Figure 6.38: The scenographic set model The Chairs (Sue Field, 2018). The digital video is projected on the wall to the left of the model.
Figure 6.39: The model within the model is exhibited in the scenographic set model The Chairs.
Figure 6.40: Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper,
9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.41: The scenographic set model No Exit (Sue Field, 2018).
Figure 6.42: The model within the model is exhibited in the scenographic set model No Exit.
Figure 6.43: The spectators cast shadows onto the two digital videos projected on the walls.
Figure 6.44: The spectator becomes the performer.
CHAPTER SEVEN: Drawn Beyond the Fourth Wall
Figure 7.1: Photograph of the spectator as the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 7.2: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 7.3: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 7.4: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 7.5: Thinking drawing for No Exit: 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal,
2016).
31
Figure 7.6: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 7.7: Photograph of scenographic scale model within a scale model (Sue
Field, 2017).
Figure 7.8: Scenographic scale model, within a scale model, within a scale model... an infinite recurring space (Sue Field, 2017).
32
CHAPTER ONE: Drawn to the Stage
33
1.1 Introduction
My scenographic design and art practice are inextricably linked: one informs the
other. Both are supported by drawing as a process and as an artefact. This practice-
based research was undertaken to investigate unexplored intersections between the
scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing as an art
practice. The primary research aim is to interrogate, experiment with, and
contextualise the potential of a personal drawing practice underpinned by
scenographic tropes, and associated with the immersive, spectator-centric space of
post-dramatic theatre.15 In other words, to produce an embodied sensory experience
that incorporates elements of post-dramatic theatre, partly through content, and
partly through its methods of engagement. In this way, the spectatorial presence is
prioritised over narrative meaning, plot structure, and the presence or absence of
the ‘actor’.
My drawing practice seeks to discover a hybrid genre that is both a drawing and a
‘theatre without actors’, in conjunction with the image of the empty stage. The
spectator’s encounter with this absent presence within the expanded drawn space
becomes a form of post-dramatic theatre. This chapter defines key terms and
practitioners, identifies the scholarly terrain within the fields of scenography,
expanded drawing, and post-dramatic theatre. It also introduces the research aim
and the research question underpinning this enquiry.
15 (Lehmann 2006) 6
34 1.2 Scenography
Scenography,16 an emergent field of research,17 is the European name for theatre
design. As Rebecca Hickie tells us ‘the term scenography is an increasingly popular
one within the worldwide theatre-making community, becoming the term of choice
when referring to the visual, spatial and aural aspects of theatre production’.18 As
the British scenographer Kate Burnett also comments:
…scenographer and scenography…have been used in Europe for far longer, but were adopted internationally as the standard academic terms, as the study of this artform/discipline has developed as an academic research subject since the early 1990s.19
Scenography expresses a holistic visual approach to creating live theatre and
performance. The scenographer and director are the joint visionaries of the mise-
en-scène, supported by a team of technical and creative collaborators. As the British
scenographer and theatre director Pamela Howard argues: ‘To be called a
scenographer means more than decorating a background for actors to perform in
front of. It demands parity between creators who have individual roles,
responsibilities and talents’.20 She also suggests that scenography ‘is the seamless
synthesis of space, text, research, art, actors, directors and spectators that
contributes to an original creation’.21 The American theatre theorist Arnold
Aronson favours the term scenography over theatre design because:
16 Scenography is the English translation for the European term Scénographie (French, Czech), scenografia (Italian), or scenografie (Romanian), and means ‘scene design’ or ‘theatre design’ in Australia. 17 (Joslin McKinney 2011) 38 18 (Hickie 2009) Abstract 19 (Burnett 2014) 3 20 (Howard 2001) 14 21 (Howard 2001) 16
35 …it implies something more than creating scenery or costumes or lights. lt carries a connotation of an all-encompassing visual-spatial construct as well as the process of change and transformation that is an inherent part of the physical vocabulary of the stage.22
My research extends Aronson’s ‘all-encompassing visual-spatial construct’23 by
removing the ‘actor’ from the spectacle and drawing attention to the Other24—
where an absent presence is made manifest. This is the core of the new hybrid genre
of drawing that I present in this thesis.
1.3 Scenographic drawing
Scenographic drawing is intimately enmeshed in both my scenographic design and
my art practice. These drawings are the drawings produced by the scenographer for
performance. In the following statement, the Australian academic Neill Overton
identifies the fluid, grey area between art and design where the applied art of
scenographic drawing sits or, as he describes it: the ‘performed drawing in situ’:
The nature of sketching as study, as enquiry, is a precondition to the performed drawing in situ. Importantly, “drawing” as an art practice is territorially without its own empire – there are drawings made for set design, costume design, theatre, painting, animation storyboarding, character development, graphic and interior design, sculpture, and manifold skirmishes backwards and forward between otherwise contested borderlands of fine art and design.25
In conventional text-based theatre, the pre-existing literary text is almost invariably
the starting point of the scenographic process.26 The scenographer begins by
reading the play, script, or libretto (in conjunction with the music), and then starts
22 (Aronson 2005) 7 23 (Aronson 2005) 7 24 In Chapter Five the Other, according to Jean Paul Sartre, is examined. 25 (Overton 2015) NPF 26 (Hickie 2009) 40
36
to draw.27 There is a multitude of different types of drawings, both analogue and
digital, executed within the production processes of scenographic design,
encompassing many functions and purposes. For example, I completed a diverse
range of scenographic drawings for the production Stags and Hens (1990)28—
directed by Steve Bisley and designed by myself—while a student at the National
Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA). My scenographic process began with first
reading the text in tandem with the spontaneous doodling in the margins of the
photocopied script (Figure 1.1). I also scribbled small thinking drawings in black
pen on yellow Post-it notes (Figure1.2). At this embryonic stage, these drawings
captured the germ of an idea. These yet unformed/formed concepts later developed
into the more detailed and comprehensive drawing (Figure 1.3) executed in my
journal and later revealed to the director. Figures 1.4-5 are photographs of the final
scenographic set and costume design. I also completed technical working drawings
for the NIDA staging, properties, and costume departments.29 However, for this
research, it is only the freehand, generative thinking drawings that are relevant to
this enquiry.
27 Some scenographers/theatre designers only use 3-D sketch models (both analogue and digital) early in the ideation design process. 28 Stags and Hens was written by Willy Russell and directed by Steve Bisley. 29 Part of the scenographic process is the visualisation of the set design as an orthographic projection: plan elevation and cross-section.
37
Figure 1.1: Scenographic thinking drawing in the script for Stags and Hens (Sue Field, 1990).
Figure 1.2: Scenographic thinking drawing on yellow Post-it notes for Stags and Hens (Sue Field, 1990).
38
Figure 1.3: Scenographic drawing for Stags and Hens: black pen and coloured pencil on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1990).
39
Figure 1.4: Photograph of NIDA’s production of Stags and Hens (Marco Bok, 1990).
Figure 1.5: Photograph of NIDA’s production of Stags and Hens (Marco Bok, 1990).
40
1.4 The thinking drawing
The analogue process of the freehand thinking drawing is an embodied form of
visual thinking, and the principal site of innovation and ideation.30 The thinking
drawing, sometimes referred to as the ‘ideational/generative sketch’, embraces the
complex cognitive and perceptual processing of the vague half-formed ideas of the
‘paper sketch’, and thus facilitating surprise, discovery, and invention. In The
Primacy of Drawing: An Artist’s View (1991), Deanna Petherbridge suggests that
the freehand drawing is:
…primarily…the movement of the hand and its extension of pen, quill, brush, chalk or lead which reveals the process of describing lines and its ideation. The difficulties of erasure implicit in most of its methods mean that the lines are left in place as a record of the processes of the moving hand.31
The term, ‘preparatory’, has extended its meaning to encompass the more dynamic
concept of ideational or thinking drawing, which is the creative embryo—the
‘birthing’—of the original concept. The American artist Terry Rosenberg writes:
The ideational drawing, in producing traces of the cognitive hand, produces the otherly arrangements of thinking that… constructs and educes otherness the way poetry does and uses otherness of thinking (poetic thought) as a process of poiesis or invention.32
Further, he suggests that within the drawing there is:
30 Examples of contemporary literature on the ideational thinking drawing: Gabriella Goldschmidt (2003), The Backtalk of Self-generated Sketches; Terry Rosenberg (2008), New Beginnings and Monstrous Births: Notes Towards an Appreciation of Ideational Drawing; Sue Field (2012), Drawn to the Light: The Freehand Drawing from the Dramatic Text as an Illumination of the Theatre Designer’s Eye of the Mind; Juhani Pallasmaa (2009), The Thinking Hand: Existential and Embodied Wisdom in Architecture; TRACEY: Drawing and Visualisation Research (1998). 31 (Petherbridge 1991) 7 32 (Garner 2008) 111
41
…the impulsion…to form and transform. In this notion of blankness, drawing is thinking and acting between the not-yet-formed and the formed, in the space between form and form at the threshold between form and anti-form.33
The British art curator Emma Dexter comments that the thinking drawing is:
…a map of time recording the actions of the maker…a line always suggests a continuation and ad infinitum and thus connects us with infinity and eternity. A drawing enjoys a direct link with thought and with an idea itself.34
In the design field of architecture, the thinking or preparatory sketch remains a
central methodology within the architectural education pedagogy. For instance, The
American architect Frank Gehry continues to draw traditionally by hand multiple
freeform ‘scribbles’, which are later transformed into the complex digitalised
geometries of his highly-theatricalised architecture (Figures 1.6-7). As Gehry
comments:
I think of them as scribble…I don’t think they mean anything to anybody except to me. At the end of the project we wheel out these little drawings and they’re uncannily like the finished building.35
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.6: Thinking drawing of the Guggenheim Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain) (Frank Gehry). http://hero-magazine.com/article/89958/charting-frank-gehrys-architectural-revolution/ (Accessed 03.06.2017).
33 (Garner 2008) 114 34 (Dexter 2005) 6 35 (Keskeys 2016) 1 https://architizer.com/blog/how-architecture-is-born-frank-gehry/ (Accessed 03.06.2017).
42
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.7: Guggenheim Bilbao (Bilbao, Spain). http://hero-magazine.com/article/89958/charting-frank-gehrys-architectural-revolution/ (Accessed 03.06.2017).
In a similar vein, the Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa suggests: ‘A sketch is in
fact a temporal image, a piece of cinematic action recorded as a graphic image’.36
The sketch is:
…a search in the obscurity and darkness of uncertainty, in which a subjective certainty is gradually achieved through the laborious process of the search itself. This search is as much an embodied and tactile journey, guided by the hand and feelings of the body as it is a visual and intellectual enterprise.37
Gabriella Goldschmidt, a seminal theorist on drawing, suggests that the designer’s
thinking drawing is a vehicle for contemplation, where the designer’s eye and hand
meander over the sketching surface seeking the new, but also sifting through the
traces of the past. She concludes with an apt description of the thinking sketch:
We are trained to look for treasures in the tangle of lines we put down on paper, and we know how to take advantage of this invaluable skill…there is no substitute to sketching as a design-thinking tool, one that economically and effectively supports the generation, development, and revision of design proposals.38
The scenographic thinking drawing is similar to those executed in architecture and
the visual arts, but also has its own distinctive features.
36 (Pallasmaa 2009) 90 37 (Pallasmaa 2009) 109 38 (Goldschmidt 2003) NPF
43
1.5 The scenographic thinking drawing
The scenographic thinking drawing is peculiar to performance design. The
Australian scenographer Tony Tripp encapsulates the essence of the scenographic
thinking drawing in the following statement:
The drawing is the act of articulating an idea. The drawing is intended to persuade the director to go with it. It is the best time of all, doing the drawing. At that early stage it is a pure and untroubled thing – nothing to do with the practicalities of realism. It is a piece of art to seduce.39
Scenographic drawings, whether motivated by text or not, can employ all traditional
methods of pen, pencil and paint, or contemporary digital systems such as a stylus
and computer tablet.40 My research focuses on freehand scenographic drawing and,
in particular, the drawings executed early in the design process because of the
special cognitive relationship that exists between the eye, the mind, and the hand.
I refer to these drawings as the scenographer/artist’s thinking drawings because they
generate ideational thinking and have nothing to do with the practicalities of
realism; or, as the contemporary Australian/Romanian scenographer Dan Potra
argues, ‘The first drawings on reading the text are at their rawest – they are not just
ideas but gut feelings, instincts’.41 In Addressing the Absent: Drawing and
Scenography (2014), Kate Burnett argues:
The phrase ‘thinking through drawing’ suggests the moments at which thoughts, ideas, and impulses may be articulated onto a surface (paper or screen), not as an end or climax but as ‘staging posts’ on a journey in a continual state of departure and arrival.42
39 (Kristen Anderson 2001)155 40 For this research, I have excluded the scenographic technical drawing—plan, section, and elevation— which are mainly executed in computer aided design (CAD). 41 Private conversation between author and Dan Potra (August 2011). 42 (Burnett 2014) 4
44
These embryonic drawings are idiosyncratic to live theatrical events such as a play,
opera, dance, or non-text-based performance. Hence, the scenographic thinking
drawings become the visualisation of theatrical live performance and space. They
are also a primary source of performative, temporal, and spatial knowledge. The
British academics Joslin McKinney and Helen Iball comment in Research Methods
in Scenography (2011):
The processes of drawing and of working through different kinds of visualisation (rough sketches, technical drawings, 3D or computer models, renderings and samples) allow mental projections to be made.43
It is the scenographic thinking drawings that visualise the images which emerge
from the scenographer’s creative engagement with the text. Pamela Howard
considers this early period in the scenographer’s drawing process as being:
…free of the constraints of the production yet to come…should be utterly pleasurable and enjoyable, created in the spirit of enquiry. This is a time of total freedom where the imagination can roam, transcending logic and reason, making the most wonderful connections…This is the stage when the scenographer’s creativity and vision are at their strongest.44
1.6 The Peacham Drawing
An example of a scenographic thinking drawing which has survived the ephemeral
and transient nature of theatre is The Peacham Drawing, executed in 1595 during a
rehearsal of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. This drawing, a doodle in the
margin of the script (Figure 1.8)—a longleaf document belonging to the Marquess
of Bath (Great Britain)—has aroused curiosity and speculation since its discovery
43 (Iball 2011) 23 44 (Howard 2002) 23
45
in 1925. As the only extant drawing of a contemporary Shakespeare performance,45
this small, finely detailed black line sketch, placed above the stage direction Enter
Tamora pleadinge for her sonnes going to execution, remains the subject of intense
scholarly debate because of the discrepancy between the drawing and the script.46
It also remains a mystery whether the artist and the writer are one and the same
individual, heightening the academic conjecture and uncertainty. However, I am
intrigued by this drawing because it is an early record of the scenographer’s
observations during the constant change that occurs within the performance space,
particularly during rehearsal. Not all scenographers draw in this volatile
environment; many will simply take detailed notes.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.8: The Peacham Drawing: black pen executed in 1595 during a rehearsal of William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peacham_drawing. (Accessed 3.3.2013).
1.7 The Curse of the House of Atreus
The scenographic thinking drawings, which characterise my own design practice,
are the result of an embodied experience when reading the text: I become immersed
in the unfolding story and the characters and spaces described. The drawings which
emerge from this encounter are the repeated reworking of the palimpsest, layers
upon layers of mark-making, erasure and trace, backtracking and reflection. Figures
45 (Schlueter 1999) 171 46 (Schlueter 1999) 171
46
1.9-10 are examples of thinking drawings which I drew in the embryonic phase of designing the set for Helmut Bakaitis’ production of The Curse of the House of
Atreus (1998). The script was developed in rehearsal as an adaptation of
Aeschylus’s ancient Greek play The Oresteia.
Figure 1.9: Scenographic thinking drawing for The Curse of the House of Atreus: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1998).
47
\
Figure1.10: Scenographic thinking drawing for The Curse of the House of Atreus: black pen, gouache and collage on bond paper, 50 x 50mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1998).
I selected these examples from many drawings of the same scenes repeated again and again, with each revealing a slight change or difference. All were executed with a fountain pen, black ink, and a splash of yellow and red gouache. This allowed rapid, fluid, and immediate visualisation in response to the text or music. These scenographic thinking drawings reveal both spontaneous, emotive ‘crudeness’ and intellectual dexterity. These two characteristics are exemplified by the generative sketch (the emotive ‘crudeness’) through the rapid, repetitive, and confident black line (the intellectual dexterity). Figure 1.11 is a more developed journal drawing; this was later shown to, and discussed with the director. Figure 1.12 is a completed final costume design for the character Iphigenia, and Figure 1.13 is a production photograph of the finally realised show, The Curse of the House of Atreus.
48
Figure 1.11: Scenographic drawing for The Curse of the House of Atreus: black pen, coloured ink, and gouache on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1998).
49
Figure 1.12: Costume design for Iphigenia for The Curse of the House of Atreus (Sue Field, 1998).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.13: Photograph of the production of The Curse of the House of Atreus (Branco Gaica, 1998).
50
1.8 The Oresteia
After The Curse of the House of Atreus had closed and the set had been disposed of, I completed a set of drawings that were prompted by the original ancient Greek text The Oresteia, written by Aeschylus. These drawings also began as thinking drawings in my journal (Figures 1.14-16).
Figure 1.14: Thinking drawings: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
51
Figure 1.15: Thinking drawing for The Oresteia: black and red pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
Figure 1.16: Thinking drawing for The Oresteia: black and red pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
52
After a period of exploration, the drawings developed into more complex works
executed in watercolour, black pen, and collage on watercolour paper (Figures 1.17-
21). These drawings were not shown to a director, nor did they bear any real
relationship to the original text. These autonomous drawings sit alone as a visual
hardcopy of the theatrical experience engendered by the original production, The
Curse of the House of Atreus, rather than as a representation of the actual production
itself. The work is the ‘mind’s eye view’ of a theatrical space, a personal
‘contemplative’ work, a crucible where symbols, motifs, and imagery generate new
ideas; however, the work is also critically important to my scenographic practice in
enabling the resurfacing of past ideas that have gestated for a period. I discovered
the significance of these rogue47 drawings during my research investigations into
my scenographic practice in 2012.48 I also came to realise that these drawings were
primarily autobiographical. Subsequently, these autonomously drawn works
became the primary focus of my research.
Figure 1.17: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
47 I use the term rogue in the context of something that is behaving differently or unusually. 48 MDes (Honours), College of Fine Art, UNSW (Australia), 2012.
53
Figure 1.18: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2010).
Figure 1.19: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
Figure 1.20: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
54
Figure 1.21: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2010).
1.9 The scenographic autonomous drawing
The scenographic autonomous drawing, executed long after the original theatre
production has ended, reveals the complexity of thinking through the cinematic
layering of imagery. Here, the ‘King’s or Prince’s eye’49 is irrelevant; instead,
multiple views are recorded simultaneously. These ‘rogue’ drawings can employ a
sophisticated freehand rendering style, not unlike the traditional set design
illustrations,50 but are considerably more developed conceptually than the original
49 The best seat in the house: the œil du prince, or ‘prince’s eye’, to use the term made famous by Nicola Sabbatini (1475-554). 92 50 Set design illustrations: Originally, these were the traditional ‘scenic’ illustrations of the ‘backdrop’, which the scenic painter accurately copied at a larger scale. With the move away from this form of scenery, except in some forms of ballet, these drawings developed a new purpose: that of perspectives from the ideal or best seat in the auditorium. They allowed the producer, director, or actor, seated centre of the auditorium, to gauge the set design from the point of view of the audience. These drawings are almost exclusively created digitally, using computer programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Vector Works and RHINOceros, in conjunction with freehand drawing, to produce a final presentation image in PowerPoint or Keynote that is intended to sell an idea or vision to the director, performers, producer, or art director. They are also used in commercial applications such as marketing a production or fundraising, or as exhibition material for a production’s retrospective. The computer has reinstated the scenic illustration, but has pushed this presentation mode into the realm of glossy, highly finished three-dimensional computer design perspectives, even going so far as to create short animated films of the proposed production for commercial purposes.
55
design intentions drawn from the text. They also detour completely from the notion
of a realistic interpretation of the existing theatrical space. The significant step
forward I have made is that, right from the beginning, I do not intend them to be
revealed to the director, producer, or anyone else associated with the theatre
production. As an outcome of this research, I integrated The Oresteia drawings into
one panoramic51 work (Figure 1.22).
Figure 1.22: The Oresteia: watercolour, black pen collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 4500mm (Sue Field, 2012).
This drawing exemplifies the notion of an autonomous work separate from the
original theatrical production. It was originally a work purely for the scenographer’s
contemplation, and a reflective study of an intense period of work. In many ways,
51 I refer to these drawn works as panoramic because they are placed in a linear, longitudinal order along the wall. The spectator is required to ‘walk’ along the work to view it. However, they are non- chronological.
56
it is the ideal resolution of a design that may never have eventuated. As I have
written in the concluding paragraph of my thesis:
This ‘space’ is potentially a site of ‘cogitative surprise’,52 of wonder and astonishment, of discovery and innovation. If my research were to progress further, it would be within this space, as a ‘portal’ to spaces beyond, that I would seek to construct an alternative model for the exploration and analysis of space by the contemporary Australian theatre designer through the practice of drawing.53
What is also pertinent is that The Oresteia is my first panoramic drawing and also,
most significantly, there are no human figures represented. It is this past drawn
work that, subsequently, became the impetus for my current practice-based PhD. I
had ‘expanded’ my scenographic drawing practice into a different space, an
actorless space that can be explored and experienced in the spectator’s imagination.
It was at this point that I became acutely aware that a shift had taken place: the
spectators and their presence within a theatrical space were the primary impetus of
my research.
1.10 An emergent field: expanded drawing
My research aims to develop a new hybrid genre of drawing: an expanded
scenographic drawing where the spectators drive the performance; indeed, where
they are the performers. The emergent field of expanded drawing challenges
preconceived notions of the ‘drawing’, stretching the traditional concept far beyond
the two-dimensional piece of paper. Contemporary drawing can include multi-
media such as film, video, montage, on-site installations, sculpture, and digital
52 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 53 (Field 2012) MDes (Honours), College of Fine Art, UNSW (Australia) 2012. 154
57
computer technology.54 In Drawing as Performance: The Art Gallery meets
Experimental Theatre (2015), Neill Overton proposes that since the 1970s:
…the drawing crossed over from the gallery exhibition into the realm of experimental theatre; time-based, engaged in situ, performed and completed by the viewer/audience: permanently shifting the art gallery exhibition paradigm.55
The term expanded was first linked to aesthetic practice by the art historian
Rosalind Krauss in her seminal essay, Sculpture in the Expanded Field (1979). She
identified that sculpture and painting ‘…had been kneaded and stretched and
twisted in an extraordinary demonstration of elasticity…extended to include just
about anything.’56 Furthermore, Krauss argued that sculpture, in particular, had
entered into a black hole where ‘…positive content was increasingly difficult to
define, something that was possible to locate only in terms of what it was not’.57
She suggested this space ‘could be called its negative condition - a kind of
sitelessness, or homelessness, an absolute loss of place’.58 Krauss also proposed
that the postmodernist space of painting involved a similar expansion, distinguished
by the conflicting binary terms uniqueness/reproducibility.59 For my research, it is
theatre’s preoccupation with duality (truth/falsity, reality/illusion,
visibility/invisibility, presence/absence) that situates the new hybrid genre within a
different, expanded drawn space.
54 (Harty 2010) Editorial 55 (Overton 2015) NPF 56 (Krauss 1979) 30 57 (Krauss 1979) 34 58 (Krauss 1979) 34 59 (Krauss 1979) 43
58
1.11 TRACEY: Drawing and Visualisation Research
A contemporary advocate of expanded drawing and its future capabilities is the
peer-reviewed, online journal TRACEY: Drawing and Visualisation Research
launched in 1998. TRACEY is dedicated to the exploration and examination—
physically, cognitively, and critically—of contemporary drawing and visualisation
research processes.60 In particular, TRACEY has actively encouraged and
‘expanded’ the definition of drawing to include drawn works such as found
drawings, ‘…which may be by-products of other processes, organic forms or
discarded materials - images arising by accident rather than from any conscious
process’.61 TRACEY and its allied web site Drawing Research Network (DRN)
have facilitated a global drawing and visualisation community beyond the
academy.62
The area of expanded drawing which is relevant to this enquiry is the practice of
performative drawing. Catherine de Zegher coined the term performative drawing
in 2001 with this comment: ‘More than a trace of a creative genius, as a
performative act drawing is the gesture in itself…the artist’s decision between
thinking and doing’.63 Performative drawing as a visual art term gained currency
by 2007 with the TRACEY publication of the book, Drawing Now: between the
lines of contemporary Art. The introduction states:
The selection aims to present drawing by traditional means with a conceptual edge, with an emphasis on how the process of making the drawing contributes to its content, a concept
60 http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/aed/staff-research/research-groups/drawing-visualisation-tracey/ 61 http://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/sota/tracey/journal/found.html 62 http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/aed/staff-research/research-groups/drawing-visualisation-tracey/ 63 (Zegher 2001) 2
59
we describe as ‘performative’.64
There are many definitions circulating in the academic arena which identify the
performative drawing. Nonetheless, there is a commonality of meaning within this
discourse: that is, they are drawings delineated by the verb or the action/doing of
drawing, the process of making marks, where the drawing ‘demonstrates process
and idea simultaneously in the course of its own production’65 - for example,
Maryclaire Foá who works with sound as a drawn trace; Tony Orrico who employs
the movement of his body as a repetitive tool to generate large drawings in graphite;
John Court, a durational performance artist whose primary focus is time; and Tim
Knowles who shapes invisible phenomena to create mark-making systems. There
is also the post-doctoral research of Heyes, Grisewood and Foá,66 which continue
to categorise performative drawing according John. L. Austin’s model of
performative speech or utterance as referring to ‘itself’ in the process of its own
making.67 While their conclusions have some relevance to this project, particularly
their investigation into the drawing’s relationship to the live spectator, I argue that
the scenographic drawing, as an artefact or object embodying performative
qualities, is a different, unacknowledged performative drawing. This is a semiotic
process that produces a series of theatrical signs that transgress across the
boundaries between representation and an absent presence.
64 (Tracey 2007) ix 65 (Tracey 2007) xviii 66 (Heyes 2010) (Grisewood 2010) (Foá 2011) 67 (Austin 1961)
60
The concept that a drawing can be performative, but not governed by the verb to
draw, is the position held by Sam Spurr who identifies architectural design
drawings as performative because they do not describe the action but allow the
viewer to participate in the action.68 As she argues: ‘in contrast to passive
representations of environments, they demand from their viewers total
immersion’.69 Spurr is not concerned with the act of ‘doing’ the drawing, as
defined by de Zegher, Heyes, Grisewood and Foá, but with drawing which
‘provide(s) alternative structures in which the … drawing can incorporate dynamic
and embodied elements’.70 What is pertinent here is the implicit involvement of
the spectator. ‘Thus, the spatial, two-dimensional, pictorial representation of an
event is transformed into a narrative unfolding in the spectator’s act of looking’.71
It is the hybrid genre of drawing I posit in this research that is a new and different
expanded drawing; drawings which manifest an active performative space and
provokes in the spectator anticipation, tension and an expectation that something is
about to happen or has occurred. This emerges because embedded in these
drawings are theatrical signs that are an accumulation of meaning or perform a
narrative: that is, a story is being unfolded. The objects become, as on stage,
emblematic, the carriers of myth.72 These signs ‘stage the act of viewing’73 and
describe where ‘theatricality seems to stem from the spectator's awareness of a
theatrical intention addressed to him’.74
68 (Spurr 2007b) 144 69 (Spurr 2007b) 149 70 (Spurr 2007b) 152 71 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 10 72 (Howard 2009) 129 73 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 14 74 (Josette Féral 2002) 96
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1.12 Key practitioner in the field of expanded drawing
A key practitioner in the field of expanded drawing is the South African
scenographer/artist, William Kentridge. The core of Kentridge’s artistic oeuvre is
expanded drawing, or what Overton refers to as ‘performed drawings’.75 In both
Kentridge’s art practice and scenographic productions, he deconstructs the
traditional definition of drawing by employing distinct scenographic tropes to
create, exhibit, and perform the drawn works. He generates expanded drawings
which are inherently theatrical, arousing curiosity, wonder, and astonishment in the
spectator. The multifarious elements which collectively produce Kentridge’s drawn
installations assert that it is not about the real but about, as Hans-Thies Lehmann
argues, ‘the unsettling that occurs through the indecidability whether one is dealing
with reality or fiction. The theatrical effect and the effect on consciousness both
emanate from this ambiguity’.76 An example of Kentridge’s drawn installations is
More Sweetly Play the Dance, exhibited at the Marian Goodman Gallery (London)
in 2015 (Figure 1.23).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.23: More Sweetly Play the Dance (William Kentridge, 2015; Marian Goodman Gallery, London). http://europe-insider.com/index.php?option=btg_news&idnovost=443&Artist-William- Kentridge%27s-incredible-refugee-premonition (Accessed 20.09.2016).
Like many of Kentridge’s works, this one is autobiographical; its core stems from
his deeply personal experiences when growing up in Johannesburg as a third-
75 (Overton 2015) NPF 76 (Lehmann 2004) 105
62
generation South African of Lithuanian-Jewish heritage during the apartheid period.
As Kentridge explained:
I have never been able to escape Johannesburg, and in the end, all my work is rooted in this rather desperate provincial city. I have never tried to make illustrations of apartheid, but the drawings and the films are certainly spawned by, and feed off, the brutalised society left in its wake.77
The work is a 40 metre, multimedia, multiscreen caravan procession of larger than
life figures, puppets, and animated charcoal drawings; they encircle the entire
space, accompanied by a Felliniesque soundscape. The film is projected onto
monumental charcoal drawings of a desolate landscape. The figures are collectively
performing the Danse Macabre—the dance of death. It is a shuffling, whirling,
dancing troupe of characters from all levels of society, uniting in death. The last
figure in this haunting procession is the South African classical dancer Dada
Masilo, dressed in a military style uniform while gracefully pirouetting around a
rifle. As Anne Rutherford argues:
For Kentridge, the body becomes a medium in itself. He is not a dancer but he knows the poetry of a body moving in space. To his teacher, the famous Jacques Lecoq, the body was the vehicle of creativity and experimentation and the essence of creative theatre was play – an openness to discover what can emerge from movement and play.78
Kentridge digitally animates his drawings on a massive, immersive scale within the
scenographic space. The expanded drawings become the ‘other actor’ whose
pervasive ‘presence’ within the space, creates an illusion of moving, three
dimensional forms interacting intimately with the live spectator. Here, the spectator
is fully immersed in a drawn narrative that is ambiguous in its complexity, but
77 https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-five-themes/ (Accessed 19.09.2016). 78 (Rutherford 2014) 23
63
palpable in what Maaike Bleeker describes as its ‘here and now-ness’.79 The
spectators are conscious that a theatrical event is taking place here and now; they
have become acutely aware of their own presence within the ‘expanded drawn’
space. It is this spectatorial presence which distinguishes post-dramatic theatre, and
which my research aims to explore within my own drawing practice: a genre of
expanded drawing, underpinned by scenographic tropes, and associated with the
immersive, spectator-centric space of post-dramatic theatre.
1.13 The field of post-dramatic theatre
Post-dramatic theatre emerged from the horrors of World War II, the Holocaust,
and Hiroshima as a recognised field of academic discourse.80 The concept of post-
dramatic theatre is analogous to that of postmodern theatre; both terms are
interchangeable. It was Elinor Fuchs, in The Death of Character (1996), who
recognised the deconstruction of traditional dramatic conventions in contemporary
American theatre. She directly related this rupture to postmodern theories of
subjectivity.81 By the 1990s, the term ‘postmodern theatre’ was firmly established
and defined by some of the following key words and phrases:
…ambiguity; celebrating art as fiction; celebrating theatre as process; discontinuity; heterogeneity; non-textuality; pluralism; multiple codes; subversion; all site; perversions; performer as theme and protagonist; deformation; text as basic material only; deconstruction; considering text to be authoritarian and archaic; performance as a third term between drama and theatre; anti-mimetic; resisting interpretation. 82
79 (Bleeker 2008) 65 80 (Lehmann 2006) 13 81 (Lehmann 2006) 1 82 (Lehmann 2006) 25
64
Arnold Aronson, in his text on postmodern theatre Looking into the Abyss: Essays
on Scenography (2005), asserts that theatre has now reached a point where:
…there is a fragmentation of languages. Structures have dissolved; discrete images have evaporated. The past is no longer prelude, it is merely material to be drawn upon the present use. All images, all ideas, all thoughts, are equal. Linearity is archaic, anachronistic.83
He examines in detail the emergence of postmodern theatre and its virulent reaction
to the avant-garde Modernism which prevailed for much of the twentieth century.
Aronson encapsulates the fundamental aesthetic of postmodern theatre design as:
‘…virtually reek(ing) with the presence of the past, and it often pastes together a
collage of stylistic imitations that function not as a style but as a semiotic code’.84
With the onset of postmodernism came the ‘death’ of art, narrative, subject, and the
character; self-referential authorship was deemed elitist and irrelevant.85 The meta-
narrative, the single metaphoric image, and the monolithic sculptural object within
the sparse dramatic space imploded with the onset of the ‘hypertextural world of
electronic media’.86 However, the German theatre theorist Hans-Thies Lehmann
disputes the application of the term ‘postmodern’ to theatre, arguing that it reduces
it to generalized catchphrases87 and ‘miss(es)… the diversity of its theatrical means
… in the light of post-dramatic aesthetics’.88
83 (Aronson 2005) 77 84 (Aronson 2005) 17 85 (Robinson 2011) https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-barthes-4/ (Accessed 07.05.2014). 86 (Aronson 2005) 79 87 (Lehmann 2006) 25 88 (Lehmann 2006) 26
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1.14 Defining post-dramatic theatre
The term ‘post-dramatic theatre’ was coined by Lehmann in his Post-dramatisches
Theater in 1999 (The English translation was published in 2006). According to
Lehmann, this ‘new theatre’89 is a simultaneous and multi-perspectival form of
perceiving.90 He proposes a ‘palette of stylistic traits’ comprising ‘parataxis,
simultaneity, play with the density of signs, musicalisation, visual dramaturgy,
physicality, irruption of the real, situation/event’.91 Lehmann further suggests that
in this new theatre, the spectators become co-writers of the text, and active
witnesses ‘who reflect on their own meaning-making and who are also willing to
tolerate gaps and suspend the assignment of meaning’.92 In a similar vein, Rachel
Fensham also argues that post-dramatic theatre ‘leads to the creation and
installation of a new kind of spectator, one who participates in the process and
meaning of the event, or situation’.93
Post-dramatic theatre is non-linear in that narrative meaning and plot structure are
subordinate. It is a reaction against twentieth century dramatic naturalism and
realism, pillaging instead from ‘low’ theatrical art forms of vaudeville, pantomime,
and music hall. Post-dramatic theatre embraces a return to ‘theatricality’ or, in other
words, a reliance on spectatorial participation and the recognition and exaggeration
of artifice.94 It is pertinent to identify here the etymology of the word theatre. As
Martin Harrison posits:
89 (Lehmann 2006) 68 90 (Lehmann 2006) 6 91 (Lehmann 2004) 105 92 (Lehmann 2006) 6 93 (Fensham 2012b) NPF 94 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 26
66
It is significant that the Greek theatron means literally “a seeing-place” or “a place for viewing”, from theomai, “to behold”, as it stresses not the performer, nor the drama performed but the audience, the spectators.95
The theatricality inherent in post-dramatic theatre positions the spectator as the
centre of the action. For example, in Het Land Nod, by the Antwerp collective FC
Bergman for the Festival d’Avignon (2016), the audience were seated within the
post-dramatic scenographic set, which was a recreation of the monumental Rubens
Room in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium (Figure 1.24).96
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.24: Het Land Nod (the Antwerp collective FC Bergman for the Festival d’Avignon, 2016). (Christophe Raynaud de Lage, 2016).
At the climax of the work, the central door was blown apart, and sections of the
surrounding wall and the ceiling above the audience collapsed.97 The production
was a roller-coaster of extreme emotions, with the spectator reeling across multiple
overlapping scenes of slapstick buffoonery, absolute horror, and ending up in a
pervasive feeling of hopelessness. The spectator inhabited the same theatrical space
as ‘the characters haunted by loneliness and absurdity’.98 This post-dramatic theatre
group ‘create huge spaces, at once very concrete and metaphorical, within which
individuals struggle with the tragedy inherent to their condition’.99 The post-
95 (Harrison 1998) 275 96 I saw this extraordinary production in July 2016, at the Festival d’Avignon. It was one of the most moving productions I have ever experienced. 97 I personally leapt 2 metres in the air from shock and disbelief. 98 http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/shows/2016/het-land-nod (Accessed 03.09.2016). 99 http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/shows/2016/het-land-nod (Accessed 03.09.2016).
67
dramatic performance expressed a heightened theatricality which embraced the
presence and gaze of the spectator.
1.15 Anti-theatricality
Ever since Plato denounced mimesis as ‘a corruption of the mind of all listeners
who do not possess as antidote a knowledge of its real nature’,100 theatricality and
theatrical performance have been frequently denigrated as ‘illusory, deceptive,
exaggerated, artificial or affected’.101 In 1758, the French philosopher and critic
Denis Diderot, in his critique De la poèsie dramatique, searched for a theatre
without theatricality, where the actors are advised ‘to moderate their declamatory
style, to speak as if in real life, and to rely more on intimate and natural gesture…
(and)…the beholder…should be invited to forget that he is attending a
performance’.103 In 1988, the art historian and critic Michael Fried returned to, and
supported Diderot’s anti-theatrical antagonism in Absorption and Theatricality:
Painting and Beholder in the Age of Diderot. Fried’s prejudice directly parallels a
demand, first made by Diderot in 1758, ‘that the artist … find a way to neutralize
or negate the beholder’s presence, to establish the fiction that no one is standing
before the canvas’.104
Fried also criticised art work which deliberately sought out a subjective and
embodied spectatorial experience; rather, he stressed the radical exclusion of the
100 (Sternberg 1990) 62 101 (Thomas Postlewait 2003) 4 103 (Oostveldt 2011) 170 104 (Fried 1988) 108
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beholder in relation to the viewing of an artwork,105 where the more absorptive the
quality of a painting (or performance), or the more its ‘lack of awareness of being
beheld’,106 the greater its ability to deny the spectator’s presence and gaze.
Jane Tormey (2005) also views theatricality and theatrical performance with
suspicion, claiming it is simply ‘acting out, a representation or mimesis, following
some directive and suggests a passive operation where the participant actualises
something already determined’.107 To support her argument, she draws on the work
of the philosopher of language John. L Austin, who proposed (in 1955) that a
performative utterance ‘said by an actor on the stage’ is a çonstative utterance and
should be ‘exclud(ed) from consideration’ because it is ‘hollow and void’ and,
therefore, ‘parasitic upon its normal use – ways which fall under the doctrine of the
etiolations of language’.108 Tormey explains, therefore, that the drawing that
follows a theatrical model ‘might be termed a “constative” drawing which would
represent or describe mimetically’;109 that it is either true or false and is, therefore,
defined before it is drawn. However, I disagree with Tormey’s interpretation of
Austin. A drawing that is innately ‘theatrical’ is not simply a mimesis; it also
involves embodied spectatorial participation, and celebrates magic, illusion, and the
invisible.
105 (Fried 1988) 108 106 (Fried 1988) 121 107 Jane Tormey, Performance Tracey: Drawing and Visualisation Research. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/tracey/journal/perf1.html (Accessed 11.10.2013). 108 (Austin 1955) 22 109 Jane Tormey, Performance Tracey: Drawing and Visualisation Research. http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/sota/tracey/journal/perf1.html (Accessed 11.10.2013).
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1.16 Theatricality
There has emerged in the second decade of this millennium an undercurrent of
thought which questions a negative understanding of theatricality. For instance,
Amanda Brandes disputes Fried’s anti-theatrical position:
Michael Fried sets up the idea of the theatrical as an enemy of art…His idea is that theatrical art is grounded in the temporal and the spatial, while the new, modern ideal, art exists outside of time and space… This ideal art, he argues, does not need its audience to validate it, but it exists instead in a pure space on its own merits. The theatrical, on the other hand, is nothing without its audience. Its audience is inherent in its very definition.110
As Laura Weigert also argues:
…historians…have recovered the term ‘theatricality’ … (and) in so doing, they have embraced those features of the term that have been traditionally denigrated: namely, a reliance on spectatorial participation and a recognition and exaggeration of artifice.111
In November 2013, a Scenography Symposium, Layering Reality: The Right to
Mask, was held in Prague as a lead up to the Prague Quadrennial of 2015. This
symposium discussed why theatricality, such as masking112 continues to be
…regarded as inauthentic, as ways to seduce us with a false appearance or as ways to hide who we actually are … perceived as ‘mere theatre’ as opposed to ‘the real,’ and rejected or even forbidden for being deceptive…it is about time that we move beyond such easy condemnation.113
The symposium argued for the ‘use of performance design in theatre and beyond in
order to question and reclaim the place of the invisible, the imaginary and the
110 (Brandes 2007) https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/theater/ (Accessed 20.05.2017). NPF 111 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 26 112 Mask: To disguise under an assumed outward show; to conceal (intentionally or otherwise). Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/114612. (Accessed 19.8.2017). 113 http://www.pq.cz/en/layering-reality-the-right-to-mask-a-gathering.html (Accessed 11.10.2013).
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theatrical in our lives’.114 Theatricality is a primary trope defining a post-dramatic
performance because it is the site of the invisible and the imaginary, where the
spectator is inherent in its very definition.115 However, another key trope is the
multiplication of frames, which reveals a simultaneous and multi-perspectival form
of perceiving.116 Post-dramatic theatre dispenses with the fourth wall, such as the
single frame of the traditional proscenium stage.
1.17 Drawn beyond the fourth wall
In order to establish an understanding of spectators and their interaction and
movement within contemporary spaces of emerging, multi-dimensional
environments, it is helpful to first address the long-held convention of the fourth
wall: the ‘threshold’ or the thin liminal space between the illusion of the live
performance on stage and the real space of the live spectator. This is the transparent
wall through which the spectator, as voyeur, passively gazes. The term fourth wall
first appeared in the Italian Renaissance with the construction of the proscenium
theatre and the single vanishing point.117
1.18 Albertian one-point perspective
In his treatise De Pictura (1435), Leon Battista Alberti, the Italian architect and
theorist, first established the single vanishing point as the representational authority
for artistic and architectural drawing.118 The single vanishing point provided the
114 http://www.pq.cz/en/layering-reality-the-right-to-mask-a-gathering.html (Accessed 11.10.2013). 115 (Brandes 2007) https://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/theater/ (Accessed 20.05.2017). NPF 116 (Lehmann 2006) 16 117 (Peacock 1995) 209 118 (Finotti 2010) 21
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scaffold for the vertical perspective plane which separated illusion and reality. This
orthographic perspectival framework has since imposed a prescriptive, inanimate
stasis on both theatre and the visual arts—an entrenched orthodoxy which has both
dictated and inhibited the gaze and presence of the spectator. As the philosopher
Ivan Illich comments:
For Alberti, the story appears in or through a window that enables the viewer, who occupies a well-defined place in front of the picture, to turn towards it and get involved in the space depicted. The picture thus establishes the eye as its independent antithesis.119
Albertian one-point perspective prioritised the supposed best seat in the house, the
œil du prince or ‘prince’s eye’, which is the centre of the seventh row of the
traditional proscenium theatre or picture frame stage.120 This style of architectural
staging has remained the most commonly used in Western performance since the
Italian Renaissance. The sixteenth-century proscenium arch developed out of the
practical function of concealing the increasingly complex stage machinery and its
workings. It
…facilitated scenic transformations of startling ingenuity. These spectacular effects took on a preternatural character, as the causes which produced them became more thoroughly hidden and indiscernible. The proscenium constituted a limit between the visible and invisible…and to focus the spectator’s attention within the defined space of the scenic action. By being both a screen and a frame, the proscenium enhanced, in fact it helped to constitute, the miraculous spectacularity of the Cinquecento theatre.121
Essentially, the proscenium arch frames the entrance into the stage box in which
the actors perform. Traditionally, at the ‘top’ or beginning of the show, the fourth
wall is closed off, either by being shrouded in heavy velvet curtains waiting to be
119 (Illich 2010) 11 120 (Kentridge 2007) The best seat in the house: L'œil du prince, or ‘the prince’s eye’, to use the term made famous by Nicola Sabbatini. (1475-554) 92 121 (Peacock 1995) 209
72
opened, or by the solid fire safety curtain with a trompe-l'œil of sumptuous red
curtains painted across it. Figures 1.25-26 depict the famous trompe-l'œil curtain
located at the Palais Garnier (Opera National de Paris), completed in 1875. This
extraordinarily realistic painting deliberately deceives the spectator’s gaze.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.25: Palais Garnier (Opera National de Paris). https://www.getyourguide.com/paris-l16/hidden-treasures-of-paris-from-palais-royal-to-opera- garnie-t10580/ (Accessed 16.03.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.26: Palais Garnier (Opera National de Paris). http://artstheanswer.blogspot.com.au/2012/11/curtain-call.html (Accessed 16.03.2016).
Theatre curtains, whether painted or real
…protect what is behind but at the same time they sustain the hope that what is secret behind them might be revealed at any moment. The dichotomy between inside and outside, hidden and revealed, given and withheld, which is fundamental to theatre, has been a source of endless fascination…throughout history… The desired effects of revelation, narration, and illusionism achieved by painted curtains.122
The drawing open of the theatre curtain or the raising of the fire safety wall signals
the beginning of the ‘show’. The fourth wall becomes invisible: a transparent plane
122 (Allmer 2008) Abstract, 18
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through which the silent spectators in the darkened auditorium gaze voyeuristically
upon the illusory world unfolding before them.
1.19 De la poésie dramatique
It was Diderot, in De la poésie dramatique (1758), who introduced for the first time
the term imaginary wall with the following advice:
Whether you are writing or whether you’re acting, think no more of the spectator than if he did not exist. Imagine at the edge of the stage a huge wall which separates you from the orchestra; act as if the curtain never rose.123
By doing so, the performer would give the impression that he was not performing
a ‘role’, but was natural and non-theatrical.124 As Bram van Oostveldt argues:
This natural and non-theatrical performance was thus built on a double strategy of forgetting, the effect of which depended on the position of the spectator. With the clear distinction between representation and the spectator enforced by the fictional fourth wall, the performer could sustain the illusion that he was not acting a role, and this, in turn, helped to persuade the viewer that he was watching the events themselves and not a play.125
For the visual artist, the fourth wall is represented in the drawing or painting by the
picture plane or thin space of the palimpsest.126 This vertical plane on the surface
of the work defines and separates the illusion of the painted space beyond the real
space of the spectator who gazes voyeuristically into the ‘frame’. According to
Diderot, the characters in a painting, or performers on stage, must exclude
everything else and forget they are being gazed upon in secret.127 Van Oostveldt
123 (Lessing 1986) 340 124 (Oostveldt 2011) 170 125 (Oostveldt 2011) 170 126 Palimpsest: material where the original writing has been erased to be replaced by other writing. A contemporary meaning is a surface, interface, or mask inscribed with layers of history and memory. 127 (Lessing 1986) 340
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also comments:
This organisation of the gaze as a form of secrecy is, however a multilayered strategy. It not only provided the representation with its natural and non-theatrical qualities; it also defined spectatorship as voyeurism.128
The challenge for post-dramatic theatre has been to dispense with the convention
of the fourth wall129 and, rather, to produce a multiplication of frames which create
a heightened condition of spectatorship, where the presence of the spectator is no
longer denied.
1.20 The multiplication of frames
Post-dramatic theatre is a multiplication of frames, in contrast to the single frame
of the traditional proscenium stage which deliberately separates the performer from
the spectator by an invisible fourth wall. Lehmann writes of a liberated ‘world open
to its audience: an essentially possible world, pregnant with potentiality’, which is
not ‘walled-off (by a fourth wall) of fictional totality’.130 It is the multiplication of
frames of post-dramatic theatre that transforms the performance area into an
immersive, spectator-centric space.
1.21 Punchdrunk
A key player within the field of post-dramatic theatre is the contemporary British
theatre company Punchdrunk. They have created a new kind of spectator who is a
128 (Oostveldt 2011) 172 129 The fourth wall can also refer to any contemporary dramatic space where the spectator is deliberately separated from the performer; for example, theatre in the round. 130 (Lehmann 2004) 105
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participant in the ‘shared space’131 of post-dramatic theatre. Their critically
acclaimed production Sleep No More, first created in 2011 and still running in New
York, is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. This production is set in over a
hundred cinematically detailed rooms ranging across the six floors of a vast block
of three disused warehouses, called the McKittrick Hotel.132 The promenade
performance133 is three hours long, with all the scenes running consecutively. The
spectators, wearing white masks to give them anonymity, wander throughout the
sprawling building, up and down flights of stairs, along the dimly lit corridors, and
in and out of the cluttered rooms. They are immersed in a film-noir horror story that
compels them to keep moving through the spaces to seek out meaning. Multiple
narratives, non-linear performance, and a heightened theatricality define this post-
dramatic production by Punchdrunk. The following images (Figures 1.27-30) are
from the Punchdrunk website.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.27: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.28: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
131 (Lehmann 2004) 105 132 http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 04.04.2016). 133 Promenade performance: Performance in which the spectator moves between locations, following the action from scene to scene. The spectator inhabits the theatrical space by walking through the performance, as against sitting and watching. Kershaw, Baz. "Promenade performance." In The Oxford Encyclopedia of Theatre and Performance: Oxford University Press, 2003. http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198601746.001.0001/acref-9780198601746-e- 3186 (Accessed 05.06.1016).
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Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.29: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.30: Sleep No More (Punchdrunk, McKittrick Hotel, New York, 2011). http://punchdrunk.com/current-shows (Accessed 20.05.2017).
Another production created by Punkdrunk in conjunction with the Royal National
Theatre is The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable, (2013). This show is also set across four floors of an abandoned building which was previously the Royal Mail sorting office (Paddington, London). Adapted from Georg Buchner's famous unfinished play Woyzeck, it is a promenade spectacle of murder, insanity and adultery (Figures 1.31-32).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.31: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and Royal National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.32: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and Royal National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
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The white-masked spectators are once again able to move throughout the
atmospheric gloom of the performance space, enveloping themselves in the
seediness and depravity of the recreated 1960s’ Hollywood studio (Figures 1.33-
34).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.33: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and Royal National Theatre, 2013). https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 1.34: The Drowned Man: A Hollywood Fable (Punchdrunk and the Royal National Theatre, 2013) https://www.punchdrunk.org.uk/the-drowned-man/ (Accessed 21.05.2017).
The freedom to move in and out and through the performance space, to intermingle
with the actors and/or simply to come and go at will, conflicts with traditional
theatre where the spectators ‘are condemned to silent observation’134 in the
darkened auditorium and in front of an imaginary fourth wall. By contrast, Maaike
Bleeker describes the presence of the post-dramatic spectator as a here and now-
ness. She proposes that:
The spectators lose their safe places in the auditorium. They lose those places – marked by absence – from whence they might merely observe a dramatic world unfolding ‘over there’. Instead, spectators are addressed more directly and made aware of the fact that the theatrical event is taking place here and now. This ‘here and now-ness’ is further stressed by strategies of deconstruction that aim at breaking open the coherent world represented on stage in order to show what really is there: actors, objects and a theatrical machinery.135
134 (Lehmann 2006) 3 135 (Bleeker 2008) 65
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1.22 All Of Me
An example from my past body of scenographic work is the post-dramatic
production All Of Me (1993), produced by the Australian physical theatre group
Legs on the Wall and directed by Nigel Jamieson.136 This performance was self-
devised—that is, created in the rehearsal space. The set, which was a skeletal
scaffold of metal spring bed frames, was built and installed at the commencement
of rehearsals to enable the actors, right from the beginning of the rehearsal process,
to embody their physicality on, and within the set. I sat in rehearsal watching, and
documenting (in my journal in the form of drawings) the ever-changing nuances
evident in this non-text-based improvised performance. Figure 1.35 is a page of
scattered thinking drawings and notations recorded in my sketch journal during a
rehearsal of All Of Me.
136 All of Me: awarded the 1995 Australian Victorian Green Room Award for Best Innovative New Form Production; 1996 Edinburgh Herald Angel Award for the most outstanding theatre show across art forms, at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
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Figure 1.35: Scenographic thinking drawings for All of Me: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1993).
Rapid, staccato graphite pencil and pen lines are scrawled indiscriminately across
the pages and, in some instances, layered over the surfaces of previous sketches.
Scraps of paper with more drawings are pasted over others, revealing the continuous
transformative process of drawing an envisaged performance, with only a
rudimentary metal structure and a short poem (written by Mary Morris)137 as a
prompt within the rehearsal room. Figure 1.36 is a more developed scenographic
drawing for All of Me, which was executed later in the design process when the
performance had metamorphosed into its final realisation. Figure 1.37 is a
production photograph of the final, realised, self-devised show.
137 The text which prompted All of Me was a short poem written by Mary Morris (1993).
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Figure 1.36: Scenographic drawing for All of Me: black ink and watercolour on paper, 420x 594mm (Sue Field, 1993).
Figure 1.37: Production photograph for All of Me (Sue Field, 1993).
81
It was through the examination of All of Me that I came to recognise that this
extraordinary theatrical production was, in fact, a post-dramatic performance.138
However, in 1993, this term had not yet gained recognition or currency. I now view
the scenographic drawings I produced in the process of designing and realising All
of Me, through a different post-dramatic lens. For the scenographer collaborating in
post-dramatic theatre, an initial text may still exist; however, this does not
necessarily drive the overall interpretation or end performance, which often has its
roots in devised and improvised methodologies. The scenographic drawings for
post-dramatic theatre look similar to those produced for text-based theatre, except
that they are more likely to have been executed in the rehearsal room rather than in
the design studio. Here, the scenographer draws the constant transformative change
manifest in non-text improvised performance. This process is strongly present in
my current art practice and the drawings undertaken for this research, which reveal
my long-held personal interest and deep connection with post-dramatic theatre.
What has become apparent through undertaking this research is that, as a
scenographer designing for post-dramatic theatre, I am constantly cognisant of the
primary importance of the spectator, not as a passive viewer, but as an active witness
in the creation of the post-dramatic performance.
138 All of Me, first performed in 1993, was before the term ‘post-dramatic theatre’ was established.
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1.23 The ideal spectator in the post-dramatic space
Rachel Fensham, in her essay Postdramatic Spectatorship: Participate or Else
(2012), identifies ‘certain characteristics of an ‘ideal’ spectator (that) have emerged
in the post-dramatic paradigm’.139 This spectator is:
1. An actor who is co-present in the events taking place around him/her. 2. A sensory being whose immediate experience induces self-reflection and heightened awareness. 3. An initiate who follows the simultaneity of multiple activities and the shared space of a ritualized staging. 4. A molecular body in the collective contagion of the audience. 140
With this ideal spectator in mind, the intent of my research is to create a spectatorial
experience through an embodied sensory encounter with the drawing; to reposition
contemporary spectators so that they are no longer gazing passively at the spectacle
or drawing in front of them, but are actively witnessing an event.
1.24 Research question
The primary objective that drives my research is to create, in collaboration with the
spectator, an unusual spectacle, a mystery whose meaning is experienced by
moving through the scenographically drawn space. The spectator encounters the
‘empty’ stage as an embodied sensory experience of an absent presence. My
intention is to investigate the nature of this experience and the ways in which it can
be enhanced through the creative engagement between the scenographic drawing
and post-dramatic theatre. In this context, my thesis is driven by a single question
139 (Fensham 2012a) NPF 140 (Fensham 2012a) NPF
83 which is of growing significance for the contemporary practice and understanding of the fields of scenography, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing:
How can a drawing, underpinned by post-dramatic scenographic strategies, produce a spectatorial encounter with an absent presence?
My research, driven by this question, takes the reader/spectator on a labyrinthine journey that interweaves in and out, up and down, and through a scenographic and art practice. In the spirit of a theatre-going spectator, this is a quest for adventure and discovery—of wonder and astonishment.
1.25 Thesis outline
The exegesis for my practice-based research is organised into seven chapters. This chapter, Drawn to the Stage, has identified the scholarly terrain; defined the key terms and practitioners within the fields of scenography; expanded drawing and post-dramatic theatre; and introduced the aim and research question driving this enquiry.
Chapter Two, Creating a Scene, outlines the approach or methodology used in the research. The research is practice-based, and employs a reflective model; I have identified this model as the transformative spiral of research that takes the form of a written thesis or exegesis and a creative or practice component. The practice component both underpins and interacts with the written research. This method is a map which leads the reader/spectator on a journey of experimentation, testing, analysis, and reflection. The practice is an experimental continuum or spiral where
84 strategies are continuously developed from the embodied process of learning and making.
Chapter Three, Staging the Mise-en-scène, examines the precedents, both historical and contemporary, which drive different approaches in the creation of a mobile embodied spectatorial gaze. The investigation is viewed through a post-dramatic scenographic lens; thus, the precedents stem from a background of live theatre. Live theatre is defined as a collaborative form of visual performance which employs live performers before a live audience. The new insights collected from the precedents are a starting point from which to compose a taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic strategies. This taxonomy, in turn, constructs a framework in which to further experiment with, develop, and design a hybrid genre of drawing.
Chapter Four, The Chairs, interrogates Experiment One and describes the process of experimentation, documentation, and reflection. It also addresses an extraction and analysis of recurring themes, motifs, and design elements which are manifest in the drawings executed during this experiment. The analysis, underpinned by
Peggy Phelan’s ‘performative writing’, enables a ‘performative’ interpretation of the images and metaphors evident within my drawings. Experiment One employs
Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist script Les Chaises (written in French in 1952) as an inspirational trigger. This text is an apt choice because of Ionesco’s preoccupation with spectatorial perception and absent presence, a preoccupation that echoes the ideology of my research. The investigation is supported by the philosophical writings of the Polish artist, director, and scenographer Tadeusz Kantor.
85
Chapter Five, No Exit, investigates Experiment Two. The aim here is for the
strategies gleaned from Experiment One to create a new and different scaffold in
which to further experiment, develop, and design a hybrid genre which is both a
drawing and a form of post-dramatic theatre. For Experiment Two, my research
uses Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play Huis Clos (1944) as the creative prompt,
most significantly because it exemplifies the arguments proposed in Sartre’s major
philosophical text Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological
Ontology (1943). No Exit is a theatrical manifestation of Being and Nothingness
which, in part, explicates Sartre’s philosophical ruminations concerning the gaze:
of being watched by the ‘other’- an absent presence. Experiment Two is
underpinned by the phenomenology of the gaze to deepen an investigation into a
spectatorial experience engendered by a particular mobile embodied gaze. This
work also draws inspiration from the philosophical writings of the German cultural
critic Walter Benjamin, the French Situationist Guy Debord, and Tadeusz Kantor.
Chapter Six, Drawn to the Light, identifies the pivotal outcome of Experiment Two,
which was a serendipitous breakthrough for this research; what Stephen Scrivener
referred to as a ‘cognitive surprise’.141 It was this critical moment of enlightenment,
of a light bulb suddenly being switched on, that drove this research to a novel
outcome: a proposal for a new and different performative drawn work.
Chapter Seven, Drawn Beyond the Fourth Wall, reflects on the way in which the
transformative spiral of research has impacted on my contemporary drawing
141 (Scrivener 2010) NPF
86
practice through the development of a proposal for a new hybrid genre of drawing.
What results from this reflection is not a definitive answer, but a proposal presenting
possibilities for future research. It is this concluding chapter that presents a new
starting point to rethink the expanded drawn space.
1.26 Drawing conclusions
My practice-based research probes the unexplored intersections between the
scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing as an art
practice. The primary aim is to create a hybrid genre which manifests a mobile
spectatorial experience through an embodied sensory encounter with an absent
presence. The ghostly presence inherent within the expanded drawn space provokes
a ‘heightened awareness for one’s own presence.’142 My research investigates the
nature of this experience and the ways in which it can be enriched through creative
engagement, thereby developing and deepening my practice to provide insights into
the spectatorial presence and gaze. The scholarly interrogation of the drawn works
enhances and contextualises both my scenographic and my art practice.
142 (Lehmann 2006) 122
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CHAPTER TWO: Creating a Scene
88
2.1 Introduction
This chapter identifies the research methods that I implement in the search for a new hybrid genre and as a response to the research question:
How can a drawing, underpinned by post-dramatic scenographic strategies, produce a spectatorial encounter with an absent presence?
My research applies a reflective model with the aim of generating an interdependent relationship between the written thesis and the creative practice. The theoretical outcome emerges naturally with the progression of the practice and visa-versa. This reflective model transports the reader/spectator on a labyrinthine journey that has no definitive end but which could potentially unlock more opportunities for future research. Practice and scholarship work in tandem throughout the research, challenging, interacting and supporting each another; both are equally important.
2.2 Transformative spiral of research
To aid in unravelling the often-bewildering complexities of my creative production, this research first enmeshes the formal methodologies of Stephen Scrivener’s model of cognitive surprise (2010); Donald A. Schön’s theory of action (1974) embodied in ‘double-loop learning’; and the infinite spiral exemplified in Douglas R
Hofstadter’s concept of a strange loop (1979). Together, they form a theoretical structure which resembles a double-helix (or two intertwining spirals). This reflective model is not a closed process, but an ongoing exploration which I have identified as the transformative spiral of research. This spiral is a concept also
89
examined in the context of the philosophical writings of the Polish
scenographer/director/artist Tadeusz Kantor (1915-1990).
2.3 Practice-based research as a reflective practice
For this practice-based research, the hypothesis-driven model or ‘problem-solving’
research is replaced with a model of reflective practice. Problem-solving research,
developed during the twentieth century in engineering and technology-driven fields
of design, ‘sought to emulate the knowledge production achievements of the
physical sciences’.143 In contrast, a model of reflective practice supports the cyclical
nature of my creative production, which is an iterative cycle of practice and
reflection; of doing and thinking. With respect to this objective, I agree with Melissa
Trimingham who, in A Methodology for Practice as Research (2002), establishes
the necessity for a different approach to be applied to practice-based research
because:
…the material on which the research conclusions are based depends almost entirely on a creative process, and the process, in fact, has many disorderly features…The ‘disorderliness’ of the creative process must be incorporated into the methodology. The paradigm model of progress that allows for this is the ‘hermeneutic-interpretative’ spiral model where progress is not linear but circular; a spiral which constantly returns us to our original point of entry but with renewed understanding.144
In a similar vein, in Reflection in and on Action and Practice in Creative-
Production (2000), Scrivener notes:
…I have recognised that some (research) interests, intentions, and ways of working, although concerned with the creation of artefacts, cannot be moulded into a problem- solving project … I have called this form of project creative-production, because it is
143 (Scrivener 2012) NPF 144 (Trimingham 2002) 56
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inventive and imaginative, and realised through and in artefacts.145
The creative or practice component both underpins and interacts with the written
research creating a navigational map; this enables experimentation, reflection,
questioning, and backtracking at multiple points or ‘landmarks’ throughout the
creative production. As Linda Candy also proposes in Practice Based Research: A
Guide, (2006): ‘The emphasis is on creative process and the works that are
generated from that process: the artefact plays a vital part in the new understandings
about practice that arise’.146 The transformative spiral of research is an
experimental continuum, where strategies are continuously developed by an
embodied process of drawing between the eye, mind, and hand. The claim for an
original contribution in the fields of scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre,
and expanded drawing is identified through the original creative work.147
2.4 Cognitive surprise
In the field of ‘art-led or artistic design’,148 practice-based research projects do not
fit comfortably with the traditional scientific methodologies because of their
‘inclination toward projective making and thinking, which benefits from a strong
element of creative intuition’.149 They are projective reflections and
‘transformational in that they change our understanding of…design and in so doing
open up new possibilities and artistic and design potential’.150 They are also
‘cognitively surprising artistic and design interventions that expand knowledge and
145 (Scrivener 2000) NPF 146 (Candy 2006) 3 147 (Candy 2006) 2 148 (Scrivener 2012) NPF 149 (Scrivener 2012) NPF 150 (Scrivener 2010) NPF
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understanding of the nature and scope of … design’.151 Scrivener describes the
model of ‘cognitive surprise’ where the artifacts or practices are not unfamiliar or
unrecognisable but to:
…the extent that they are surprising, then we encounter something new…they facilitate the cognitive readjustment necessary to expand our understanding to encompass the surprising and the new. In this sense, they project a future whilst reflecting the past.152
Scrivener’s model of cognitive surprise is a constantly evolving paradigm where
strategies are endlessly developed by the process of embodied making and thinking.
The analogy is that of being on a spiral, circling around and around, upwards and
downwards, but surprisingly and unexpectedly ending up where one started,
enlightened and transformed in one’s thinking. The ‘disorderliness of the creative
process’153 is integrated into the transformative spiral of research (Figure 2.1).
Chapters Four and Five explore in greater detail how this spiral has become
integrated into my research practice.
151 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 152 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 153 (Trimingham 2002) 56
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Figure 2.1: Diagram of research model: the transformative spiral of research: black pen, gouache and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
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2.5 The Double-loop of Learning
Donald A. Schön, recognised for developing the theory and practice of reflective
learning, proposed, along with Chris Argyris, the concept of ‘double-loop’ learning
as integral to the theory of action. ‘Double-loop learning changes the governing
variables (the settings) of one’s programs and causes ripples of change to fan out
over one’s whole system of theories-in-use’.154 This prototype compels researchers
to examine their ‘actions’ repeatedly: to reflect upon serendipitous moments in their
process, potentially double-looping back, thereby continually uncovering and
questioning assumptions present in their practice. Schön’s ‘double-loop’ of learning
is adapted into my model of the transformative spiral of research as a means of
reflective discovery, of ‘problem finding’ as against ‘problem solving’ and, most
significantly, as a catalyst to create a ‘ripple of change’ in my creative production.
2.6 The double helix
A HYPERSPACE… The process of reaching it is childishly simple… SPACE is compressed into a flat surface. This surface is put into various types of motion CIRCULAR MOTION, around an axis posited vertically, horizontally, diagonally in relation to the surface of the image… This motion requires a constant COUNTERMOTION. PENDULUM MOTION… MOTIONS OF MOVING [surfaces] … MOTIONS OF DESCENDING and ASCENDING. MOTIONS OF MOVING [surfaces] apart until they disappear. MOTIONS OF DRAWING them NEAR and PUSHING them AWAY. SUDDENNESS and VELOCITY of these motions create new aspects: TENSION and a change of SCALE.155
154 (Chris Argyris 1974) 19 155 (Kantor 1993) 217
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The above statement/poem, written by Kantor, describes a perpetually spiralling
‘state of being’ like that of a double helix, the fundamental DNA makeup of the
human body. The double helix analogy best explains the concept of the
transformative spiral of research. A double helix is a pair of congruent geometrical
helices, or two spirals with the same axis (Figure 2.2).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 2.2: Double Helix of the DNA structure. http://lifewell-lived-two.com/what-you-need-to- know-now-about-stem-cell-research/#iLightbox[gallery334]/0 (Accessed 16.05.2016).
The double helix inherent within the architecture of the Sydney Opera House
(Sydney, Australia) car park is an excellent exemplar for my practice-based
research.156 The engineering is ingenious in its elegant simplicity: the last parking
spot is not at the bottom but at the top, back at the beginning. It is possible to
interrupt your travel down the spiral by cutting or traversing across to the second
intertwining helix and returning to the beginning. This facility of being able to
quickly backtrack, add to, or change an element of my research is crucial in its
progression and evolution.
2.7 Paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop
Douglas R Hofstadter’s concept of a ‘strange loop’ also demonstrates the
phenomenon of a transformative spiral of research:
156 The Sydney Opera House is also the venue in which a number of my scenographic productions were produced; for example, Tannhäuser (2007) Opera Australia, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2001) Bell Shakespeare Co.
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And yet when I say "strange loop", I have something else in mind … a less concrete, more elusive notion... not a physical circuit but an abstract loop in which, in the series of stages that constitute the cycling-around, there is a shift from one level of abstraction (or structure) to another, which feels like an upwards movement in a hierarchy, and yet somehow the successive "upward" shifts turn out to give rise to a closed cycle. That is, despite one's sense of departing ever further from one's origin, one winds up, to one's shock, exactly where one had started out. In short, a strange loop is a paradoxical level-crossing feedback loop.157
The ‘strange loop’ is a metaphor for research that is in a constant state of flux:
unpredictable, with no finite end, and constantly re-negotiating boundaries, thereby
creating spaces that remain to be populated with future research.158 As Hofstadter
further comments: ‘implicit in the concept of Strange Loops is the concept of
infinity, since what else is a loop but a way of representing an endless process in a
finite way’.159
2.8 Helical concept
Nicola Boyd (2009), in her PhD exegesis (creative writing), sets a precedent by
examining the ‘creative thesis’, using the ‘strange loop’ theory. She asserts that the
loop theory can be a ‘tool to test and backtrack… (where) the writer can measure –
or test – the success of their research process or creative work to see what worked
or didn’t, so as to improve for the next project’.160 Boyd also suggests:
The converging spiral is infinite, with its ability to spawn new research spirals and modes of research engaged in quantum entanglement as the creative writer researches.161
157 (Hoftadter 1979) 10 158 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 159 (Hoftadter 1979) 15 160 (Boyd 2009) 6 161 (Boyd 2009) 10
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To further explain this ‘strange loop’ or helical concept, I return to the work of
Scrivener.162 He proposes that with creative-production projects, the focus of
interest and the goals can change constantly as the work develops. Breadth and
complexity deepen as cycles of experimentation, exploration, and reflection take
place. The researcher can easily return to earlier investigations through reflection.
Research, where the work progresses through the creation of, and interaction with
a host of artefacts, issues, goals, and priorities, may change as the research proceeds,
and result in a stream of outcomes; thereby, it never settles on a specific problem
or yields to a ‘final’ solution, as is the case with ‘problem solving’ research.
Scrivener surmises that creative production, as an object of human experience, is
more important than any knowledge embodied in it. As an object of experience, it
makes explicit the creative process by which the material and analysis are
produced.163
2.9 Research methods
The transformative spiral of research frames and drives experimentation and
testing, adopting cycles of making and reflecting so that a spiral of knowledge and
understanding is constantly evolving. The following introduces the research
methods that propel the research through multiple iterative processes in the creative
production.
The research methods are:
• A taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic strategies
162 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 163 (Scrivener 2010) NPF
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• The scenographic thinking drawing
• The sketch journal
• Performative writing
• The monologue
First, a taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic strategies is collected from an
examination of the precedents to my research practice. The taxonomy helps in the
construction of a framework for the experimental phase of the research. This
experimental phase is primarily conducted through freehand drawing - beginning
with the scenographic thinking drawing recorded in a sketch journal as the potential
source of cognitive surprise. To document this process, I employ performative
writing which draws on a self-referential and auto-biographical style of writing in
order to perform itself. 164 Finally, I strip back to ‘one voice’ in the form of the
dramatic monologue and the single voice of the researcher/artist.
2.10 A taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic strategies
For this research, I interrogate precedents in preference to a literature search or the
reviewing common to conventional research approaches.165As Andrew E.
McNamara suggests, art-led or artistic design research is better served by
employing precedents
164 (Spurr 2007a) 13 165 (Scrivener 2012) NPF The traditional literature review is a critical analysis of published sources and literature on a particular academic research topic.
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…beyond the parameters of one’s practice to provide a historical or conceptual context for a creative or professional practice (which) is an important way of establishing whether new insights are being produced or not.166
I examine a diverse selection of precedents, both contemporary and historical, with
the intention of assembling a taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic tropes.
These precedents are selected from various art/design fields other than post-
dramatic theatre. However, in some way, all have a scenographic connection, where
the spectator is the primary performative participant and an overall heightened
theatricality is expressed in the works. Joslin McKinney and Helen Iball propose
that contemporary research into scenography has led to:
…a focus on the audience and the ways they might experience scenography has become an important strand in new definitions of scenography and, therefore research into scenography. This way of thinking about scenography pays attention to the role of the audience in meaning-making…167
It is through the examination of each of these distinct precedents that strategies can
be devised and tested to produce a different hybrid drawing: both an expanded
drawing and post-dramatic theatre which manifests an absent presence.
2.11 The sketch journal
The primary research method of experimentation and testing is freehand drawing,
beginning with the scenographic thinking drawing prompted by the dramatic text
and recorded in my sketch journal168 as a visual autobiography. My contemporary
drawing practice is closely linked to my scenographic work in the creative
166 (McNamara 2012) 6 167 (Joslin McKinney 2011) 27 168 From this point on I will refer to my sketch journal as journal.
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production of theatre and opera. My current panoramic, autonomous drawn works
have emerged from many years of producing scenographic drawings critical to my
design process, in particular, the early freehand thinking drawing which is
fundamental to the generation of ideation thinking in both my scenographic and art
practice.
The journal, also referred to as a ‘reflective journal’, ‘sketchbook’, ‘drawing
portfolio’ or ‘diary’, is a portable hard-drive of the artist/designer’s eye-of the-
mind: ‘…a window into a creative practice, suggesting a moment of truth,
realisation or an unbridled thought’.169 Kate Burnett identifies the primary
importance of the sketch journal for the contemporary scenographer in Addressing
the Absent: Drawing and Scenography (2014):
The sketch and sketch books are essential to most scenographers, for whom drawing is an essential part of our collaborative art form. Even the Greek origin of sketch, schedios, meaning ‘done extempore’ is illuminating: It indicates the importance of the moment in observing, recording, graphically developing or demonstrating ideas in meetings with directors and fellow artists, in rehearsals, and while working in transit and other random situations. Importantly, the lines (meaning a full range of mark making) and the ideas are constantly shifting, the sketch understood and interpreted from the individual viewpoints of those drawing and looking.170
Sketching on paper as a thinking process has been in use since the late Middle Ages
when artists/artisans began to draw in an experimental and investigative way, rather
than simply copying or recording finished paintings and sculptures.171 As Carmen
Bambach, a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art New York, argues: ‘This
exploratory type of drawing offers a vivid and intimate glimpse of the artist
169 (Tracey 1998) http://www.lboro.ac.uk/microsites/sota/tracey/journal/sketch1.html 170 (Burnett 2014) 5 171 (Bambach 2002) NPF
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creatively thinking on paper’.172 The earliest extant sketchbook (c.1225-1235?) is
attributed to the French draughtsman Villard de Honnecourt.173 Comprising thirty
three parchment leaves measuring approximately 235x155 mm, this medieval
artifact contains over 250 drawings, which Honnecourt executed informally over a
period of ten years on his extensive travels throughout Europe.174 This unique
sketch book is a portal into Honnecourt’s creative oeuvre: his observations,
reflective thinking, and eye-witness record. The work includes disparate subject
matter, ranging from animals, humans and furniture detailing, to architectural
constructions. The sketchbook was a working document, revealing multiple layers
of thinking. As the American historian Carl F. Barnes Jr suggests:
The number of palimpsests in the portfolio indicates that at times he had no blank surfaces on which to draw, so he had to erase one drawing to make another or had to juxtapose drawings of unrelated subjects on individual sheets.175
These drawings, with all their uncertainties, imperfections, irregularities, fractured
scribbles, rubbings, and erasures could, however, have potentially generated
unexpected connections, thus illuminating accidents and surprises for Honnecourt.
It is this quality of Honnecourt’s sketchbook—the layers of thinking embedded in
the ‘erased’ palimpsest—that resonates with my personal process as a drawing
artist. The journal in the twenty-first century remains a melting pot of observational,
annotative, and generative thought.
172 (Bambach 2002) NPF 173 (Barnes.Jr 2011) NPF 174 (Barnes.Jr 2011) NPF 175 (Barnes.Jr 2011) NPF
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2.12 The journal’s thinking drawing as the source of cognitive surprise
For this research, I produced thinking drawings or ‘primi pensieri’176 in my journal.
These had a similar intention and purpose to those I created as part of my
scenographic design process. However, they use the dramatic text only as a creative
prompt. Like that of the scenographic thinking drawings, they are a manifestation
of a special cognitive relationship between the eye, the mind, and the hand;
however, they are dissimilar because of their preoccupation with memory and the
personal interior monologue of the researcher/artist, rather than being an
interpretation or adaptation of the playwright’s intent.
A significant outcome of previous research into my practice177 was the discovery
that, when first reading the dramatic text, I not only scrawled notations, highlighted
or underlined key words and scenes but, most unexpectedly and significantly,
detoured conceptually into both memories and present thoughts triggered by the
text. The little drawings or doodles I scribbled in the margins, on the back of the
script pages, post-it notes—any scrap of paper at hand—took the form of an
autobiographical ‘stream of consciousness’, which is very different than my
scenographic process. I realised that these scribbles are a personal esoteric
symbolism, unintelligible to others because they are a form of shorthand
hieroglyphic that produces spontaneous, fluid, and abstract solutions, decipherable
only by their creator. For example, the following images reveal the progression in
my thinking, beginning with a doodle in the margin of the script, through to the
more developed drawings in my journal (Figures 2.3-6). What is also evident is that
176 (Petherbridge 1991) 12 177 MDes (Honours) College of Fine Art, UNSW (2012).
102 there is a representation of the actor in the drawings while, in this current research, actors are deliberately absent.
Figure 2.3: Scenographic thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on A4 photocopied script, 40 x 60mm (Sue Field, 2010).
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Figure 2.4: Thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on bond paper, 80 x 60mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
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Figure 2.5: Thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on bond paper 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
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Figure 2.6: Thinking drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black pen on bond paper 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2010).
2.13 The ‘mind’s eye’
The thinking drawing, as an intimate tactile understanding of media, is critical as
an embodied sensory encounter between the images in the ‘mind’s eye’ and the
hand. ‘The mind’s eye’ is one's visual memory or imagination. William
Shakespeare coined the phrase ‘in the mind’s eye’ in his most famous play Hamlet
(1603). Hamlet recalls the ghost of his father in his mind’s eye:
HAMLET: Thrift, thrift, Horatio! The funeral baked meats Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables. Would I had met my dearest foe in heaven Or ever I had seen that day, Horatio! My father! - methinks I see my father. HORATIO: Where, my lord?
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HAMLET: In my mind's eye, Horatio178
The thinking drawings are not finished works;179 rather, they are conceptual
explorations revealing the intimate workings of cognitive thinking. I discovered that
this early period in my drawing process is a particularly precious ‘alone’ time—a
moment of contemplation, of deep reflection. The secretive and reflective thinking
drawings become dynamic modes of illumination, of revelation—revelation born
of drawing the same image over and over, worked and re-worked, with only slight
variations; of the constant performative action of drawing in exploring,
experimenting with, and interrogating the space. More drawings follow, further
challenging and inspiring me to continually experiment and to seek answers within
my process. The sometimes rough and rudimentary scribbles and marks,
comprehensible only to me as the researcher/artist, can stimulate a renewed energy
which then reinvigorates the creative work. They are the primary source of
cognitive surprise.180 The thinking drawings generate a multitude of ideas that can
lead to what Scrivener termed a dream.181 Armed with this prior knowledge, I
embarked on this research with the intention to further investigate this phenomenon
within my artistic practice.
2.14 Performative Writing
The courageous way, is to come to the text without having any ideas at all, allowing the words to sing and speak themselves to life.182
178 (Shakespeare 2015) 18 179 Finished works, such as the set perspectives for the final presentation to the performers and production team – these are often executed digitally. 180 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 181 (Scrivener 2012) NPF 182 (Howard 2002) 20
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Drawing is a performative, collaborative act of the eye, hand, and ‘mind’s eye’. As
the drawing artist/researcher, I performed drawn actions for this research as the
primary methodology. Therefore, it is only appropriate that I construct a description
of the performative act of drawing by documenting it in the style of performative
writing in my journal. It is a written form that arises through the doing of writing,
or in the case of this research, the doing of drawing, which is also the doing of
performance. For this research, I used Peggy Phelan’s model of ‘performative
writing’ as a method of analysing the process of drawing. Performative writing
‘enacts’ rather than describes a process. Like a theatrical performance, it is based
on the same fleeting temporality, ‘the act of writing towards disappearance, rather
than the act of writing towards preservation’.183 Performative writing allows the
written analyses of my drawing practice to actively ‘sing and speak themselves to
life’.184
The writing style is autobiographical, deeply embedded in self-referential
experience and memory. As Phelan states, performative writing:
…enacts the death of the 'we' that we think we are before we begin to write. A statement of allegiance to the radicality of unknowing who we are becoming, this writing pushes against the ideology of knowledge as a progressive movement forever approaching a completed end-point.185
As a precedent, I referred to the model employed by Sam Spurr in her PhD thesis
Performative Architecture Design Strategies for Living Bodies (2007); here,
Phelan’s performative writing technique is used to analyse the architectural
183 (Heckenberg 2006) 148 184 (Howard 2002) 20 185 (Phelan 1997) 17
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processes (described by Spurr as ‘performative architectural drawing’)186 of four
case studies. Spurr comments:
Performative writing is a method, which, instead of using literal descriptions, draws on various personal and autobiographical techniques in order to perform itself…for architecture this means allowing for transformation and embracing indeterminacy, two aspects that have become integral to contemporary, digital architecture.187
2.15 Pollack’s six terms defining performative writing
The American academic Della Pollock also describes the relationship between
performance and writing:
Performativity describes a fundamentally material practice. Like performance, however, it is also analytic, a way of framing and underscoring aspects of writing/life.188
Pollock suggests a framework of six terms defining performative writing.
Performative writing is evocative of ‘other-worlds’189 that are ‘other-wise
intangible, unlocatable: worlds of memory, pleasure, sensation, imagination, affect,
and in-sight’.190 Performative writing is metonymic, ‘filled with longing for a lost
subject/object…that has disappeared into history or time’.191 Performative writing
is subjective and nervous; ‘…unable to settle into a clear, linear course, neither
willing nor able to stop moving, restless, transient and transitive, traversing spatial
and temporal borders’.192 Performative writing is citational; ‘quot[ing] a world that
is always already performative – that is composed in and as repetition and
186 (Spurr 2007a) 13 187 (Spurr 2007a) 13 188 (Pollock 1998) 75 189 (Pollock 1998) 80 190 (Pollock 1998) 80 191 (Pollock 1998) 84 192 (Pollock 1998) 90
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reiteration’.193 Finally, performative writing is consequential, in that it ‘subsumes
the constative into the performative, articulating language generally as an
operational means of action and effects’.194 Pollock’s six terms are definitive in
constructing a means by which to analyse, evaluate, and reflect upon the drawn
performative outcomes of my research—a hybrid genre.
2.16 Scenographic writing
Joslin McKinney and Helen Iball, in Research Methods in Scenography (2011),
extend performative writing into the field of scenography and suggest that:
Performative writing that focuses on the scenographic draws on the researcher’s responses to the multiple dimensions of the event, and to the constituent parts of the performance environment. Ventures into scenographic research of this kind aim to describe the event – or, rather, the author’s recall of the experience – by reflective and evocative means. The centrality of spectators’ experience to research in scenography is a motivating factor in the particular subjectivity expressed by writing that might be described as ‘scenographic’.195
‘The act of writing towards disappearance’196 can, in turn, be referred to as the
performative act of scenographic drawing towards disappearance, ‘allowing for
transformation and embracing indeterminacy’,197 both of which are synonymous
with the ephemeral heart of scenography and post-dramatic theatre. As McKinney
and Iball further propose, scenographic writing ‘is retrospective and refers to an
event substantially vanished. Scenographic writing aims to evoke moments that
have passed, styling the writing to “do” things performatively’.198
193 (Pollock 1998) 92 194 (Pollock 1998) 95 195 (Joslin McKinney 2011) 31-32 196 (Heckenberg 2006) 148 197 (Spurr 2007a) 13 198 (Joslin McKinney 2011) 37
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2.17 A phenomenological approach
The Australian artist Alex Ashton, in his PhD thesis Drawing Phenomenological
Parallels through Practice Based Research (2014), also employs a
phenomenological approach that privileges personal experience and first-person
accounts. He recognises the validity of the self-reporting of cognitive and emotional
responses, which is particularly appropriate for conducting auto-ethnographic
practice-based research. Ashton argues that:
…phenomenology and drawing, each offer the possibility of an account of space, time and the world as we live them, from the first person point of view; in that embodied and perceptual experience constitutes feelings and experiences explicitly through the activity of drawing.199
His research data consist of a combination of sketches and drawing; excerpts of
journal writing that documents his processes and perceptions of the embodied
experience of drawing; and analytical writing/reflecting on those elements of data.
Chapters Four and Five address the informality and personal reflections of
performative or scenographic writing from the first person point of view; where
embodied and perceptual experience is identified explicitly through the activity of
drawing. These chapters are based largely on extracts from my journals, which are
often in the form of autobiographical monologues or stream-of-consciousness
entries.
199 (Ashton 2014) 2
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2.18 Monologues
Personal confession… an unusual and rare technique today. In our epoch of an increasingly collective life, a terrifying growth of collectivism, [personal confessions are] a rather awkward and inconvenient technique.
Today, I want to find the reason for this maniacal passion for this technique.
I feel it is important. There is something ultimate about it, Something that is manifested only when one is faced with The END.200
Tadeusz Kantor’s ‘unusual and rare technique of the personal confession’,
otherwise known as ‘monologue’, is integral to the methodology for my research.
The central focus of a dramatic monologue, (from the Greek word monologos,
meaning ‘speaking alone’)201 is the illumination of the character’s state of mind—
a revelation, whether intentional or unintentional. A dramatic monologue is a
character study exposed in what is being spoken. I discovered during my previous
research202 into my scenographic practice, that I have a consistent recurring theme
where the monologue is used as a primary motif in both the scenographic drawings
and the final realisation of the theatrical production. A significant part of the
experimentation for this earlier research was to explore further the integration of
the monologue within the drawing in the creative production phase of the research.
For instance, I embedded the performer’s dramatic monologue into the final
200 (Kantor 1993) 166 201 Monologue: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=monologue (Accessed 26.02.2017). 202 MDes (Honours) College of Fine Art, UNSW (2012).
112 autonomous drawings, along with a figurative representation of the performer
(Figures 2.7-8).
Figure 2.7: Autonomous Drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 841mm (Sue Field, 2009).
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Figure 2.8: Autonomous drawing for The Master and Margarita by Edward Kemp: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 841mm (Sue Field, 2009).
However, in the case of this current investigation, I have set out to remove the actor from the drawn theatrical space altogether; to strip back to the ‘one voice’ or monologue to create a cohesive unity between the drawing and the single dramatic voice of the text and the single voice of the researcher/artist. The palpable absence of the actor becomes a ghostly presence, where questions are provoked in the spectator. Who has just left the space? Who is about to return? The monologue becomes a stimulus and an effect of the imaginary.
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I have selected two dramatic texts as starting points for this research: Les Chaises,
the absurdist tragic farce by Eugène Ionesco (1952), and the existentialist play Huis
Clos by Jean Paul Sartre (1944). I have deliberately chosen these texts to present
my drawing practice because of their potential to produce heightened theatricality,
which is a post-dramatic scenographic strategy. Both scripts, within their different
constructs, reveal a preoccupation with spectatorial perception and presence,
echoing the ideology of this research, and providing an illuminating impetus for the
drawing, its primary method. This empowers the potential for releasing the myriad
of images contained in the ‘mind’s eye’ through the drawing process.
2.19 Drawing conclusions
The concept of the double helix within the Sydney Opera House car park is the
intrinsic framework of the transformative spiral of research (Figure 2.1). This
allows the researcher/artist to navigate across to the other interconnecting helix at
any moment during experimentation, analysis, and reflection; at no point will the
research be locked in on a trajectory that prevents a ‘ripple of change’.203 It is this
potential for constant change in the direction of the research that can possibly spark
cognitive surprise. This surprise, in turn, could produce new and novel moments of
discovery to lead to further experimentation, analysis, and reflection. This is the
transformative continuum inherent in the transformative spiral of research.
203 (Chris Argyris 1974) 19
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CHAPTER THREE: Staging the Mise-en-Scène
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3.1 Staging the mise-en-scène
This chapter examines the work, both contemporary and historical, of a selection of
artists, architects, and scenographers who, in very different environments, proposed
a mobile embodied spectatorial experience that employed both two and three
dimensional representations within a constructed or ‘staged’ mise-en-scène. These
constructed settings, in distinctive ways, exemplify post-dramatic scenographic
tropes, despite their being a relatively ‘new’204 phenomenon. It is through the
examination of each of these diverse precedents that strategies can be devised and
tested to produce an expanded—or hybrid—drawing. This, in turn, generates a
‘new’ and different spectatorial encounter, which is the final outcome of the
practice element of this research. This outcome supports the repositioning of my
practice, and generates focus questions that further develop and enhance future
research.
3.2 The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, Pompeii
This research begins with an examination of the megalographic205 and panoramic
fresco, the Great Frieze of the Villa dei Misteri in Pompeii, Italy (Figure 3.1). The
fresco was completed in 60 BC, and discovered in 1909 when the Villa was
excavated under the direction of de Petra.206 The Villa had been buried and
miraculously preserved under volcanic ash since the eruption of Mount Vesuvius
in 79AD. Despite the ambiguity of the frieze’s origins and antiquity, this research
204 (Lehmann 2006) 68 205 Megalography: Originally: drawing on a large scale. Later: the artistic depiction of things considered greatly significant, such as legends of the gods or events of history. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/megalography (Accessed 02.09.2016). 206 (Grau 2004) 25
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focuses on this particular precedent because it exemplifies a number of
contemporary post-dramatic scenographic characteristics. The frieze covers all four
walls of the chamber, and contains twenty-nine realistic, life-sized figures that enact
a silent drama. This drama immerses the spectator in a strange world shrouded in
mystery, a world that continues today to perplex historians, academics,
archaeologists, and the like.207 As John R. Clark suggests, the figures create ‘exotic,
highly allusive, and beautifully painted tableaux that seem to speak, pulling the
viewer into a drama that both begs and defies interpretation. All is flux’.208
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.1: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy). https://au.pinterest.com/pin/410601691003912352/ (Accessed 13.09.2016).
3.3 Scholarly speculations
The frieze has yielded multiple, divergent interpretations in relation to its purpose,
function, and meaning. Oliver Grau posits that it is ‘a chamber dedicated to the cult
of Dionysius, used by his followers for rites of initiation and ritual’; that the frieze
reveals the initiation of a young woman into a Dionysiac cult.209 Michelle Baldwin
proposes, however, that the frieze is the wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne, and
‘derives principally from myth rather than from cult’.210 Karen Polinger Foster is
more cautious, and suggests that the fresco displays an ‘apparent participation in
207 (Grau 2004) 29 208 (Clarke 1991) 98-99 209 (Grau 2004) 25 210 (Baldwin 1996) Abstract
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Dionysiac mysteries’,211 and that ‘the paintings still impress and confound’.212 As
Grau further argues:
Although the frieze still presents a wealth of unsolved riddles, for all that, it is clearly a palpable testimony to a virtual reality, which not only sought to involve the observer through its subject but also, through the use of panoramic images, specific colours, and dramatic gestures, aimed at emotionally arousing the observer to ecstatic participation: the psychological fusion of observer and image in the cult.213
The actual room or space is believed to have functioned as a triclinium or dining
room, so called because it would have contained three chaise lounges, or klinai,
arranged around the walls (Figure 3.2).214
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.2: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): Reconstruction of the Triclinium. https://sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/pompeii/villas-outside-the-walls/villa-of-the-mysteries (Accessed 13.08.16).
With this Triclinium in mind, one can speculate on the intense performativity being
enacted between the two-dimensional life-size Dionysian characters and the real
live Roman banqueters. There would have been an indistinguishable merging of
illusion and reality, creating an orgiastic scene of debauchery and sadomasochistic
eroticism.
211 (Foster 2001) 38 212 (Foster 2001) 53 213 (Grau 2004) 29 214 (Grau 2004) 25
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3.4 Post-dramatic scenographic traits
The immersive theatricality of the frieze manifests distinct post-dramatic
scenographic traits: the heightened baroque colouring; the theatricalised panoramic
setting; and the mobile embodied spectatorial experience provoked by the two-
dimensional painted performers within the three-dimensional space.
3.5 The painterly qualities of the frieze
The amplified theatricality of the frieze is produced through the realistic rendering:
the exquisite use of light and shade to construct the volumes, and the flamboyant
use of the colours red, purple, and blue to create a sumptuous decadence that evokes
the Dionysian unconstrained sensuality and hedonism. The centre piece of the frieze
reveals the two gods Dionysius and Ariadne, lying intertwined, intoxicated, and
oblivious to their surroundings.215 The frieze is executed in an Italian fresco
painting technique called buon fresco, in which alkaline-resistant pigments, ground
in water, are applied to wet lime plaster. In a similar way to watercolor painting,
the pigments stain the plaster entirely, through all the layers, resulting in a depth of
colour that is rich and luminous.216 It is particularly the blood red background which
submerges the spectatorial field of vision in a sanguineous glow. As Grau posits,
‘the glowing red colour heightens the sensual and ecstatic atmosphere and its
climax, the consummation of the sexual initiation rite, ultimately succeeds in
involving the observer as well’ (Figure: 3.3).217
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
215 (Grau 2004) 26 216 https://www.britannica.com/art/buon-fresco. (Accessed 13/9/2016). 217 (Grau 2004) 29
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Figure 3.3: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy). https://dailyreview.com.au/pompeiis-villa-of-the-mysteries-unveils-ancient-cult-rites/21770/ (Accessed 13.09.2016).
3.6 The panoramic performativity of the frieze
The frieze is seventeen metres long and three metres high. The panoramic
performativity creates a 360 degree all-encompassing space, ‘which seeks to meld
the observer spatially with the mythical scene, demand(ing) a pictorial form that
will envelop the observer hermetically’.218 The fresco is composed of three groups
of figures: the mortals making preparations for the ritualised initiation; the initiated
maenads;219 and the intertwined immortals, the intoxicated Dionysus and Ariadne
and their attendants.220 What makes this fresco particularly unusual is the dynamic
interplay between the figures across the enclosed space, enveloping the spectator
within the psychological drama being performed. As Grau again suggests:
The borders between visual and actual space seem to dissolve as the figures apparently move in real space. Visitors are trapped in the gaze of the figures, which hit from all sides and do not let go. The illusionary space surrounds the spectators entirely, fixing them into the same place and time.221
For instance, the young frightened maenad with a billowing cape (Figures 3.4-5)
appears to be pivoting violently out of her pictorial, framed space into that of the
spectatorial space. She looks fearfully across to the satyr on the adjoining wall, who
is holding up a hideous mask (Figure 3.6). Her frightened gaze compels the
spectator to look in the direction she is looking. As Grau comments:
218 (Grau 2004) 27 219 In ancient Greek mythology, the Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus or raving ones. 220 (Grau 2004) 28 221 (Grau 1999) 365
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Her gestures and expression are reactions to what is happening on the adjacent right-hand wall, according to the logic of the work, they point across the intervening area, traversing the space of the observer.222
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.4: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): The young, frightened maenad. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii-villa-EU- deadline-looms.html (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.5: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): The young frightened maenad. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii-villa-EU- deadline-looms.html (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.6: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): The hideous mask. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii-villa-EU- deadline-looms.html (Accessed 13.09.2016).
Another example is the ferocious winged demon who is flagellating the prostrate
initiate cringing on the adjoining wall (Figure 3.7). Again, the Roman spectator
would have been very aware of the enormous whip held up in her raised arm,
repeatedly lashing across the spectatorial space. As Grau again argues:
…the dramaturgy of the painting transcends the limits of the second dimension, for the lash falls or so one imagines across the observer’s space on the back of a girl kneeling on the opposite wall.223
222 (Grau 2004) 26 223 (Grau 2004) 27
122
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.7: The Great Frieze in the Villa dei Misteri, 60BC (Pompeii, Italy): Ferocious winged demon. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3004498/Italy-shows-restored-Pompeii-villa-EU- deadline-looms.html (Accessed 130.09.2016).
Like its name, the frieze in the Villa dei Misteri largely remains a mystery, raising
more questions than answers. However, when viewed through a post-dramatic
scenographic lens, the frieze manifests similarities with contemporary
spectatorship. While this research can only speculate, based on the above evidence,
a mobile embodied spectatorial experience could potentially have been provoked
by the two-dimensional painted performers within the three-dimensional space,
where ‘one can almost feel the dialogic communication between the figures, from
wall to wall, as a lingering, almost physical reality’.224 The following thinking
drawing in my journal reveals a speculative examination of the spectatorial
engagement within the Villa dei Misteri (Figure 3.8).
224 (Grau 2004) 28
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Figure 3.8: Thinking drawing of the spectatorial engagement within the Villa del Misteri Pompeii, 60BC: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
3.7 The medieval Mystery play and panoramic tapestry
The late medieval Mystery play and its mutually dependent equivalent,225 the
panoramic medieval woven tapestry, embody post-dramatic scenographic tropes.226
Both forms of visual imagery would have awakened in the medieval spectator a
mobile embodied gaze of devotion.227 As Laura Weigert argues:
Human, sculpted, woven, or painted figures were all seen within a similar set of circumstances…Animate and inanimate figures were considered to create the same constellations of meaning or to prompt homologous experiences on the part of their audiences.228
225 (Weigert 2011) 26 226 (Limon 2011) 259 227 (Ehrstine 2012) 311 228 (Weigert 2013) 39
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The embodied gaze and spectatorial experience exhibited in contemporary post-
dramatic theatre have their roots in medieval theatricality and spectatorship.229 As
Jerzy Limon argues, the ‘new’ trends in art and theatre continue the traditions of
many centuries and are no novelty in the history of the medium.230 As he posits,
medieval performance displays similar characteristics to post-dramatic theatre, such
as ‘the tendency to blur the boundaries between the fiction and reality, with
numerous addresses ad spectatores drawing the spectators into the ‘action’, and
engaging them in all sorts of interaction’.231 Like post-dramatic theatre, medieval
performance was not dramatic; that is, it was devoid of animated, fully drawn
exchange of dialogue. Rather, it comprised sequences of monologues.232 And,
again, like post-dramatic theatre, it was a theatre of scenography or theatre of
imagery directed at a largely illiterate population.233
This research examines medieval performance through a post-dramatic lens, with
an emphasis on the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in France and Britain when
the Mystery play, and its witness and documentation in the medieval woven wool
tapestry, were at their height.234 As Weigert comments: this is ‘a historical moment
in which pictures and plays shared a representational mode and engaged their
audiences in a similar way […] the two media were mutually dependent’.235
229 (Limon 2011) 259-60 230 (Limon 2011) 259-60 231 (Limon 2011) 259 232 (Limon 2011) 259 233 (Limon 2011) 259 234 (Weigert 2011) 26 235 (Weigert 2011) 26
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3.8 Medieval performance
Medieval performance developed out of Liturgical Drama, which was performed
within the confines of the church building and dictated by the liturgical year.236 The
twelfth century marked the change when the Christian church took to the streets
and spectacularly staged dramatised versions of the sacred biblical texts (Figure
3.9).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.9: Jean Fouquet: The Martyrdom of St. Appollonia (1460), depicting the staging of a mystery play Musée Condé (Chantilly, France). https://www.wikiart.org/en/jean-fouquet/martyrdom-of-st-apollonia (Accessed 11.12.16).
The focus of this research, however, is the medieval Mystery or Miracle cycle play,
which first appeared in England in 1375.237 The English Mystery plays were very
short, and were always performed as a cycle, tracing the Judea-Christian message
through salvation history from Creation (and before, with the fall of Lucifer) to the
Last Judgment.238 This was deeply moral and spiritual storytelling to a largely
illiterate population. The cycle was performed by the guilds (groups of merchants
or craftsmen)239 on great feast days and outdoors on pageant wagons. As Weigert
argues:
The distinctive feature of the alterity of medieval religious drama…is the lack of designated and fixed boundaries that have come to circumscribe the traditional modern theatre and play-going experience it frames. Taking place outside, in a central marketplace and in the streets, the performance space merged with the space of the city. 240
236 (Woolf 1972) 54 237 (Woolf 1972) 54 238 (Woolf 1972) 54 239 http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/guild (Accessed 31.08.2016). 240 (Weigert 2011) 27
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Performing outside followed the classical tradition inherited from Greece and
Rome, where the theatres were unroofed to take advantage of the long daylight
hours.241 However, in England, this presented a dilemma because the two great
festivals beginning with liturgical drama fell in winter and early spring when short
days and bad weather were inevitable.242 This led to these religious scripts being
performed for the first time outside of the liturgical year.
A manuscript of the York Corpus Christi Plays (dated between 1463 and 1477)—a
cycle of forty-eight plays spanning sacred history from the Creation to the Last
Judgment—survives at the British Library. The name ‘mystery’ is thought to have
derived from two sources: first, in the theological context of a miracle or religious
truth via divine revelation and, secondly, from the Latin word ministerium, meaning
‘craft’, as the plays were staged and performed by the medieval craft guilds.243 The
mystery plays were performed as a collection of sacred episodes or vignettes that
ran concurrently for several days, lasting all day and late into the night. Each play
might be performed eight to twelve times a day. As Rosemary Woolf suggests:
The characteristic of the cycle play is that (like a series of wall-paintings) it sets forth a number of different episodes, which are doctrinally and thematically related, but which do not fuse into one extensive plot as does the matter of the Passion and Resurrection play.244
Medieval performance also demonstrated very specific characteristics of ‘excessive
display, exaggeration, and the accumulation of seemingly limitless quantity of
disparate events, places, and characters’.245 The staging of the cycle plays involved
241 (Woolf 1972) 54 242 (Woolf 1972) 55 243 ( http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=mystery) (Accessed 10.07.2016). 244 (Woolf 1972) 55 245 (Weigert 2011) 28
127
the unusual system of using moving, elaborately decorated pageant-carts or
mansions which were situated within the cramped township buildings and crowded
streets, blurring the spiritual with the secular. Reportedly:
This had important consequences, such as the frame-like effect given by the small stage, the closeness of actors to audience, the frequent need for one character to be impersonated by a number of different people, and the suggestion of passing of time.’246
Figure 3.10 is Hubert Cailleau’s (1547) miniature of the staging for the
Valenciennes mystery play.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.10: Setting for the Valenciennes Mystery play, Hubert Cailleau (1547) (The Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris). http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medievaldrama.htm (Accessed 11.10.2016).
This was an early theatrical form of promenade performance, where the spectators
were compelled to move to view the performance and where they would often find
themselves mingling intimately with the performers. As Weigert comments:
The division between audience and actor often dissolved as actors moved into the locations occupied by spectators, who subsequently adopted roles as bystanders or as participants in the action of the play. 247
There were no spatial-temporal barriers between the performer and the spectator;
there was no fourth wall.248 The mystery play is a spectatorial model where the
spectator is physically and actively engaged within the world of the representation.
The spectators were the centre of the performance, entertained by an experience
246 (Woolf 1972) 73 247 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 28 248 (Limon 2011) 259
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that that was not just visual, but also corporeal and participatory.249 This prompted
kinaesthetic modes of affective play reception.250 Here, in a communal space,
medieval spectators were conscious of themselves as spectators immersed in the
realm of the performance; the stage reality which they observed was also the reality
within which they observed.251 As John McGavin suggests: ‘Rather than attempting
to put to rest a spectator’s self-consciousness, this form of theatre attempts to
redefine the parameters within which that self-consciousness can operate’. 252 And
as Weigert again posits:
It is, rather, to the tapestries that we should return for a vestige of the visual experience of these plays. Viewers of these pictures and plays were required to engage in interpretative work to situate events both temporally and spatially and to identify the relationships between what might appear initially as a confusion of bodies.253
3.9 Theatricality and spectatorship in medieval tapestry
My research extends the spectatorial paradigm of the English mystery play and the
French la passion et les mystêres to that of the medieval tapestry. The woven
tapestry demonstrates the most prominent similarities with the Mystery plays,254 so
much so that ‘references to tapestries in inventory accounts can even be confused
with documentation on the performance of a play or script, since the language used
for each is the same’.255 On particular festive occasions, the panoramic tapestry
would be hung on wooden scaffolds in the form of a circular arena with the Mystery
play being performed within.256 The medieval spectator did not simply gaze upon
249 (Weigert 2013) 31 250 (Ehrstine 2012) 316 251 (McGavin 2009) 187 252 (McGavin 2009) 187 253 (Weigert 2011) 30 254 (Weigert 2011) 26 255 (Weigert 2011) 26 256 (Mesqui, Jean (2001). Château d'Angers. Paris: Centre des Monuments Nationaux. 50
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the performance or contemplate a tapestry, but viewed both from a place within the
action. Spectators, actors, and woven life-sized figures merged to become an
indistinguishable ‘collective’ mass. As Weigert suggests:
Animate and inanimate figures were considered to create the same constellations of meaning or to prompt homologous experiences on the part of their audiences. Bodies of human beings and those fabricated from other materials could potentially create the same scenarios.257
In her book French Visual Culture and the Making of Medieval Theater (2015),
Weigert suggests that the medieval spectator viewed both animate and inanimate
figures as being without difference, and thus identified both as personnages. She
further proposes:
The illuminations and descriptive passages in the manuscript attest to a contemporary appreciation of the multimedia and multi-sensory nature of the personnages, and the degree to which they incorporated animate and inanimate figures, as well as movement.258
The tapestries are massive in scale and panoramic in format, originally covering the
great walls of a nobleman’s castle, enveloping the choir stalls of a cathedral, or
strung out through the winding cobbled streets. For instance, the French Tapisseries
de l’Apocalypse (1377-1382), when first completed, were approximately 144m x
6.1m (Figure 3.11).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.11: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou. 259
257 (Weigert 2013) 39 258 (Weigert 2015) 72 259 (Delwasse 2008) 2
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The life-sized woven figures of biblical characters, historic dignitaries and bizarre
mythical beasts tumble out of the pictorial frame into the real space of the spectator.
On particular festive and celebratory occasions, these illusory images jostled with
the crowd of awestruck live spectators; both the woven figure and the spectator
were homogeneous, inhabiting and performing together in the same space. This was
emphasised in particular by the contemporary dress of the woven characters which
further enhanced the milieu of confusion between the spectator and the illusory
woven figure. Figure 3.12 is a panel from the Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse,
illustrating Saint Michel slaying the dragon with Saint John looking on.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.12: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: Saint Michel slaying the Dragon (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.260
‘As in the (mystery) plays, the boundaries between the space in which the woven
action takes place and the one occupied by the viewer are permeable’.261 Here, there
was no boundary or fourth wall separating the spectator from the action. The
monumental scale of the tapestries forced the spectator to physically move, as they
were unable to view the work in its entirety from a single Albertian vantage point.
The tapestries were multi-perspectival, which further heightened the curiosity of
the spectators because they were compelled to seek out meaning from the disparate
fragmented scenes that cascaded down upon them. Although scale appears to
fluctuate randomly throughout, the objects and figures are, in fact, hierarchical; the
most significant element in the scene was deliberately represented as larger in scale.
For instance, (Figure 3.13) portrays Saint John presenting the Fall of Babylon. The
260 (Delwasse 2008) 2 261 (Weigert 2011) 30
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tumbling buildings are the size of dollhouses in comparison to Saint John, the devils
and angels, who are represented as massive in scale. This puts an intended emphasis
on the portrayal of human weakness when challenged by immortality.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.13: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: The Fall of Babylon (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.262
The Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse is a series of multiple tableaux vivants, in the form
of an early panoramic comic strip. For instance, (Figure 3.14) exhibits the comic
strip tropes of block colours; voids of stylised pattern; the flattening of spatial
perspective; the juxtaposition of disparate images (real and imaginary); the capture
of distilled action; and a hierarchy of scale.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.14: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: The first trumpet sounds, a deluge of hail and fire destroyed a third of the earth (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377- 1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.263
The tapestry also has comic strip bubble text or ribbon text, for instance, (Figure
3.15).264 Most of the tapestry’s text has faded with time. The tapestry also had panel
gutters of text, but much of this has been destroyed or lost as well.265
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
262 (Delwasse 2008) 2 263 (Delwasse 2008) 24 264 In early renderings, speech balloons were no more than ribbons emanating from their speakers' mouths. 265 The gutter is the space between panels, where often text is inserted.
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Figure 3.15: Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse: The Fall of Babylon: The first seal releases the divine justice (a crowned man on a white horse (Château d'Angers, Paris); Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille (1377-1382); commissioned by Louis I, Duke of Anjou.266
The script or biblical text was interwoven within the images; text, image, and
spectatorial performance were fused. The pictorial devices propelled the spectator
on a quest for meaning through kinetic action. As Weigert again comments:
These tapestries suggest, in turn, that the distinctive characteristics of large-scale urban drama cannot be represented visually but can only be enacted through the viewer’s participation.267
The shared mode of representation and enactment through the viewer’s
participation that existed between the medieval mystery play and tapestry,
demonstrates distinct similarities to contemporary post-dramatic theatre such as
Sleep No More, produced by the British theatre group Punchdrunk (2011).268
However, despite these parallels, it is important to this research to identify the major
distinguishing feature of these forms of spectatorship—the medieval spectatorial
presence.
3.10 Medieval presence
Medieval spectatorial presence, underpinned by the performative actions of the
medieval gaze, is a complex early model of spectatorship radically different than
that of the twenty-first century. William Egginton, in How the World Became a
Stage: Presence, Theatricality and the Question of Modernity (2002), argues that
266 (Delwasse 2008) 20 267 (Weigert 2011) 34 268 Sleep No More, produced by the British theatre group Punchdrunk (2011), is examined in Chapter One.
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medieval spectacles ‘are organized around the pivot of what (he calls) presence’269;
however, this ‘relates to a different organizing principle from the theater that has
become the model of the modern stage’.270 He proposes an analysis of magic and
of the doctrine of the Real Presence that expresses ‘a different mode of being from
the one or ones we have come to inhabit in modern society’.271 This different mode
of being is a ‘real, lived experience, and experience of magical, salutary impact,
and one that inspired awe and excitement among the masses who came to bear
witness’. 272
3.11 Sympathetic magic and the Doctrine of the Real Presence
According to Egginton, medieval presence is rooted in notions of mimetic instinct,
sympathetic magic, and the Doctrine of the Real Presence. The medieval mode of
being involved:
…a performative repetition intended to invoke, conjure, or to make present some event. The mode of being that generates and depends upon this relation between bodies and what they encounter carries with it a distinct experience of space and causality, and to grasp the nature of this experience we need to examine phenomena that, at first glance, may have no obvious relation to the theatre: sympathetic magic and the doctrine of the Real Presence.273
Sympathetic magic is imitative, comprising the power of the copy which embodies
the power and character of the original, such as effigies, fetishes, or puppets
(Voodoo dolls also expresses this capability). This power affects the medieval
spectator in such a way that they believe the representation is the original and not
an illusion, artifice, or copy. The Doctrine of the Real Presence also has this power:
269 (Egginton 2002) 35 270 (Egginton 2002) 36 271 (Egginton 2002) 45 272 (Egginton 2002) 45 273 (Egginton 2002) 36
134
the devotional gaze of the medieval spectator upon the Holy Eucharist believes that
Jesus is corporeally present. The bread and wine is his body and blood, soul, and
divinity. This is at odds with the representational model of imitation dominant in
modern Western culture.274 The contemporary emphasis—that the illusion enacted
on the stage is somehow real—is unfamiliar to the medieval imagination. Medieval
performance does not need to create illusion to be real.275
The term ‘sympathetic magic’ was popularised by James Frazer, an anthropologist
who published his seminal text on magic and religion, The Golden Bough, in 1890.
Frazer argues that sympathetic magic is where:
…things act on each other at a distance through a secret sympathy, the impulse being transmitted from one to the other by means of what we may conceive of as a kind of invisible ether, not unlike that which is postulated by modern science for a precisely similar purpose, namely, to explain how things can physically affect each other through a space which appears empty.276
Egginton elaborates on Frazer’s argument:
…the Middle Ages experienced space in a fundamentally different way: as full, impressionable and substantial, whose dimensions existed relative to observers and, more specifically, participants, as opposed to being empty and independent of them – an experience that, for instance, would not necessitate a notion of “ether” in order to explain action at a distance.277
Ivan Illich suggests that medieval gaze was a result of ‘…a kind of metaphysical
simulacrum swarming out from the object of cognition to be grasped, embodied and
named as the knowing subject’. 278 In other words, the medieval spectatorial gaze
274 (Egginton 2002) 37 275 (Egginton 2002) 49 276 (Frazer 2002) 27 277 (Egginton 2002) 37 278 (Illich 2010) 9
135
was identified as a physical, embodied protrusion which gropes out from the eye
into the ether towards the object of cognition. Unlike the gaze of the contemporary
theatre-going spectator, the medieval spectator was not a passive receiver, nor
conceived as a separate spectator of the objective world, but as an intrinsic
participant.279 This multifarious model of spectatorship dictates the form of
medieval performance, in particular the medieval Mystery play and medieval
woven tapestry; both shared a similar mode of representation. As Weigert
comments:
…the viewing experience of mystery plays was in many ways homologous to that of contemporary tapestries and that isolating this similarity allows us to establish and appreciate the specificity of both media and the theatrical culture in which they participated.280
The roots of post-dramatic theatre are embedded in medieval performance.281
Chapter Four, in particular, examines in detail this parallel, in connection with the
first major experiment of this research, The Chairs (2015).
3.12 Inigo Jones (1573-1652)
As an important precedent to my drawing practice, this research also investigates
the elaborate seventeenth century Stuart court masques designed by the English
architect and scenographer Inigo Jones (1573-1652).282 This choice was also
determined by the marked similarities between the English court masque and
contemporary post-dramatic theatre. Jones created lavish masques or spectacles
279 (Egginton 2002) 38 280 (Weigert 2011) 25 281 (Limon 2011) 259 282 (Peacock 1995) 1 The Stuart court masque emerged as a recognisable character in 1605, and flourished until 1640.
136
which were conceived as a combination of music, ballet, spoken parts (largely
monologues), fantastic costumes, complex stage machinery, dazzling light effects,
and brilliant stage settings. There are over 470 of Jones’ scenographic designs
extant, including set models, perspective drawings, and costume renderings. He
transformed two-dimensional imagery into three-dimensional phantasmagorial
forms of extraordinary beauty. These were spectacles generated exclusively for, and
performed by the élite: the seventeenth century English court.
The principle masquers were always courtiers, usually choreographed around a
royal personage such as the King.283 The courtier, both as spectator and performer,
exhibited a mobile embodied gaze through the intertwining concepts of spectatorial
encounter, presence, and movement. These spectacles were primarily part of a
complex propagandist machine reinforcing the powerful reigning English Stuart
dynasty.284 The Stuart monarchs ‘…used the masque to foster an exalted conception
of the divine right of kings’.285
3.13 Italian influence
As a young man, Inigo Jones studied in Italy, and this influence remained evident
throughout his long career. He was the first person to introduce the classical
architecture of Rome and the Italian Renaissance to Britain.286 From the princely
Italian courts, he also introduced to the English aristocracy scenographic design
innovations that had never been seen or enacted before in Britain. He designed
283 (Peacock 1995) 3 284 (Limon 2011) 262 285 (Creaser 1984) 118 286 (Peacock 1995) 11
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novel stage machinery for the masque to produce miraculous visual effects, such as
chariots riding on clouds, raging storms with thunder and lightning, and sea battles
with ships and subterranean monsters.287 This major technological change in
seventeenth century stage design can be compared to the digital revolution of the
early twenty-first century, with the introduction of CGI (Computer Generated
Imagery) to production design.288
3.14 The Court Masque
The term ‘masque’ is derived from the French word, masque, meaning to conceal,
disguise, or change identity.289 In his masque designs, Jones created tableaux
vivants, living stage pictures or, as he suggested, ‘pictures with light and motion’.290
The English playwright Ben Jonson wrote many of the scripts or poetry for the
masques that Jones designed.291 These highly theatricalised spectacles were
structured around allegorical or mythological themes, and only the ‘disguised’
courtiers were allowed to participate. Nobles and royalty were physically and
actively part of the performance, often playing ancient gods or heroes, while the
comedic and grotesque characters of the anti-masque were played by professional
actors.
287 (Peacock 1995) 209 288 (Limon 2011) 263 289 (Peacock 1995) 1 290 (Peacock 1995) 51 291 (Peacock 1995) 7
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3.15 Similarities between the Court Masque and post-dramatic theatre
The court masques were theatrical, without being intrinsically dramatic.292 As Jerzy
Limon comments in Performativity at Court Stuart Masque as Postdramatic
Theatre, (2011), there is a surprising similarity between what is defined as
contemporary post-dramatic theatre and the court theatre in the sixteenth and
seventeenth century.293 Limon also supports the significant convergences between
the court spectacle and post-dramatic theatre, as follows:
…the rejection of the predominance of the word, the creation of the theatre of scenography, the increased role of dance and music, as well as of special effects (fireworks), the new function of the body, often provocatively naked and sexually ambiguous, the move beyond spaces of institutionalised theatre into urban space, onto the river, or into tournament ground, etc., the substitution of monologues for dialogues, the breaking of the barrier separating performers from the audience, their physical integration (common dancing and feasting, even direct communication between the performers and the audience), the departure from fiction in favour of the ‘real’, the rejection of the story and verbal coherence, the departure from communication in favour of participation, and so on. 294
As Limon argues, Hans-Thies Lehmann’s‘re-theatricalisation’ of post-dramatic
theatre has its origins in seventeenth century Court theatre.295 Inigo Jones did not
design these masques and spectacles for a permanent theatre. He built his stages
and complex machinery when, and where, they were needed.296 Court theatre was
site-specific (referring to contemporary events and held in spaces directly
connected to an event such as a royal wedding), time-specific (contemporaries
talked of the present occasion), substance-specific (objects within the spaces), and
spectator-specific (the aristocracy).297 Each unique production, comprising time,
292 (Peacock 1995) 4 293 (Limon 2011) 260 294 (Limon 2011) 262 295 (Limon 2011) 262 296 (Baur-Heinhold 1967) 131 297 (Limon 2011) It is important to note here the similarity with post-dramatic theatre, which is also site- specific, time-specific, substance-specific and spectator-specific. 262
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space, signalling matter, and the participating audience, became an inseparable
whole from which very particular meanings became apparent:
The blend or merger is thorough and complete, creating a very complex semiotic structure. The complex relationships established are intrinsically connected with the occasion and its timing, even with the particular audience, and cannot be shown or reproduced elsewhere. 298
3.16 The Court Masque as a promenade performance
The Court masques frequently began as a promenade performance winding through
the cobbled London streets towards the sovereign’s palace, accompanied by a
dazzling display of fireworks, and followed by a thrilling sea battle on the Thames.
This preamble was inseparably linked to the masque proper enacted within the walls
of the palace. ‘Through this, the space of the masque was expanded and
incorporated, metonymically, the city of London’; for instance, in Britannia
Triumphans (1637) (Figures 3.16-17) produced by Inigo Jones and William
Davenant.299
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.16: Britannia Triumphans (Inigo Jones, 1637). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Houghton_EB65_A100_B675b_v.5_- _Magna_Britannia_triumphans.jpg (Accessed 23.08.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.17: Scenographic drawing of antimasque costume characters for Sir William Davenant's production of Britannia Triumphans (Inigo Jones, 1637).300
298 (Limon 2011) 262 299 (Limon 2011) 269 300 (Peacock 1995) 153
140
These promenade performances involved hundreds of elaborately costumed
participants: a milieu of spectators, noble performers, and professional actors.301
The ‘fictional figures do not pretend to be somewhere else and at a different time
than the spectators gathered along their path. This means that there is no spatial or
temporal division separating the two realms’. 302
Once within the palace walls, the anti-masque would be performed first, serving as
an exposition and contrast303 to the spectacle proper, and performed by professional
actors.304 It took the form of a dramatic one-act play, a short narrative usually about
a group of fictional characters wishing to communicate something of great
importance to the monarch.305The anti-masque took place on a stage erected at the
far end of a large space, such as a hall within the palace. ‘The action achieved its
climax by transcending drama; the ‘discovery’ of the masquers was always a
moment of triumph or apotheosis, when negative forces released in the anti-
masqued world would be confounded by glory’.306 The performativity of the court
creates a blend, in which both the spheres become inseparable and not demarcated
by any visible or invisible boundary. In this way, the court presents itself as a
gateway to divinity.307
At this point, the Court masque proper begins in earnest. The heavy baroque curtain
rises to reveal the stage setting populated by the costumed nobility. They do not
301 (Limon 2011) 269 302 (Limon 2011) 270 303 (Peacock 1995) 3 304 (Limon 2011) 267 305 (Limon 2011) 268 306 (Peacock 1995) 4 307 (Limon 2011) 262
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‘pretend’, but are to be perceived as real, not illusory, fictional figures. Nor do they
pretend to be somewhere else or at a different time. They are in the ‘here and now’
of the other spectating nobility installed on the parallel bleachers either side of the
seated monarch. Their utterances, primarily in the form of monologues, are
unmistakably directed at the King and spectators. There is no spatio-temporal gap
typical of conventional theatre.308 ‘Thus, as in post-dramatic theatre, the actors who
play and ‘pretend’ are replaced by performers, who neither pretend nor play,
because they are ‘themselves’, sharing the time and space with the spectators’. 309
Next, the ‘masqued’ nobles descend in a flying chariot from the clouds or a cave
into the ‘auditorium’ or space of the spectators. Now, the partying and dancing—
or the revels as it was commonly called 310—begins, with the complete merging of
stage and palace. It draws spectators into its boundaries and creates court-specific
rituals, where the spatio-temporal unification of stage and audience is accompanied
by the complete integration of performers and spectators. This has, indeed, much in
common with ritual or game that courtiers love to play, and not with the theatre in
the traditional meaning of the word. 311
3.17 Jones’ proscenia
In the court spectacle, a central scenographic feature was the temporary proscenium
arch built as a framed opening within the stage space. Unlike the proscenium built
in the permanent theatre buildings, these were not constructed to emphasise a
308 (Limon 2011) 268 309 (Limon 2011) 268 310 (Peacock 1995) 2 311 (Limon 2011) 269
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separation between the performer and spectator by framing the fourth wall or
invisible screen. The English court spectacle, similar to contemporary post-
dramatic theatre, did not attempt to exclude the medieval spectatorial gaze and
presence from the performance. Inigo Jones, in particular, designed a proscenium-
like structure that did not separate the proscenium opening from the stage setting;
‘…both were simultaneously visible, instead of one being a visual prelude to the
other’.312 His design was part-architecture and part-painting, which he referred to
as the ornament.313 This figurative and highly symbolic ornamentation was clearly
integrated into the overall visual image of the stage setting. For instance, in Jones’
1608 production the Haddington Masque (Figure 3.18), the opening into the
performance space was framed by flying Victories holding up a wreath:
The scene to this masque, was a high, steepe, red cliffe, advancing it selfe into the cloudes, figuring the place, from whence…the honourable family of the RADCILIFFES first took their name…before which, on the two sides, were erected two pilasters, chardg’d with spoiles & trophees, of love, and his mother, consecrate to marriage: amongst which were old and young persons figur’d, bound with roses, the wedding garments, rocks, and spindles, hearts transfixt with arrows, others flaming, virgins girdles, gyrlonds, and worlds of such like; all wrought round and bold: and over-head two personages, triumph and victory, in flying postures, and twise as big as the life, in place of the arch, and holding a gyrlond of myrtle for the key. All which, with the pillars, seem’d to be of burnished gold, and emboss’d out of the metal. 314
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.18: Title page of first edition of the Haddington Masque (1608). http://shalt.dmu.ac.uk/locations/the-banqueting-house.html (Accessed 23.08.2016).
Jones continued throughout his scenographic career to draw the proscenium ‘…as
if it was part of the scene; and its architectural basis seems to be eclipsed by the
312 (Peacock 1995) 213 313 (Peacock 1995) 208 314 (Peacock 1995) 212
143
exuberant spread of ornament and figures’.315 For example, (Figure 3.19), which is
a scenographic 1621 Jones’ drawing for a hunting scene, demonstrates how he
merged the proscenium and the performance space; they were not conceptually
separate.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.19: Scenographic drawing of a hunting scene, identifying the merging of the proscenium and the performance space (Inigo Jones, 1621).316
The elaborate seventeenth century Stuart court masques designed by Jones
transformed two-dimensional scenographic drawings into a three-dimensional
mise-en-scène that manifests post-dramatic scenographic traits. It is these traits that
assist this research to devise strategies for the creation of a new hybrid genre. The
following thinking drawing in my journal reveals a speculative examination of the
spectatorial engagement within a court masque designed by Jones (Figure 3.20).
315 (Peacock 1995) 215 316 (Peacock 1995) 217
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Figure 3.20: Thinking drawing of the promenade performance of the 17th century Court Masque: pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
3.18 The Panorama: View of the Cities of London and Westminster (1792)
The interest of the panorama lies in seeing the true city – the city indoors.317
The above Walter Benjamin quote, in The Arcades Project (1982), embodies the
powerful theatrical illusionism of the Panorama which emerged in the late
eighteenth century. It continued to enthral and mesmerise its captured audience for
the next hundred years, until its decline as a visual medium with the introduction of
photography and cinema. My research examines the Panorama, or panoramic
painting, with a particular focus on the seminal work View of the Cities of London
and Westminster (1792). This extraordinary Panorama was designed and painted
317 (Benjamin 1999) 532
145
by the English/Irish painter Robert Barker (1739-1806). His large-scale landscape
painting of a multi-perspectival view of the city of London from the high vantage
point of the Albion Mills factory near Blackfriars Bridge318 sparked a new genre of
painting which is considered the birth of mass entertainment, a grandiose spectacle
for the general populace.319 As Markman Ellis argues:
In this context, the panorama has been seen as the paradigmatic point of origin for the rise of mass entertainment, the prototype for a proliferating series of exhibition spectacles (cosmoramas, dioramas, cycloramas, myrioramas, moving panoramas, phenakistiscopes) that inform the emergence of the new visual media in the nineteenth century (daguerrotype, the photograph, the stereotype, and the cinema).320
Most importantly, it is the post-dramatic similarities that the Panorama generates
that make this form of spectacular entertainment so pertinent to my research. The
Panorama engenders an embodied spectatorial encounter through the action of
viewing and, therefore, identifies with a contemporary post-dramatic experience.
The Panorama was invented by Barker in Edinburgh in 1787.321 He patented a
process called la nature à coup d’oeil, or ‘nature at a glance’, whereby a panoramic
landscape could be painted on a circular canvas in accurate perspective.322 When
viewed from a central platform at a certain elevation, the perspectival illusionism
remained ‘true and undistorted’.323 Barker’s first panoramic painting was a
cityscape of Edinburgh from Calton Hill which was executed in the paint medium,
318 (Grau 2004) 57 319 (Ellis 2008) 133 320 (Ellis 2008) 133 321 (Ellis 2008) 133 322 (Grau 2004) 56 323 (Grau 2004) 56
146
distemper.324 The success of this work gained Barker Scottish the financial backing
to seek out the larger, more profitable territory afforded by transferring his creative
and entrepreneurial practice to London in 1789.325 Here, the panoramic painting of
Edinburgh again met with success. The reviewer of this exhibition commented in
The Times newspaper, 28 April 1789:
When we consider the great merit this Artist has, in being the first to give real freedom to his art, we are surprised at his genius, which, Shakespeare-like, has spurned at restraint, and dared to ‘snatch a thought beyond the rules of art.326
Emboldened by this ‘ground-breaking achievement’,327 Barker embarked on his
larger and more ambitious work View of the Cities of London and Westminster
(1792). It was approximately 1479 square feet in area.328 To attract even greater
crowds and accolades, he painted the breadth of the London cityscape (Figure 3.21).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.21: Key to Barker's Panorama of London from Albion Mill [undated c.1792?], 301×228 mm (St Paul's Collection, Guildhall Library, City of London). https://www-euppublishing- com.wwwproxy1.library.unsw.edu.au/doi/full/10.3366/E1354991X0800024X (Accessed 01.05.2017).
It was in the written material advertising this spectacular new event that Barker
first coined the term Panorama. He deliberately chose a word with ancient Greek
origins, (pan meaning ‘all’, and horama meaning ‘view’; that is, ‘an all-seeing or
324 (Ellis 2008) 134 325 (Ellis 2008) 134 326 (Ellis 2008) The Times, 28 April 1789, 3. Cited in, Spectacles within doors: Panoramas of London in the 1790s, 2008. 134 327 (Ellis 2008) 134 328 (Ellis 2008) 135
147
all-embracing view’)329 to capture the neo-classical mania that prevailed throughout
Britain and Europe in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.330
The scale of Barker’s new Panorama required its own site-specific building. This
was a temporary wooden construction at 28 Castle Street, London. The painting
encompassed a three-quarter circular formation within the architecture; the
remaining wall space was the opening from the street into the interior space. The
spectators entered to find themselves in a completely disorientating wrap-around
view of London, dimly lit by overhanging lamps. The unsuspecting spectator
inhabits Barker’s painting or, as Oliver Grau suggests, ‘the panorama installs the
observer in the picture’.331 There is a post-dramatic theatricality inherent in the
installation: the exaggerated panoramic scale, the illusionism, and deliberate
chorographic placement of the spectator as the ‘actor’ within the drama directed by
Barker. It was from this exhibition that Barker made his fortune.332 However, his
overwhelming popularity and financial gains forced him to build a much larger and
permanent dwelling for his future Panoramas.
3.19 Leicester-Square
The new brick building, located at Leicester-Square, was designed by the Scottish
architect Robert Mitchell.333 It was constructed as a circular building or rotunda,334
329 (Ellis 2008) 135 330 https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/the-panorama-the-regency-cinema/ (Accessed 03.03.2016). 331 (Grau 2004) 57 332 (Ellis 2008) 135 333 (Ellis 2008) 136 334 (Ellis 2008) 133
148
90 feet in diameter and 57 feet high. This encompassed over ten thousand square
feet in which to exhibit a monumental Panorama (Figure 3.22).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure: 3.22 Interior of Barker’s panorama building, located at Leicester-Square (Published 15 May 1801, London); Etching: https://www.bl.uk/picturing-places/articles/the-spectacle-of-the-panorama (Accessed 15.06.2017).
As Ellis posits:
The building brought the architecture of the panorama to maturity: visitors were conducted to the viewing platform through a darkened passage below, emerging into an exhibition space brightly lit by a concealed skylight from above, the upper edge of the painting plane obstructed by the platform canopy, and the lower by the platform railing.335
The spectator stood in the centre of a 360-degree image, where the light source was
hidden and the edges of the painting obscured: the spectator was there, in the
picture. Barker’s illusionistic virtual experience336 was not unlike the twenty-first
century manifestation of the Panorama, the IMAX cinema.337 Barker’s Panoramas
were an early iteration of this immersive virtual cinematic form, where there is a
deliberate manipulation of the spectatorial presence and gaze. As Oliver Grau
suggests:
Even when the spectator was conscious of confronting an illusion, its perfection seemed so consummate and above banal illusion that one still felt transported to another place.338
335 (Ellis 2008) 136 336 (Ellis 2008) 133 337 https://regencyredingote.wordpress.com/2010/04/09/the-panorama-the-regency-cinema/ (Accessed 03.03.2016). 338 (Grau 2004) 98
149
Or as Ellis again argues:
As an event, the panorama was not only a meticulously staged exhibition of a painting, but also a carefully orchestrated media event comprising advertisements, patent grants, critical commentary and satire.339
Barker eventually dismantled View of the Cities of London and Westminster in
Castle Street (December 1793), had it repainted in oils, re-named it a View of
London and the surrounding Country, and installed it at the new premises at
Leicester-Square in 1795. The Panorama then went on tour throughout Europe,
again with overwhelming success.
The spectator today lives in a post-millennial society and culture which is constantly
bombarded by a rapidly mutating digitalised interface or ‘screen’ which continually
deconstructs and fragments the boundaries between the real and its simulation.
According to Jean Baudrillard:
...the medium is no longer identifiable as such, and the merging of the medium and the message…there is no longer any medium in the literal sense: it is now intangible, diffuse and diffracted in the real, and it can no longer even be said that the latter is distorted by it.340
It is therefore difficult, as a contemporary spectator, to imagine that the static
images of Barker’s Panoramas also provoked a similar profound effect on its
nineteenth century audience. As Grau comments, ‘the panorama developed into a
presentation apparatus that shut out the outside world completely and made the
339 (Ellis 2008) 133 340 (Baudrillard 1983) 54
150
image absolute’.341 The Panorama is a pertinent precedent to my research practice
because this genre of panoramic painting self-consciously presented itself as
immersive spaces where the spectator became at least mobile, if not necessarily an
actor. The question here is:
Are they spectators—with an implied disembodied gaze—or are they actors, with the role’s implied performative/agentive role in post-dramatic theatre?
3.20 I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE: Futurama
As a precedent, this research also explores the innovative design practice and
thinking of Norman Bel Geddes (1893-1958), the former American scenographer
who transformed himself into a visionary industrial designer.342 The following
focuses on his design Futurama, for the General Motors’ Highways and Horizons
Pavilion at New York World’s Fair (1939-1940).
Futurama was Bel Geddes technological vision of an automotive future.343 This is
a considered choice because the design for Futurama exhibits pronounced
similarities with contemporary post-dramatic performance. Bel Geddes’
spectacular creation was an investigation into the mobile, embodied ‘desiring’ gaze
and spectatorial participation. Like contemporary post-dramatic performance, it
eradicated what he considered the inhibiting conventions of the theatre, such as the
traditional peep-show relationship between the spectator and the proscenium
stage.344 It was this determination to eliminate all boundaries between the spectators
341 (Grau 2004) 59 342 (Marchand 1992) 25 343 (Marchand 1992) 25 344 (Marchand 1992) 26
151
and ‘performers’ in favour of ‘a sense of unity, intimacy, and audience-
participation’345 that characterised Bel Geddes as a prophetic and pioneering
designer.346
3.21 The American Dream
Bel Geddes was originally contracted by automobile corporation giant General
Motors, with a budget of $US2 000 000. However, Futurama eventually cost over
$US7 000 000 to design and realise a complex prototype of the highway system of
the future.347 The central component of the design was an immense, animated
architectural model, complete with 500 000 individually designed buildings, 1 000
000 miniature trees, and 50 000 cars; 10 000 of the latter careened along a fourteen
lane, multi-speed interstate highway.348 The scale of the model was 1ʺ/200ʹ and
covered 35 738 square feet; a utopian vision of America in 1960 or, as history has
revealed, an immortalisation of the American Dream 349 (Figure 3.23).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.23: Scenographic model for Futurama (Norman Bel Geddes, 1939) (The workmen provide a sense of scale). http://exhibitions.nypl.org/biblion/worldsfair/enter-world-tomorrow-futurama-and- beyond/story/story-gmfuturama (Accessed 31.08.2016).
The innovation manifest in Bel Geddes design was the mobile embodied
spectatorial experience it engendered. The spectators did not view the model from
a static Albertian vantage point, but were seated on six hundred moving arm chairs
345 (Marchand 1992) 26 346 (Marchand 1992) 26 347 (Marchand 1992) 29 348 (Morshed 2004) 74 349 (Marchand 1992) 30
152
on a conveyer belt that transported them on a ‘serpentine, up-and-down route over
the vast landscape and cityscape of the model at a height and speed that would
simulate a low-level air-plane flight’.350 Bel Geddes produced a highly
theatricalised environment which manipulated the spectatorial emotive response
and, therefore, influenced and promoted subliminally the brand and motorised
futuristic vision of General Motors. Indeed, Bel Geddes:
… employed every stage technique of lighting, spatial organization, camouflage, surprise, and scenic trickery to induce in visitors the kind of emotional response that he had previously sought in theatrical productions.351
The unsuspecting spectators of Futurama ‘were to marvel over the experience of
finding themselves suddenly borne into Bel Geddes's future’.352
3.22 Promenade performance
Futurama was an immersive spectatorial encounter on an extraordinary scale;
however, the experience did not begin and end with the monumental model: it
involved a complex and highly orchestrated choreography from the entrance to the
exit. This was a promenade performance that commenced with the heightened
anticipation of waiting in the queue (lines were up to a mile long with 500-1500
people)353 on a long, sinuously curved ramp that led up to ‘the mysteriously dark
slot of an entrance’354 into a building of stark simplicity. The silver-grey,
350 (Marchand 1992) 30 351 (Marchand 1992) 30 352 (Marchand 1992) 30 353 (Hayden 2012) 5 354 (Marchand 1992) 31
153
windowless façade of the pavilion entrance was specially designed by Eero
Saarinen who, as a young Yale graduate, was assisting Bel Geddes (Figure 3.24).355
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.24: Photograph of the entrance to Norman Bel Geddes (1939) Futurama design (Eero Saarinen). http://westread.blogspot.com.au/2011_08_01_archive.html (Accessed 31.08.2016).
Once inside, the spectators descended into a darkly illuminated and cavernous
space, the Map Lobby,356 in which was suspended a huge 60-100 feet map that
curved up and over their heads, creating a sense of limitless space. A quiet, intimate
voice-over explained the different illuminated configurations of the map, in which
were projected traffic solutions of the future.357 From here, the spectators were
ushered into the mobile winged lounge chairs (deliberately limiting their vision to
straight-ahead);358 these then took them on a fifteen minute, labyrinthine and
discombobulating ride over the panorama of the future. The spectators looked down
through glass screens as if from an aeroplane window. Bel Geddes described this
as ‘a surrogate airplane eye’.359 The simulated flight, ‘traversed three levels,
changing scale, shifting angles, showing realistic detail as well as strategic clouds,
shadows, and haze used to promote the illusion of aerial perspective’.360 Figure 3.25
illustrates the spectatorial presence within Futurama.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.25: The spectatorial presence within Futurama (Norman Bel Geddes, 1939).
355 (Hayden 2012) 5 356 (Hayden 2012) 5 357 (Marchand 1992) 31 358 (Hayden 2012) 7 359 (Morshed 2004) 77 360 (Hayden 2012) 7
154
http://www.wired.com/2010/04/gallery-1939-worlds-fair/ (Accessed 31.08.2016).
Throughout the flight, the spectators had their own unseen private guide which
purred discretely into their ear:
Come tour your future with General Motors.361 The world of tomorrow is a world of beauty.362
Then, the climax of the ride! As Bel Geddes described it:
Suddenly the spectator, in his chair, is swung about! He can scarcely believe his eyes. He is confronted with the full-sized street intersection he was just looking down on. He gets out of his chair and becomes part of the crowd.363
Scale was transformed to 1:1. The spectators disembarked at a full scale 1960 street
intersection with the Frigidaire Exhibit Building, Apartment House Building,
Automobile Display Building, and Science Auditorium Building on opposite
corners. They had only moments before seeing this view in miniature, with
miniature pedestrians, cars, street lights, and road signs. The spectators were then
handed button pins printed with, ‘I HAVE SEEN THE FUTURE’ (Figure: 3.26).364
Bel Geddes:
…above all else...brought his audience into the drama of the future, emotionally and physically…Eventually, he had discovered how to enable the audience to "move through" the stage setting and participate in the "play" itself. Nowhere was this more dramatically accomplished than in the "surprise ending" that Bel Geddes provided as the climax to his propagandistic drama of the future, a climax that raised the entire occasion onto a whole new plane of experience.365
361 (Marchand 1992) 32 362 (Marchand 1992) 32 363 (Marchand 1992) 34 364 (Hayden 2012) 8 365 (Marchand 1992) 33
155
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions. Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.26: Button pins handed out to the spectator at the conclusion of their Futurama experience (Norman Bel Geddes, 1939). http://archinect.com/news/article/81153290/major-exhibition-on-polymath-designer-norman-bel- geddes-to-open-at-mcny. (Accessed: 31.08.2016).
Fifteen million people viewed Futurama between 1939 and 1940.366 However,
despite its popularity, and Bel Geddes’ protestations, it was dismantled in 1940.
Futurama was an extraordinary, propagandist spectacular. For this research,
however, it also exemplified pronounced post-dramatic scenographic tropes,
particularly the highly choreographed spectatorial promenade performance.
3.23 Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller
As a precedent, this research also examines the practice and theoretical thinking of
two controversial American scenographers and architects Ricardo Scofidio and
Elizabeth Diller, with particular emphasis on their design for the Slow House, an
unrealised vacation home (1990). The design was an investigation into viewing
through multiple frames or representations of the screen: the windscreen, television
screen, picture- window, and X-ray film. All these screens were a conceptualisation
of the mobile embodied ‘desiring gaze’ on vacation. Together, the drawings, the
architectural model, and the exhibition—The Desiring Eye: Reviewing the Slow
House (Gallery Ma Tokyo, 1992)—manifest post-dramatic scenographic tropes that
are of particular value to this research in creating a hybrid drawing.
366 (Hayden 2012) 10
156
3.24 The Slow House (1990)
The design for Slow House was originally commissioned by Koji Itakura, a
Japanese real estate investor, and was to be built in North Haven on Long Island.
The blueprint of the design was dictated by an arc, or as the architects described it,
the ‘decelerating curve’: the organic form of a snail (hence the name Slow
House).367 The façade comprised the front door alone, four feet wide and eighteen
feet high. This opened into a meandering curved space which ended in a huge
picture-window, capturing a prized ocean view. However, this view was quite
deliberately obstructed by a large television screen which was connected to a video
cassette recorder (VCR) and camera directed at the water view outside. Scofidio
and Diller ‘conceptualised a waterfront view as portable, storable, and capable of
being transported back to the city, a commodity as well as a sight and an
experience’.368
The spectatorial embodied experience began in the car driving towards the vacation
home. Upon arrival, the spectator stepped through an entrance of highly
theatricalised, baroque proportions, then moved along a 100 foot long curved wall
to be confronted by a simulacrum of an extraordinary view. The ‘desiring gaze’
compelled the spectator to move, to seek out the ‘million dollar’ view so coveted
by the status-driven, nouveau riche American. As Scofidio and Diller argued:
Taking issue with the construction of visual pleasure for the leisure-eye both its production and its denial – the house regulates three optical devices of “escape” from and to culture: The car windshield, a reversible escape into vehicular space between city and vacation
367 (Dimendberg 2013) 66 368 (Diller 2013) 67
157
home; the television screen, a solitary escape into mediatic space, a social space that connects viewers by an electronic weld; the picture window, the escape into a propriety scenic space, a space measured by market value. 369
The Slow House design was a deliberate contrast to the historical traditions of the
summer home or villa. Scofidio and Diller ‘rejected these traditional precedents by
replacing the codes of Renaissance perspective with a flattened space that
transformed the interior of the house into a single curving surface without a direct
visual axis’.370 Vision is eroticised, the hostage of the ‘desiring eyes’. The Albertian
one-point perspective which relaxed the static eye centre is deflected, provoking a
curiosity that compels the spectator to move, to seek out meaning:
The house is a mechanism of arousal, eliciting an optical desire and feeding it, slowly. The only direct view is at the end of the one-hundred-foot-long wall, through the picture window, toward the horizon.371
Of course, this view is not real; it is only a representation of the real. The television
screen stretches the notion of reality, truth and meaning, becoming, as Jean
Baudrillard suggested, a simulacrum where the original truth has been rendered
meaningless and irrelevant—a spectre of the real, which he referred to as a
hyperreality.372 The spectator gazes longingly upon an electronic screen which,
ironically, can be programmed to display the perfect view twenty-four hours a day
(Figure 3.27). As Scofidio and Diller argue: ‘Thus the vacant leisure gaze is
arrested at the window’s surface and forced to contemplate the instrument of its
contemplation’.373
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
369 (Elizabeth Diller 1994) 224 370 (Diller 2013) 67 371 (Elizabeth Diller 1994) 225 372 (Baudrillard 1983) 104 373 (Elizabeth Diller 1994) 248
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Figure 3.27: The Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller, 1991). https://secrethesis.wordpress.com/2011/02/21/pecha-kucha-one/slowhouse_dsr/ (Accessed 05.07.2016).
3.25 Theatrical architects or illusionists
On 24 October 1990, at Columbia University, Scofidio and Diller presented a
seminal lecture using video, projected images, and multiple competing voiceovers
of their unrealised seaside vacation house, Slow House. The presentation was, in
fact, a theatrical performance: ‘the performance overshadowed (the) project to wide
acclaim’.374 Diller and Scofidio, acknowledged as highly theatrical architects or
illusionists,375 first collaborated in the scenographic design of installations and
theatre sets. As Peter Wood argues: ‘For them performance offered a way to re-
introduce the body to architectural discourse after the emptiness of late Eighties
Minimalism’.376 Prior to the lecture, Diller and Scofidio had just been presented a
prestigious award at the Progressive Architecture Thirty-Eighth Annual Awards
Competition. Rem Koolhaas, a member of the jury said, ‘what I like here is that the
house itself is a kind of mise-en-scène. It manipulates the view’.377
3.26 The Desiring Eye: Reviewing the Slow House (1992)
It was, however, at the exhibition—The Desiring Eye: Reviewing the Slow House—
at the Gallery Ma in Tokyo in the following year (1992), that the Slow House
became immortalised as a performative art installation, comprising the model,
374 (Wood 2005) 3 375 (Davidson 2007) Davidson, Justin. 2007. "The Illusionists." New Yorker 83 (12):128-137 376 (Wood 2005) 1 377 (Elizabeth Diller 1991) 88
159
Polaroid photographs, drawings, soundscape and text.378 It reworked ‘the house as
an installation, splicing and editing it as if it were a film, introduced another layer
of reflexivity into a project already concerned with vision’.379 What had been a
failed commission due to a change in the client’s financial circumstances, had now
elevated the Slow House design from an inanimate building to a mobile, embodied
spectatorial experience and, as this research also posits, a post-dramatic
scenographic encounter. This was particularly evident in the multiple drawings380
spawned from the failed enterprise. These were displayed in such a way that the
spectator was forced to weave through the exhibition as if on a quest for meaning
in a labyrinth of glazed panels of glass. The Desiring Eye used twenty-four
freestanding steel poles and frames in a grid-like pattern on a raised floor within the
gallery space. A single halogen light bulb was suspended above each display: ‘At
first glance they resembled music stands, and the gallery conveyed the impression
of a concert, minus the instruments and performers’ (Figure 3.28).381
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.28: The Slow House (Photo by Mitsumasa Fujitsuka, 1992). http://www.toto.co.jp/gallerma/hist/en/exhibi/diller.htm. (Accessed 14.05.2016).
3.27 The Slow House Drawings
The innate theatricality of Diller and Scofidio is apparent in the Slow House
drawings. Inserted into the model were ten sectional X-ray drawings on acetate
(Figure 3.29).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
378 The Desiring Eye: Reviewing the Slow House, at the Gallery Ma in Tokyo (1992), and the following year at Le Magasin in Grenoble and Arc-en-rêve in Bordeaux. 379 (Diller 2013) 73 380 Drawings and model now reside at MOMA, New York. 381 (Diller 2013) 74
160
Figure 3.29: Model of Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller). www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/1999/un-privatehouse/Project_19.htm. (Accessed 03.06.2015).
However, in the exhibition, the drawings were displayed separately from the model
to allow the spectator to fully observe each drawing and read the text (Figure 3.30).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions. Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.30: Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller). www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=6028437 (Accessed 02.01.2013).
An example of the text or script is as follows: ‘Long, slick and slender, tickles where
it’s tender? A whip. What is the difference between walking up the stairs and
looking up the stairs: In one you step up the stairs, in the other you stare up the
stairs’.382 As Wood argues:
The X-ray provides a particularised view of the body not seen without technological intervention. The X-ray is another screen, and it is, in the tradition of comic book superheros, a privileged view not afforded to ordinary human sight. The X-ray drawing is a form of super-vision that sees that which should really be hidden.383
The spectator becomes the voyeur, embodying the desiring gaze. In one of the ten
drawings, Eating in Bed, there is a copulating couple in bed, observed from above
by a group of three individuals eating (Figure 3.31). As Wood suggests: ‘We have
in this drawing a version of debased performance – a sex-show’.384 These drawings
‘stage’ the mobile embodied act of gazing.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
382 (Wood 2005) 5 383 (Wood 2005) 5 384 (Wood 2005) 5
161
Figure 3.31: Slow House (Ricardo Scofidio and Elizabeth Diller; FRAC collection).385
What is so unusual is that these drawings, accompanied by a script, cease to function
as architectural drawings and become a ‘post-dramatic’ scenographic storyboard
that enacts a reality drama: a satirical narrative that parodies the American seaside
vacation house and lifestyle. The drawings function as multiple cinematic screens
or as voyeuristic vignettes; a probe into the domesticated eye on vacation.386 The
drawings in the exhibition transformed the spectatorial gaze from a static, all-
encompassing image, to a process of accumulating images in motion. This
demanded that the spectator engage and participate in the post-dramatic drama of
the installation.
3.28 William Kentridge
The South African contemporary artist, director, and scenographer William
Kentridge (1955-) is the final precedent this research examines, with an intent to
garner strategies that assist in the creation of a hybrid drawing. The core of
Kentridge’s artistic oeuvre is expanded drawing. In both his art practice and
scenographic productions, Kentridge deconstructs the traditional definition of
drawing by employing distinct scenographic characteristics to create and exhibit the
drawn works. He generates expanded drawings that are inherently theatrical,
arousing curiosity, wonder, and astonishment in the spectator. The spectators
encounter the drawing and the process of drawing as they would be in post-dramatic
theatre. As in post-dramatic theatre, the multifarious elements that collectively
385 (Wood 2005) 7 386 (Wood 2005) 3
162
produce Kentridge’ drawn installations assert that it is not about the real ‘but the
unsettling that occurs through the indecidability whether one is dealing with reality
or fiction. The theatrical effect and the effect on consciousness both emanate from
this ambiguity’.387 This research examines Kentridge’s expanded drawing Black
Box/Chambre Noire at the Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin, 2005), and later at
MOMA (2010).
3.29 Black Box/Chambre Noir (2005)
Black Box/Chambre Noire is a performative art installation, comprising an
intricately constructed architectural model of a baroque proscenium theatre and
theatre set, drawings (charcoal, pastel, collage, and coloured pencil on paper),
mechanical puppets, live-action and animated films, soundscape, and text.388 The
work is a disturbing portrayal of the German massacre of the Herero in Southwest
Africa (now Namibia) in 1904—an under-researched period of history that is
considered the first genocide of the twentieth-century.389
Black Box/Chambre Noire, as a performative architectural model, generates a
similar spectatorial experience as Diller and Scofidio’s Slow House. Figure 3.32
demonstrates how the spectator viewed the work when it was originally exhibited
at the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (2005). The spectator could sit or stand to view
the show, as they would in the auditorium of a baroque theatre; however, they were
387 (Lehmann 2004) 105 388 Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005): Model theatre with drawings (charcoal, pastel, collage, and coloured pencil on paper), mechanical puppets, and 35mm film transferred to video; duration of 22 minutes, 141 3/4 x 78 3/4 x 55 inches (Commissioned by Deutsche Bank AG in consultation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim, Foundation for the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin). 389 (Buikema 2016) 251
163
also encouraged to walk around the model to observe the mechanical workings, as
well as promenade around the interior gallery space to look upon Kentridge’s
drawings presented on the walls.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.32: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2005); Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin. http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/2005/12/29/2005_12_william_kentrid/ (Accessed 19.09.2016).
3.30 Black Box/Chambre Noire (MOMA, 2010)
Figures 3.33-35 reveal how Black Box/Chambre Noire was exhibited later (in 2010)
at MOMA. Unlike in Berlin, it was displayed at opposing ends of the exhibition
space to Kentridge’s set model design for the opera Die Zauberflöte, (The Magic
Flute, 2005).390 This was a deliberate juxtaposition between the utopian idealism of
the eighteenth-century German Enlightenment in Die Zauberflöte, and the violence
and horror enacted by the German military on the African Hereros early in the
twentieth-century. Light and virtue is contrasted against darkness, shadows, and
death. It was during the scenographic and directorial process of Die Zauberflöte that
Kentridge was prompted to produce Black Box/Chambre Noire.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.33: Installation view of Black Box/Chambre Noire; (L to R) Learning the Flute and Preparing the Flute (William Kentridge, 2010); music by Philip Miller (2005); exhibited at MOMA (2010). https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-five-themes/ (Accessed 03.04.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.34: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2010); exhibited at MOMA (2010).
390 William Kentridge directed and designed the set for Die Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 2005) at the Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels.
164
https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-five-themes/ (Accessed 03.04.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.35: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2010); MOMA (2010). https://www.acmi.net.au/exhibitions/past-exhibitions/2012/william-kentridge-five-themes/ (Accessed 03.04.2016).
3.31 Soundscape
The panoramic format of the installation at MOMA compelled the spectator to
physically move to view all the varying media—drawings, models, film and
light/shadow play—from differing perspectives. There also reverberated
throughout the space Mozart’s playful score, juxtaposed with the harrowing laments
of the Hereros, (outjina).391 This is a Brechtian strategy in which the spectator is
deliberately jolted into critical awareness through contrast: a meta-theatrical392
device to discourage immersion and escapism and, instead, foster knowledge and
action in the spectator. The installation, like that of The Desiring Eye: Reviewing
the Slow House, becomes a performative space.
3.32 The trompe-l'œil curtain
Another post-dramatic strategy that is manifest in both the constructed baroque
theatre of the Black Box/Chambre Noire and the scaled set design for the opera Die
Zauberflöte, is the trompe-l’œil theatricality of the ‘painted curtain’. Rather than
curtains of real fabric on both the model stages, there are stage-flats that look like
391 (Buikema 2016) 252 392 Meta-theatre is ‘theatre that is aware of itself’.
165
three dimensional ‘real’ curtains. The teasers and tormentors393 are draped in hand-
drawn charcoal curtains, framing the interior space in multi-layered, two-
dimensional cut outs (Figures 3.36-37).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.36: William Kentridge in his Johannesburg studio during preparations for Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005). http://www.deutsche-guggenheim.de/e/ausstellungen-kentridge01.php (Accessed 21.09.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.37: William Kentridge (2005). http://www.deutsche-guggenheim.de/e/ausstellungen-kentridge01.php (Accessed 21.09.2016).
In Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute),394 these miniature curtains become scaled-
up enlargements of Kentridge’s original charcoal drawings, framing the dramatic
space in multi-layered, two-dimensional cut outs (Figures 3.38-39). His set design
was enveloped in illusory painted proscenium curtains, recalling those of the
eighteenth-century theatre at the time the opera was written. The trompe-l’œil
curtain becomes a self-conscious, constructed theatricality: a deliberate interruption
or disruption contradicting traditional notions of ‘the suspension of disbelief’. As
Arnold Aronson comments: ‘…postmodernism is inherently theatrical, and the
proscenium (or proscenium-like arrangement) remains the prime semiotic
embodiment of theatricality in our visual vocabulary’.395
393 A teaser, or top masking, is a horizontal curtain attached to a batten and hung upstage of the proscenium, and reduces its height. Tormentors, or side masking, are vertical stage drapes—usually hung on battens attached to travellers running on stage track— that reduce the visual width of the stage for certain scenes. http://www.specialtytheatre.com/teaser-tormentor-stage-curtains (Accessed 22.09.2016). 394 Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) (Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, 2005). 395 (Aronson 2005) 26
166
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.38: Set model for the opera production Die Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute (William Kentridge); Theatre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels, 2005).396
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 3.39: Set model for the opera production Die Zauberflöte/The Magic Flute (William Kentridge); Theatre Royal de la Monnaie (Brussels, 2005).397
The painted trompe-l’œil curtain is also a recurring motif in both my drawing
practice and this research. The curtain is examined further in Chapter Four.
3.33 Taxonomy of post-dramatic scenographic tropes
This research has examined seven precedents in the quest for post-dramatic
scenographic exemplars, despite none of them being identified or classified as
‘post-dramatic performance’. The following is a taxonomy of post-dramatic
scenographic tropes constructed from this examination:
1. Villa del Misteri (Pompei, 60BC)
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta- theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
396 (Kentridge 2007) 53 397 (Kentridge 2007) 135
167
2. Medieval Mystery play and panoramic tapestry
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta- theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Non-linear
• Departure from fiction in favour of the 'real'
• Monologues instead of dramatic dialogue
• Subordination of the word/text
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
3. 17th century Stuart Court masques
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Departure from fiction in favour of the 'real'
• Monologues instead of dramatic dialogue
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
4. The Panorama: View of the Cities of London and Westminster (1792)
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
168
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
5. Norman Bel Geddes’ Futurama (1939-40)
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Monologues instead of dramatic dialogue
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
6. Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio’s Slow House (1991)
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames - absence of invisible fourth wall
7. William Kentridge
• Panorama: two-dimensional and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
169
• Monologues instead of dramatic dialogue
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
3.34 Drawing conclusions
The above taxonomy became the framework by which to embark on an accelerated period of investigation and experimentation. The following two chapters divide the research drawing practice into two experiments or studio outcomes. My three- month art studio residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts (Paris) in 2015 fell between the two experiments: the panoramic drawn works The Chairs (2015) and
No Exit (2017). The significant impact that the international residency, primary
French sources, and field studies had on this research becomes evident; in particular, on the way in which the helical concept embedded within the transformative spiral of research, manifests during this intensive stage of the inquiry.
170
CHAPTER FOUR: The Chairs
171
4.1 Introduction
In Today Is My Birthday, a threshold between the world of ILLUSION and our world of REALITY is crossed over… And one more observation: in the process of falling out from the world of illusion and falling into the real world, elements, illusions, people, provoke the DISINTEGRATION OF ILLUSION ITSELF.398
This and the following chapter identify the relationship between myself as the
artist/scenographer and the lived experience of drawing as an embodied part of my
creative production. This chapter documents the creative process of my first
completed experiment: the panoramic drawing The Chairs (2015). This studio
outcome comprised an initial response to a selected dramatic text, and the written
documentation of the role of drawing in the exploratory process. As outlined in
Chapter Two, my methodology was underpinned by the research model, the
transformative spiral of research, which employed several methods of data
collection throughout the phase of experimentation, testing, and reflection: the
drawing process; Peggy Phelan’s ‘performative writing’ as a method of analysing
the process of drawing; the drawings themselves as a primary outcome of the
research; and reflections on those drawings leading to the next turn in the
transformative spiral of research. Extracts from my handwritten visual diaries
follow, and illustrate the informality and personal reflections of the ‘performative
writing’ process throughout the creative production of The Chairs.
398 (Kantor 1993) 198
172
4.2 Performative drawing
I began The Chairs with the intention of investigating performative drawing.
However, it was in the embryonic experimental phase of producing many
generative thinking drawings—in conjunction with examining the theoretical
writings of the Polish theatre director, scenographer, and artist Tadeusz Kantor399—
that I was prompted to pursue a new direction in my drawing practice.
Kantor’s theories relate to the conceptual dualities that dominate theatre:
reality/illusion, truth/false, visible/invisible, darkness/light, and presence/absence.
These dualities particularly resonate with this research, providing a framework in
which to scrutinise forensically through drawing, both performative and
spectatorial space and their potential integration. His prolific manifestos detailing
his innovative and compelling philosophy and practice expose a life-long obsession
with the chair, door, the fourth wall, and ‘the erasure of (this) demarcation between
art and life’.400
Notions of presence and absence that emerged in the creative production of The
Chairs, informed the philosophical framework supporting the scholarly
investigation into my practice. Thus, the motivation for this research was to
discover and develop innovative ways of engaging the mobile, embodied
spectatorial presence and gaze within a post-dramatic theatrical space that evokes
an absent presence.
399 (Lehmann 2006) Lehmann identifies Kanto as a forefather of Post-dramatic theatre. 71 400 (Kobialka 2002) 76
173
4.3 Definition of presence
The Oxford English Dictionary defines presence as ‘the fact or condition of being
present; the state of being with or in the same place as a person or thing’.401
However, the emergence of postmodernist discourse in the latter half of the
twentieth century, in particular by the French New Wave philosophers,402 has
disrupted this traditional definition of presence, specifically in relation to theatre.
This radical new debate questioned the presence of the dramatic text as the driving
force of the theatrical production, the performer as the centre-piece,403 the director
as auteur, and the spectator as passive voyeur.
Elinor Fuchs’ ground-breaking publication, The Death of Character: Perspectives
on Theatre after Modernism (1996), still resonates as an astute and perceptive
critical text, predicting as it does the shift in theatre from the language of
performance to a non-narrative paradigm. Fuchs examines the rapid cultural and
aesthetic change which occurred in American Theatre in the 1980s and early 1990s
and, in particular, the evolution of the theatrical consciousness and presence of the
postmodern spectator. As she suggests, theatre has a:
…deep genius for representing the cultural condition (which) always re-emerges. Thus we may be seeing a new kind of theatre that mimics in its underlying structures of presentation and reception the fundamental culture of contemporary capitalism. In this theatre, one could say, we are seeing the commodification of the theatrical unconsciousness.404
401 (OED 1989) 402 French New Wave philosophers, for instance: Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986); André Breton (1896- 1966); Michel Foucault (1926-1984); Maurice Merleau–Ponty (1908-1961); Jean Paul Sartre (1905- 1980). 403 (Denise Varney 2000) 93 404 (Fuchs 1996) 129
174
Fuchs illustrates her argument with this metaphor:
Walter Benjamin’s flaneur, the stroller, the loiterer, the window shopper endlessly fascinated with commodities…finally to have arrived in the theatre. Too restless and driven to be contained in a theatre seat, he prowls the total entertainment, simultaneously consuming and consumed.405
According to Denise Varney and Rachel Fensham, ‘the processes of deconstruction
have shown representation, on which the theatre relies, is based on absence rather
than presence’.406 As Cormac Power also states, postmodernism has begun the
following debate:
If the concept of presence implies a correspondence between consciousness and object, or viewer and stage, then theatre at once affirms presence by taking place before an audience, while simultaneously putting this correspondence into question: a fictional “now” often coexists in tension with the stage “now”. We see the stage and imagine the fiction, and so the whole question as to what is present is opened up.407
The Avant-garde theatre activist Antonin Artaud, in his Theatre of Cruelty/Théâtre
de la Cruauté, advocated the concept of a pure unmediated presence in the theatre:
Released from the text and the author-god, mise-en-scene would be returned to its creative and founding freedom. The director and the participants (who would no longer be actors or spectators) would cease to be the instruments and organs of representation.408
The French philosopher Jacques Derrida, in Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of
Representation, extends Artaud’s argument:
405 (Fuchs 1996) 141 406 (Denise Varney 2000) 93 407 (Power 2008) 4 408 (Derrida 1978) 10
175
Artaud kept himself as close as possible to the limit: the possibility and impossibility of pure theater. Presence, in order to be presence and self-presence, has always already begun to represent itself, has always already been penetrated.409
Derrida was a major proponent of the poststructuralist theory, where there is a shift
from ‘the importance of the present to a postmodern aesthetic of absence and
textuality’.410As Power further suggests, ‘Derrida’s writings disrupt the claims to
meaning, truth, closure and presence in philosophy, in favour of absence, deferral,
play and openness’.411
4.4 The unrepresentable
Jean-François Lyotard viewed the postmodernist paradigm as an attempt to
represent the unrepresentable.412 Postmodern thinking erases presence as an absent
presence, as a ghostly trace of the unrepresentable. As Alice Rayner suggests, the
‘ghosts’ which inhabit the theatre:
… animate our connections to the dead, producing a visible, material, and effective relationship to the abstract terms of time and repetition, sameness and difference, absence and presence. If we doubt the presence of those absent, it may be only because the abstractions are safer and more comfortable. A ghost, particularly in the theatre, ought to startle an audience into attention with a shiver. Doubt rationalises the shiver, but it also signals an encounter.413
This research supports the notion that absence can be thought of as an
unrepresentable ‘ghostly’ form of presence and of absence. Therefore, this research
409 (Derrida 1978) 16 410 (Power 2008) 5 411 (Power 2008) 5 412 (Lehmann 2006) 37 413 (Rayner 2006) xiii
176
and practice aims to apply this definition to the post-dramatic spaces of a new
hybrid genre of drawing.
4.5 Constraints
Before I began work on The Chairs, I developed a set of constraints that would
generate a creative catalyst and focus the drawing practice within a theatrical model.
These constraints were to:
1. Begin the process with a dramatic text as a conceptual stimulus
2. Support the drawing process by the theoretical writings of Tadeusz Kantor
3. Interrogate, through drawing, the post-dramatic elements and principles of design
exhibited by the medieval Mystery play and tapestry (Both are precedents to my
research practice because of their panoramic format; they are also non-linear,
multi-perspectival, theatrical, and scenographic)
4. Employ a monochromatic palette of red on primarily neutral tones in layered
paper. (This was to draw the spectatorial eye specifically towards certain objects
in red that jolt and dislocate; or, as Bertold Brecht proposed, to discourage the
spectator from taking refuge passively in a harmonious blur of sentiment)414
These limitations enabled me to begin:
414 (Brecht 1965) 76
177
Figure 4.1: Journal handwritten extract: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, 2014).415
… scribbling, doodling multiple thinking drawings – more and more thinking drawings in the pursuit of escaping the unrelenting vastness and emptiness of the large blank white piece of paper. (Extract from journal 02.05.2014)
The handwritten extracts from my journal (for example Figure 4.1) will, from this
point on in this research, be distinguished by a framed grey background, and written
in the digital font Times New Roman.
4.6 The dramatic text as a catalyst
The Chairs was inspired by the dramatic script Les Chaises, an absurdist tragic farce
by Eugène Ionesco, and first performed in Paris by Sylvain Dhomme at Le théâtre
Lancry (22 April 1952).416 This strange, surreal play is set in the future, four
hundred thousand years after the city of lights, Paris, has been obliterated. All that
415 An extract of handwritten text from my journal. 416 (Ionesco 1965) 126
178
remains are an old man and woman, the remnants of a past dystopia,417 and the
memory of a song, Paris sera toujours Paris (1939). As in my scenographic
practice, a script always prompted my drawings; however, as in post-dramatic
theatre, the text was simply inspirational and not necessarily the driving force
behind the work.
4.7 Absent presence
I adopted this unusual script because it exemplifies Ionesco’s conviction that the
spectator’s presence is the only space that ultimately matters.418 He argued that ‘to
watch empty chairs occupied by an inexistent audience means becoming more
aware of one’s own condition as a spectator among other spectators’.419 As
Octavian Saiu suggests, absence becomes presence in Les Chaises: an absent
presence in which the spectator is invited to play an ontological game of complicity
in an inner space which is irremediably broken into pieces without a centre, just
margins and marginality.420 For example, the play ends with what appears to be a
stage of empty chairs; at this point, however, Ionesco includes these last haunting
stage directions:
For the first time human noises seem to be coming from the invisible crowd; snatches of laughter, whisperings, a ‘Ssh!’ or two, little sarcastic coughs; these noises grow louder and louder, only to start fading away again. All this should last just long enough for the real and visible public to go away with this ending firmly fixed in their minds. The curtain falls very slowly. (Extract from Les Chaises)421
417 Ionesco presents an apocalyptic future after a catastrophic event. 418 (Saiu 2007) NPF 419 (Saiu 2007) NPF 420 (Saiu 2007) NPF 421 (Ionesco 1965)177
179
It is at this point, when they are preparing to leave the auditorium, that the ‘real’
spectators hear the invisible audience. It is in this strange metaphysical gap—a
space of an absent presence, a ‘shiver’422—that the ‘real’ spectators are made
acutely aware of a space without hope.423 The approach of this research echoes
Ionesco’s preoccupation with spectatorial perception and presence in Les Chaises,
and provides an illuminating stimulus for the drawing as the primary method of this
research.
4.8 Selecting the text
My artistic/scenographic process begins with an individual exploration inspired by
a piece of text. The text, sometimes just a single word, is the starting point of the
process. In conventional Western theatre productions, the scenographer begins with
the dramatic text such as a play, script, or libretto (in conjunction with the music).
The dramatic text is a prose or verse composition forming a narrative. The live
performer is a representation of the characters in the narrative or story, performing
the dialogue and action before a live audience. The scenographic process is similar
in the context of post-dramatic theatre, except that the text is subordinate to other
aspects of the production. As Lehman argues:
Post-dramatic theatre is not simply a new kind of text of staging – and even less a new type of theatre text, but rather a type of sign usage in the theatre that …becomes more presence than representation, more shared than communicated experience, more process than product, more manifestation than signification, more energetic impulse than information.424
422 (Rayner 2006) xiii 423 The notion of a space without hope is discussed in detail in 4.10, with an examination of existentialism. 424 (Lehmann 2006) 85
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4.9 French absurdist/existentialist texts
My literary interest has always led me to the French absurdist/existentialist texts
that emerged from World War II. Perhaps this affinity stems from a Scottish/Irish
ancestry who fought and died in France during both World Wars.425 I also respond
creatively to these scripts because of their metaphorical complexity, existentialist
thought, and extraordinary capacity to produce Scrivener’s cognitive surprise.426
Examples are the two texts selected for this research: Eugène Ionesco’s Les Chaises
(1952), and Jean Paul Sartre’s Huis Clos (1944).
4.10 Théâtre de l'Absurde
Théâtre de l'Absurde is a French dramatic and literary term plundered from the
‘low’ theatrical art forms of vaudeville, pantomime, and music hall, and mixed with
horror and tragedy. As Germaine Bree argues, this is what gives these plays their
‘strange burlesque, discomforting quality’.427 These texts emerged out of World
War II as a reaction to the futility of war and the frightful atrocities enacted on
humans by humans. The war, the Holocaust, and Hiroshima left some playwrights
questioning whether ‘the universe would continue to revolve around us’,428
highlighting the precariousness of human existence. As Ionesco wrote: ‘There
comes a time when you can no longer accept the horrible things that happen’.429
425 My mother’s paternal ancestry: McKinley, Buckley and Kershaw. (There were twelve Kershaw brothers, one of whom was my great-grandfather, Harold Herbert Kershaw. Four of the brothers were killed in World-War I; my great-grandfather lost his eye in the French Somme, 1917; my great, great-uncle Bert Buckley was killed in the Somme 1917; great-uncle Eric John Kershaw fought the Japanese in World War II, 1941; and great-uncle Arthur Arnold Kershaw, a pacifist, refused to enlist, and was labelled a coward during World War II.) 426 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 427 (Brée 2012) 128 428 (Brée 2012) 123 429 (Brée 2012) 127
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Underpinning absurdism is the philosophical concept of existentialism. The
existentialist philosophers who influenced the absurdist playwrights were
Frenchmen Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) and Albert Camus (1913-1960). Both
Sartre and Camus were also playwrights. Camus is recognised for coining the term
‘absurdism’ in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus, written in 1942 and translated into
English by Justin O'Brien in 1955. However, absurdism was defined quite
differently by Sartre and Camus:
For Sartre absurdity belongs to the world prior to activity of consciousness, while Camus’s idea of the absurd is closer to Kierkegaard and Nietzsche—the absurd is a direct consequence of the absence of God. Without God the discrepancy between human aspirations and the world is acute. The human condition is characterized by the probability of suffering and the certainty of death—a fate which human reason cannot accept as reasonable.430
This genre of plays is identified as ‘anti-plays’ because they are ‘intolerable’.431 For
this research, I have deliberately chosen French absurdist texts to inspire my
drawing practice because of their potential to produce post-dramatic scenographic
strategies. In these texts, the characters lead a meaningless existence devoid of order
or rational reason, where their actions are repetitive and banal, and their dialogue
often incongruous and illogical. There is no conclusion or resolution, and the
disturbed spectator is left with a feeling of hopelessness. As Germaine Brée argues
in relation to the ‘grotesque’ characters in Les Chaises:
There is a strange incongruity between their situation and their words, a disparity visible to the spectator but not to the characters who never question the coherence of what they say.
430 (Camus 1985) 1 431 (Brée 2012) 122
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This incongruity is the trap whereby the playwright "catches the conscience" of the spectator.432
At the end of Les Chaises, the empty chairs, littered with streamers and confetti,
parallel the absurdity of existence, and are a potent image of futility. However,
contrary to Brée, I agree with Jacques Guicharnaud, who suggests a play by
Ionesco:
…does not bog the spectator down into stagnation, does not hold him down in a hole with no exit: it provokes him, it makes him indignant; it insults him; it makes him laugh. It is upsetting, not paralysing … The new theatre is a theatre of dissatisfaction, in which all the means are used so that, at no moment is any dehumanization complacently accepted.433
I first read Les Chaises with few preconceptions, completely expunging any external influences from my mind; just allowing myself to be enveloped in the story being unfolded. With the second reading, I returned to the text with a fresh eye and armed with a fine black felt tipped pen. Text, which is particularly inspirational, was extracted. Metaphors, allusions, submerged themes, repeated motifs were sought out, dissected and analysed. A search - analogous to Walter Benjamin’s ragpicker - rummaging, picking, scratching, and searching through the clutter and debris of history. (Extract from journal, 02.05.2014)
Walter Benjamin uses the metaphor of the ragpicker to describe his writing process,
which he called a literary montage. He wrote:
I needn’t say anything. Mere show. I shall appropriate no ingenious formulations, purloin no valuables. But the rags, the refuse – these I will not describe but put on display.434
My artistic/scenographic practice is akin to Benjamin’s montage - the juxtaposition of disparate fragments, the rags and refuse of history, which combine to give the illusion of a homogenous whole. (Extract from journal, 02.05.2011)
432 (Brée 2012) 126 433 (Guicharnaud 1961) 131 434 (Benjamin 1999) 44
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A particularly illuminating example is the following excerpt from Ionesco’s script
Les Chaises:
OLD WOMAN: No, my dear, I’ve forgotten. OLD MAN: How did we get there? Where’s the road to it? I believe the place was called Paris… OLD WOMAN: Paris? There never was such a place, my pet. OLD MAN: There must have been once, before it fell into ruins…...It was the city of light and four hundred thousand years it faded right away...there is nothing left of it now, except a song. OLD WOMAN: A real song? That's funny. What is it? OLD MAN: A lullaby, a parable: "Paris will always be Paris." (Extract from Les Chaise) 435
The above dialogue sparked a very early memory of mine as a four-year-old child
growing up in the Welsh countryside. My memory is of a rambling, derelict
Georgian mansion, Cottrell Manor, across the fields from our home. Figures 4.2-3
are a colour photographic slide, and a close-up detail (taken by my father) of my
mother, sister, and I standing outside this extraordinarily beautiful but totally
abandoned building.
435 (Ionesco 1965) 131
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Figure 4.2: Colour photographic slide of a derelict Georgian mansion, Cottrell Manor, Wales (Geoffrey Field, 1969).
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Figure 4.3: Detail of me (aged 4 years) on the far right (Geoffrey Field, 1969).
The enormous, empty building was filled with bales of hay. I remember entering through the neo-classical portal and unlocked, majestic front door to be confronted by the most amazing staircase which spiralled endlessly upwards. My recollection was of me wandering from room to room - or was that just in my childhood dreams. This memory resonates in my ‘mind’s eye’ as an evocative image of intimate immensity; of infinity that goes on forever in the confined space of the ruined Georgian foyer. (Extract from journal, 17.06.2011)
The blurry and scratched image of Figure 4.3 evokes a ghostly absent presence: a recurring presence in my dreams. However, as I sadly discovered during this research, Cottrell Manor is now an absent object, only a memory of a forgotten past.
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The building was demolished in 1972 to accommodate the Cottrell Park Golf
Resort. I look upon this ghostly image with a sense of loss. I am also haunted by
the thought that the Manor never actually existed, other than as a ghostly illusion
conceived in my mind’s eye.436 Just like the ghostly Georgian manor of my
dreams,437 the Ionesco passage is seminal in the development of The Chairs. A
faded, forgotten world of ruins438 began a search for photographic images of
cavernous spaces such as derelict theatres, abandoned buildings, and disused and
forgotten dark spaces. These types of text extractions inspire a theatrical wonder
and astonishment, allowing me to respond directly and deliberately through
drawing.
The consciousness is a sprawling architectural space, a collection of spaces within spaces – dense with rooms, compartments, voids and teeming with images and more images of space within spaces; the backstage of an ancient theatre – a labyrinth of dark mysterious space – somehow waiting to be illumined. Long dusty corridors, winding endlessly through space; walls slashed with doors, leading into more corridors; leading through eternal space. (Extract from journal, 18.06.2011)
4.11 The consciousness as a labyrinth of memory
Benjamin describes consciousness as a maze of dark corridors which, ‘at certain
hidden points, leads down into the underworld – a land full of inconspicuous places
from which dreams arise’.439 He suggests that the labyrinth is a metaphor of history
436 A haunting within a haunting: ‘In true Manor House tradition, it is recorded that The Cottrell was haunted by a ghost. Emelia Gwinnett inherited the Estate by her brother Reverend Samuel Gwinnett who had in fact ‘Willed’ the estate to Lord Clarendon. In her attempt to mask the true benefactor, she is said to have burnt her brother’s Will and destroyed the Manor Book that contained all the chronicles and records of the Manor. In retribution for this wicked act, her unhappy spirit is said to haunt the room in which the Will was burned.’ http://www.cottrellpark.com/history/ (Accessed 05.02.2017). 437 Cottrell Manor was demolished and replaced by Cottrell Park Golf Resort in 1972. 438 (Ionesco 1965) 131 439 (Benjamin 1999) 84
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folding back on itself so that the present is always juxtaposed with a period from
the past:
In the idea of eternal recurrence, the historicism of the Nineteenth Century capsizes. As a result, every tradition, even the most recent, becomes the legacy of something that has already run its course in the immemorial night of the ages. Tradition henceforth assumes the character of a phantasmagoria in which primal history enters the scene in ultramodern get up.440
Motifs from history - memories - keep repeating as history doubles back on itself. It is as if one is calling up the spectre, ghosts from the past: memories folding back on themselves, colliding with ‘present’ contemporary images, constantly absorbing, translating, consuming now, in the present. (Extract from journal, 13.08.2011)
4.12 Illuminating the spectre of drawing
OLD WOMAN: Just ghosts, after all, nobodies, of no importance whatever. (Extract from Les Chaises)441
Picking up a sharpened paintbrush (I sharpen the opposite end of the brush), dipping it tentatively into a pot of black ink and then finally making that first mark onto paper begins the illumination. That instantaneous moment of line meeting paper, that instantaneous moment of eye and hand is the revelation from the shadows of ghosts emerging and taking form. (Extract from journal, 13.08.2011)
In 1896, the Russian playwright Maxim Gorky wrote a review of the Lumière
program at the Nizhni-Novgorod Fair, as printed in the Nizhegorodski listok. It was
his reaction to first viewing cinema:
Last night, I was in the Kingdom of Shadows. If only you knew how strange it is to be there. It is a world without sound, without colour. Everything there – the earth, the trees, the people, the water and the air – is dipped in monotonous grey. Grey rays of sun across
440 (Benjamin 1999) 116 441 (Ionesco 1965) 161
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the grey sky, grey eyes in grey faces, and the leaves of the trees are ashen grey. It is no life but its shadows; it is not motion but its soundless spectre.442
Gorky’s ghostly shadows in monotonous grey fill the mind’s eye, devoid of all
colour. The black and white generative drawings, as ‘first thoughts’,443 are an
attempt to grasp these shadows, these disembodied spectral forms, as a trace of an
absent presence.
The shadows or spectres wandering the endless spaces of the consciousness are illuminated in those initial black and white sketches. The spectres from one’s own past, history and memories emerge on paper as a vision, a spectacle, a visual illumination. (Extract from journal, 15.08.2011)
As Deanna Petherbridge suggests, ‘Mobility is also inherent in the drawing out of
ideas from the mind in the conceptual, generative sketch’.444These early black and
white drawings reflect this mobility in their proliferation, repetition, and constant
drive to ‘draw out’ from the shadows these ghostly apparitions ‘of ideas from the
mind’.445 For example, (Figure 4.4) shows drawings which are embryonic thinking
which, at a very early stage of my process, already reveals the underlying theme of
this research—an absent presence. The lone door jamb, empty chair, and
windowless space emerge as haunting images of an absence that is palpably present.
442 (Donaldson 2002) 241 443 (Petherbridge 1991) 12 444 (Petherbridge 1991) 11 445 (Petherbridge 1991) 11
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Figure 4.4: Thinking drawing for The Chairs; black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
Drawing is the mixing of history and memories with contemporary experience and visual perception. The spectres of history haunt the drawings of the present. Memories resonate throughout the drawings of the present. Visual links echo memories and experiences. There is no linear form to these memories. They are fragmented; often contradictory and chaotic in construction. (Extract from journal, 15.08.2011)
The initial reading of the text awakens memories and, therefore, the thinking
drawings generated can express the most intimate thought processes occurring in
the artist’s private space and … imagination.446 While the thinking drawing in
(Figure 4.5) evokes an empty, desolate room, it teems with my memories—of an
absent presence.
446 (Kobialka 1992) 333
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Figure 4.5: Generative drawing: black ink and collage on watercolour paper, 297 x 420mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2011).
An empty room, a desolate, lonely empty space except for a single lone chair. An abandoned, bleak space - waiting, waiting, waiting for someone to return. (Extract from journal, 15.08.2014)
The ghosts inhabiting the dark space of the empty stage are illuminated in the eye
of the mind where the spectral presence, embedded in the palimpsest of generative
drawing, becomes the seminal source of revelation, of originality and innovation.
4.13 Tadeusz Kantor
Tadeusz Kantor, like Walter Benjamin, wrote of history as a refuse of abandoned
photographic glass plates447 that overlapped and juxtaposed events of the past with
447 ‘Exhumations: The return of the dead in Tadeusz Kantor’s Let the Artists Die and in Andrzej Wajda's Katyń’, (Milija Gluhovic, Polish Theatre Perspectives, 1 (2015), 227-55)
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the present. The following prose, Kantor’s Klisze/Memory Plates, identifies his
preoccupation with discarded objects as objects of memory, loss, and death:
In our ‘warehouse’ of the memory there exist ‘catalogues’ of photographic plates, registered by our senses. These are for the most part seamlessly meaningless details, pitiful ones, scrapes, clippings of a kind... and they are IMMOBILE! And, what is more important: TRANSPARENT, like photographic negatives. They can be placed on top of each other. And that’s why one should not be surprised if, for instance, distant events link up with those of today, personages get mixed up, and we have serious problems with history, morality, and all sorts of conventions. The waves of memory, now bright and peaceful, are suddenly stirred up, the elements are unleashed, HELL...448
Reminiscences of Polish history, the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust are
manifest in Kantor’s ‘theatre of death’.449 He believed that ‘theatre is the place that
reveals – as some fjords in a river do – the traces of transition from “the other side”
into our life’.450 Kantor suggested that the theatre is a metaphysical space in which
‘…the self-reflexivity of the space fold[ed] back upon itself’.451 He also described
the fourth wall as an ‘in-between space; …as a found reality – an autonomous
spatial fold that exists in a space of variable dimensionality’.452 In his theatre
practice, he repeatedly explored the spatial and temporal dimensions of this
448‘Exhumations: The return of the dead in Tadeusz Kantor’s Let the Artists Die and in Andrzej Wajda's Katyń’ (Milija Gluhovic, Polish Theatre Perspectives, 1 (2015), 227-55)
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transition or ‘in-between’ space as a site of memory and history. These explorations
took the form of haunting monologues and personal ‘commentaries intended to
transgress all physical and mental boundaries and to express the most intimate
thought processes that occur in the artist’s private space and … imagination’.453 He
called these private spaces the ‘Room of Imagination’ and the ‘Room of Memory’.454
The drawn space of The Chairs is an example of Kantor’s performative ‘folded
space’; a collapsed space which is potentially a site where performance and
spectatorial perception and presence become conflated.
4.14 Kantor’s ‘happenings’
Kantor’s early work included ‘happenings’, or performative events. These are
pertinent to this research because Lehmann identifies them as an exemplary form
of post-dramatic theatre.455 As Lehmann further argues:
…Kantor leads far away from dramatic theatre: a rich cosmos of art forms between theatre, happening, performance, painting, sculpture, object art and space art and…ongoing reflection in theoretical texts, poetic writings and manifestos.456
Kantor’s ‘lyrical-ceremonial theatre’457 involved live meta-theatrical performances
which ‘repeatedly expressionistically condensed scenes, combined with a quasi-
ritualistic form of conjuring up the past’.458 They were ‘grotesquely heightened
scenes of ultimate rituals [that] constitute the leitmotif: execution, farewell, death,
burial’. 459These often bizarre, absurdist performances, such as Panoramic Sea
453 (Kobialka 1992) 333 454 (Kobialka 1992) 62 455 (Lehmann 2006) 71 456 (Lehmann 2006) 71 457 (Lehmann 2006) 73 458 (Lehmann 2006) 71 459 (Lehmann 2006) 71
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Happening, 1967460 (Figure 4.6), also echoed medieval theatricality and
spectatorship. For instance, the spectator in Kantor’s theatre, as in the medieval
Mystery play, was always inside the performance space.461 As Kantor’ himself
suggested: ‘my theatre has always been recognised as the Fairground Booth
Stage’,462 which has its roots in the ritualistic Mystery play performed on the
medieval pageant wagons or theatre mansions.463 The Chairs, like Kantor’s
Fairground Booth Stage, also takes inspiration from medieval theatricality and
spectatorship.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.6: Eustachy Kossakowski and Tadeusz Kantor’s Panoramic Sea Happening; performed on the Baltic Coast. (Osieki, 1967); (B/W photo, 11 parts, each 45 x 44 cm; collection of Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich).
4.15 Medieval theatricality and spectatorship in The Chairs
The Chairs sought stimulus from the late medieval Mystery play and its mutually
dependent equivalent,464 the panoramic medieval woven tapestry. My research
identified very early that both these medieval genres were a precedent to my
practice because both manifested distinctive post-dramatic scenographic tropes.465
These are listed below and were discussed in more detail in Chapter Three:
• Panorama: both two and three-dimensional
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
460 Panoramic Sea Happening, performed in Osieki on the Baltic Coast, 1967. 461 (Kantor 1993) 397 462 (Kantor 1993) 137 463 (Meyerhold 1998) 119 464 (Weigert 2011) 26 465 (Limon 2011) 259
194
• Non-linear
• Departure from fiction in favour of the 'real'
• Monologues instead of dramatic dialogue
• Subordination of the word/text
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
Both forms of visual imagery would have awakened in the medieval spectator a
mobile embodied gaze of devotion.466 Armed with these strategies, I embarked on
my first thinking drawings in my journal.
4.16 The Chairs’ beginning as a thinking drawing
The Chairs, a drawing of approximately nine metres, began as a small, ‘Post-it’
sized scenographic thinking drawing, and was completed early in the creative
production. Figure 4.7 is a Post-it note in my journal, revealing the embryonic
thinking.
466 (Ehrstine 2012) 311
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Figure 4.7: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and lead pencil on yellow Post-it note (Sue Field, 2013).
These often unintelligible and messy ideational drawings are a crucible filled with ambiguous, indeterminate marks, signs and symbols where new ideas are generated but also, critically, where past ideas resurface, having gestated for a while. Memories become interwoven with the present. A new vocabulary of marks, signs and symbols, which represent past images, memories, metaphors and motifs which resonate with potential new meanings, then emerges and memories are reinvented into something fresh and invigorated. (Extract from journal, 17.09.2014)
The ‘doing’ of the drawing, and the drawing as the artefact, comprise the method of investigation and the investigative evidence. I do not plan the work in its entirety—only one section or panel at a time; even then, the drawing can change on impulse by pasting paper over past layers. In tandem, I also record a form of ‘stream of consciousness’ into my journal, as in (Figure 4.8) for instance.
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Figure 4.8: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
4.17 Monochromatic memories
The Chairs is executed in black/red pen, ink, and layers of printed script and sheet music. The monochromatic palette deliberately focuses the spectator’s attention on specific objects which take priority in the drawing (Figure 4.9).
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The colour red is used almost exclusively to highlight the presence of certain objects which signify red beacons luring the inquisitive spectator towards the objects in the pursuit of meaning, only to be confronted by, perhaps, vacillation and ambiguity. (Extract from journal, 15.08.2014)
Figure 4.9: One of twelve panels for The Chairs: black and red pen; collage on watercolour paper; 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2015).
Ink is the preferred medium, whether a pen or a sharpened end of a paintbrush dipped in
ink. Both allow my thoughts to be put down quickly before they disappear. Ink, a rapid fluid medium, leaves indelible, irreversible and permanent marks. There is no means of
erasure, except to paste yet another piece of paper overlaying the abandoned drawing underneath. The work becomes layers of trace and memory. The drawing blends history
and memories with contemporary experience and visual perception. Visual links echo memories and experiences. There is no linear form to these memories. They are disparate, often contradictory and chaotic in construction. Fragmented memories resonate in the drawings’ imperfections, irregularities, fractured scribbles and rubbings. These generate unexpected connections, unpredictable but illuminating accidents and extraordinary, serendipitous moments. All fuel and drive the research forward. (Extract from journal, 15.08.2014)
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4.18 The panoramic drawing: The Chairs
The Chairs, completed in 2015, is a panoramic drawn work, approximately 9000 x
600mm in size (Figure 4.10).
Figure 4.10: Panoramic drawing, The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script and sheet music, approximately 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2015).
A multitude of thinking drawings executed in my journal developed into this drawn work of twelve panels or drawing sections, which can be reordered or interchanged at whim. Here, chronological narrative and linear meaning are irrelevant. The
Chairs is multi-perspectival, a mind’ eye view into imagination and personal memories. There is no beginning or end: it is an eternally looping, revolving entity which is a manifestation of the artist/researcher’s interior monologue or ‘stream of consciousness’. This autonomous drawn work, prompted by a dramatic text, is primarily autobiographical in its content. The drawing, as Juhani Pallasmaa argues,
‘is always a result of yet another kind of double perspective; a drawing looks
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simultaneously outwards and inwards, to the observed or imagined world, and into
the draughtsman’s own persona and mental world’.467
Like the panoramic medieval tapestry,468 the drawing ceases to be a backdrop for
action, becoming the impetus for action itself. However, it is not the drawing artist
who is the performer, but the curious performing spectator, compelled to move to
view the drawing in its entirety. The panoramic performativity of this drawing also
harks back to the medieval theatre pageant wagons, where the street spectator
walked from tableau to tableau, seeking out the revelations of God. It is also the
objects and their strange arrangement in The Chairs that arouse curiosity in the
spectator.
4.19 Absent presence in The Chairs
The objects within the drawn space of The Chairs focus on ‘absent presence’.
Unlike the medieval tapestry, there are no human figurative elements in The Chairs,
other than the running man exit sign (Figure 4.11).
467 (Pallasmaa 2009) 91 468 The performativity of the panoramic medieval tapestry is discussed in Chapter Three.
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Figure 4.11: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
The objects embody presence and absence; for instance, the lone door-jamb slightly ajar, neither open nor closed; the neglected telephone receiver lying forgotten off the hook; the broken, discarded umbrella; and the profusion of seemingly abandoned chairs (Figures 4.12-13).
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Figure 4.12: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
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Figure 4.13: One of twelve panels of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2015).
There is an ambivalent sense that someone, the actor, has just left the ‘room’. The
ambiguity of the objects, as Jacques Rancière argues, compels the spectator ‘to
exchange the position of passive spectator for that of scientific investigator or
experimenter who observes phenomena and searches for their causes’.469 The
objects in The Chairs, as in post-dramatic theatre, are signs that can provoke
meaning—or, perhaps, none at all? As Bleeker argues:
…freed from his or her fixed position and no longer forced to see in one way rather than the other, the spectator is granted the freedom to see and give meaning at will – or not to attribute any meaning at all – to the experience there to be apprehended.470
Also, as Erika Fischer-Lichte suggests:
469 (Ranciere 2009) 4 470 (Bleeker 2008) 65
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The spectators are free to associate everything with anything and to extract their own semiosis without restriction and at will, or even to refuse to attribute any meaning at all and simply experience the objects presented to them in their concrete being.471
4.20 Meta-theatrical tropes
The space…’does not have an exit or a boundary: which is receding, disappearing, or approaching omnidirectionally with changing velocity… Space is not a passive r e c e p t a c l e… It is space that G I V E S B I R T H to forms! It is space that conditions the network of relations and tensions between the objects.472
Objects take priority in The Chairs. The panoramic format compels the spectator
to physically move with the work as it pans across a performative space teeming
with deliberate, self-conscious meta-theatrical conceits. The objects embedded
within it are reflexive, post-dramatic strategies or meta-theatrical tropes, such as the
red theatre curtain, floorboards, and door jamb. All are signs constantly reminding
the spectators that they are watching a ‘live’ theatre performance. Meta-theatre is
‘theatre that is aware of itself’. Meta-theatre makes use of the conventions that haunt
the theatre space, such as wings, entrances, exits, fire extinguishers, and stage
directions. Instead of masking the mechanics of theatre, they are made visible. As
Rayner suggests, ‘…the Brechtian aim [was] for the theatricality of theatre to be
obvious, without the mystique of illusionistic secrets’.473
In The Chairs, certain objects are made prominent, such as the running man exit
sign, red emergency telephone, and camera security notice—a tactic that is
471 (Fischer-Lichte 1997) 57-58 472 (Kantor 1993) Lesson 3, 361 473 (Rayner 2006) 145
204 deliberately intended to jolt the spectator into critical awareness. This is because their twenty-first century stark and prosaic Work, Health and Safety (WHS) signification yank/jerk the spectator back into the mundane reality of the present
(Figures 4.14-15).
Figure 4.14: Detail of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field,
2015).
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Figure 4.15: Detail of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field,
2015).
In The Chairs, the spectator’s attention is constantly drawn to theatrical conventions
and the use of the theatrum mundi (world stage) trope474 to discourage immersion
and escapism and, instead, foster knowledge and action in the contemporary
spectator. These objects, in particular, emphasise what Bleeker earlier referred to
as ‘here and now-ness’,475 where the spectators become acutely aware of their own
presence within the post-dramatic performance space (Figure 4.16).
474 Theatrum Mundi (Latin for the ‘theatre of the world’) is a metaphorical concept that portrays the world as a theatre, where the people are actors and are aware that they are acting a play. Shakespeare wrote in As You Like It, Act II Scene VII: "All the world's a stage." (OED Online. June 2017. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/200242 (Accessed 08.08.2017). 475 (Bleeker 2008) 65
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Figure 4.16: Two of twelve panels of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2015).
The objects within the drawn mise-en-scène become, as on stage, emblematic, the
carriers of myth. These signs ‘stage the act of viewing’476 or, more implicitly, the
act of mobile, embodied gazing. The following focusses on the chair, the door, and
the curtain—the significant objects in The Chairs that return the spectator to a ‘here
and now-ness’.477
4.21 Empty chairs
The stage is empty, apart from the chairs, the platform, and the confetti and paper streamers over the floor. The door at the back is wide open, gaping black. (Extract from Les Chaises) 478
Alice Rayner suggests:
…an empty chair speaks of a future or a loss: it anticipates the person who will sit; it remembers the person who did sit. A body leaves its imprint on the chair, which holds the memory of the body in place. The pathos of an empty chair holds both memory of a loss and anticipation of return …a chair, in short, is also a memorial device.479
476 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 14 477 (Bleeker 2008) 65 478 (Ionesco 1965) 177 479 (Rayner 2006) 112
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In the drawing of The Chairs, the ordinary, mundane object of the chair becomes
Rayner’s ‘memorial device’,480 symbolic of hope and inevitable loss. At moments,
the drawing reveals the single chair, forgotten and alone in the drawn drama
(Figures 4.17-18). However, in other sections of the drawing, an ocean wave of
broken, crippled chairs crash into the drawn space—an analogy for uncertainty,
confusion, and unrelenting chaos (Figure 4.19).
Figure 4.17: Two of twelve panels of The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm. (Sue Field, 2015).
480 (Rayner 2006) 112
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Figure 4.18: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
Figure 4.19: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
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The ‘chair’ imagines a ghostly presence or a double—of the absent presence of the
actor, the drawing artist, or some other unseen occupant. The presence of the gazing
spectator as the performer becomes the Other who, in some way, ‘completes’ the
drawn work. The notion of the Other and of being watched is examined in detail in
Chapter Five.
4.22 Kantor’s chair
A space that is small in size constitutes the stage. Almost all of it taken up by a huge pile of chairs, which are similar, weathered by wind and rain, worn out, useless randomly connected with a wire, and put into motion.481
Kantor’s philosophical ruminations on the ‘chair’ as objets trouvé, and his
theatre/art practice which personified this everyday object, resonate with the chair
as a primary object in my research practice. The chair, particularly the folding,
wooden garden chair, performed a critical role in Kantor’s artistic/theatrical oeuvre
(Figure 4.20). It, and other objets trouvés (or ‘everyday found objects’) were, as
Kantor described, ‘abstracted from the human experience of space so that they lost
their original function’.482 The everyday, ordinary folding chair within Kantor’s
constructed spaces challenged its realness and the realness of the space and objects
481 (Kantor 1993) 45 482 (Sienkiewicz 2009) NPF
210
around it, thus questioning its surrounding reality. The chair, according to Kantor’s
theory, is an ‘impossible’. As Kantor argued:
…an impossible...whose sense and meaning are revealed to us only in the process of folding and exploring the tensions between different realities, is to bring us to the edge where the liberation of our historical environment from conventions is possible.483
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.20: Kantor sitting with a jumble of folding wooden garden chairs and many folds (the curtain and the hanging objects behind him). http://www.fotopolis.pl/newsy-sprzetowe/wydarzenia/18733- tadeusz-kantor-na-fotografiach-czlonkow-krakowskiego-zpaf/21477/25364 (Accessed 16.03.2016).
However, in his work Impossible Monuments (1970)—a series of three photo
montages, one of which was of a colossal folding chair in a city-scape—the chair,
transcended its banality to become one of Kantor’s ‘impossible’ objects (Figure
4.21).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.21: An Impossible Monument: a colossal chair photomontage in Kraków square (Tadeusz Kantor, 1970). http://www.studiointernational.com/index.php/tadeusz-kantor (Accessed 14.05.2014).
In 1971, Kantor also designed an installation at the Foksal Gallery in Warsaw.
Titled Cambriolage, it depicts a huge folding chair breaking through the walls of
the gallery space; only a fragment was visible to the spectator (Figure 4.22).
483 (Kobialka 2002) 77
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Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.22: Cambriolage, Foksal Gallery, Warsaw (Tadeusz Kantor, 1971). (Photo: Jerzy Borowski, courtesy of Foksal Gallery). (Accessed 14.05.2014).
Kantor said of his dismembered chair:
This border is the wall, namely the place, where our living space ends, and another one begins, belonging to someone else, alien, so inaccessible that very rarely we allow ourselves to imagine what is happening behind that wall. 484
Kantor was always present on stage during the performances of his Polish
experimental theatre company Cricot 2 productions; he, ‘like a ghost, hovered
within and without a performance space… the stage was filled with his presence,
his gestures of scorn and praise, and his creative energy’.485 Kantor died during the
final rehearsals of his last production, ironically named Today Is My Birthday
(1990).
The production went ahead, with Kantor’s usual place on stage replaced by a single
empty chair, and his disembodied recorded voice reverberating throughout the
space as a haunting monologue. The presence of the absent director was palpable.
Like the chairs and invisible ghosts in Ionesco’s Les Chaises, the lone chair and the
ghostly presence of Kantor ‘belong to, come from, and are imbued with a deep
sense of the theatrical double by which material objects take on the force and effect
of the imaginary’.486 The chair, ‘create[d] the ghostly presence of their unseen
484 (Sienkiewicz 2009) NPF 485 (Kobialka 1993) 387 486 (Rayner 2006) 119
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occupant and at the same time give…specificity and character’.487 The ‘real’, banal
chair as a ‘Rayner’ ‘memorial device’488 provoked ‘the disintegration of illusion
itself’,489 by making the chair and the presence of the dead Kantor, indivisible.490
After Kantor’s death, two colossal concrete chairs were constructed using the
artist’s original designs that were part of his Impossible Architecture, presented at
the Wroclaw 70 symposium in 1970.491 One of them was erected next to Kantor’s
home and studio in Hucisko near Wieliczka in 1995; the other was built in Wrocław
in 2011 (Figure 4.23).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.23: Tadeusz Kantor’s house in Hucisko, Poland. http://culture.pl/en/article/a-virtual-tour-of- kantors-summer-residence-in-hucisko (Accessed 14.03.2014).
4.23 Drawn to the door
The doorjamb, as a traditional staging apparatus, and as another of Kantor’s
‘impossible’ objects, is intentionally featured in The Chairs as a meta-theatrical
illusory conceit of a boundary or threshold (Figure 4.24).
487 (Rayner 2006) 120 488 (Rayner 2006) 112 489 (Kantor 1993)198 490 (Rayner 2006) 119 491 (Sienkiewicz 2009) NPF
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Figure 4.24: Detail from The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2015).
The spectators’ perspectival logic and rationale are challenged by the door jamb.
This is because the spectators are forced to accept that the only feasible exit or
entrance is through the door when, in reality, it is possible to simply walk around
the door jamb. The composite view, formed by the doorjamb floating within an
empty plane, collapses the spatial opposition between the real and unreal, the known
and unknown.
4.24 The world seen and the world unseen
Arnold Aronson posits: ‘On the stage, a door is a sign of the liminal, the unknown,
the potential, the terrifying, the endless’.492 Theatre is, in large part, about presence
492 (Aronson 2004) 340
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and absence,493 and the single lone door on stage establishes this boundary by
delineating ‘two separate spaces: the world seen and the world unseen; the world
known and the unknown; the tangible and implied’.494 For Aronson, the object of
the open door becomes Rayner’s ‘memorial device’,495 an analogy of death and
loss. Aronson proposes:
…on some level…the doors on stage…echo this opening onto the inner world of the soul. Every time a door opens on the stage, a cosmos of infinite possibility is momentarily made manifest; every time a door closes certain possibilities are extinguished and we experience a form of death.496
Gaston Bachelard, in The Poetics of Space (1994), suggests:
The door is an entire cosmos of the half-open. In fact it is one of its primal images, the very origin of a daydream that accumulates desires and temptations: the temptation to open up the ultimate depths of being, and the desire to conquer all reticent beings.497
In a similar vein, the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests that the moment of
opening the door and stepping into the light and onto the stage is a metaphor for the
human consciousness:
I have always been intrigued by the moment when, as we sit waiting in the audience, the door to the stage opens and a performer steps into the light or to take the other perspective, the moment when a performer who waits in semi darkness sees the same door open, revealing the lights, the stage, and the audience.498
However, the American scenographer Robert Edmond Jones believed the unopened
door on stage was somehow lifeless—dead; until the performer entered the door
493 (Aronson 2004) 332 494 (Aronson 2004) 332 495 (Rayner 2006) 112 496 (Aronson 2004) 332 497 (Bachelard 1994) 222 498 (Damasio 1999) 3
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onto the stage, the design remained inert and incomplete, containing only ‘the
promise of a completion, a promise which the actor later fulfils…It waits for the
actor and, not until the actor has made his entrance, does it become an organic
whole’.499 Doors also appear in the dreams of the American architect and
scenographer George Tsypin. They are closed doors; however, instead of shutting
off creativity, their hidden mystery stimulates ideas and the mind’s eye:
The mystery doesn’t get cracked open. You touch it – you encounter it. Or at least you discover a little door. You never enter that door, but at least you identify the door. My role is to identify the door... there is a world inside your head. And I see if I can bring that world to a live installation, but essentially you only have your own world in your mind. There is only that, and you just have to have the courage to make it happen.500
4.25 A single door of milky, semi-opaque glass
Since studying and graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA)
in 1991, my scenographic practice has reflected a fascination with the ‘single door’
within the theatrical space. This motif reoccurs repeatedly in my thinking drawings
and final designs; however, only through this research have I discovered why I am
so preoccupied with the ‘door’.
The lone door jamb…a single door of milky, semi opaque glass. This door was discovered in the back shed of a NIDA share house above the Commonwealth Bank in Kensington. A rambling, decaying collection of rooms divided by shabby white, milky, semi opaque glass doors and inhabited by five NIDA acting students and a single design student. This abandoned door, now given a new life, appeared again and again in my scenographic designs. However, the building that was once the Commonwealth Bank in Kensington was eventually demolished along with all the other interior milky, semi opaque glass doors. ( Extract from journal, 09.08.2014)
499 (Oenslager 1975) 12 500 (Ebrahimian 2006) 147
216
Figures 4.25-28 are a selection of drawings and photographs of my early theatre productions that used only a ‘single door’ within the design: the shabby white, milky, semi-opaque glass door. Ultimately, this fascination stems from the notion of the ‘single door’ as the only exit and entrance for the performer. This imposed physical limitation immediately presents a challenge for the scenographer in persuading the audience to believe that this is the only possible ‘way in or out’ for the performer.
Figure 4.25: Generative drawing for Posieres: ink on watercolour paper, 420x 594mm (Sue Field, 1990).
217
Figure 4.26: Production photograph for Posieres (Marco Bok, 1990); set and costumes by Sue Field.
218
Figure 4.27: Generative drawing for Passion (Griffin Theatre Company): gouache on paper, 210x297mm (Sue Field, Journal, 1996).
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Figure 4.28: Production photograph for Passion (Griffin Theatre Company) (Sue Field, 1996).
4.26 The single door on stage
My personal response to the ‘door’ is a portal into my memories. The door can be a real door jamb on stage or an analogy for a door but ultimately it is the entry into the designer’s eye of the mind. The closed door of the consciousness is mysterious - concealing secrets. The open door conjures up images of the yawning abyss of ‘disappearance.’ (Extract from journal, 03.05.2014)
The drawing panel from The Chairs (Figure 4.29) identifies a single open door that breaks the trompe-l’œil illusion of a cascade of sumptuous curtains. This work was my first completed drawing for The Chairs. I now look back upon it and realise that
220
the single door, slightly ajar, was indeed an entry into my imagination and
memories; the ghost light501 to the left, not only illuminating the folds that are a
‘trick of the eye’, but also the depths of my innermost mind’s eye.
Figure 4.29: The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941m (Sue Field, 2014).
Kantor wrote an apt description of the doors on stage; this resonates with my own
memories and practice:
There is also a place “BEHIND THE DOORS,” a place that is somewhere at the back of the ROOM; a DIFFERENT space; an open interior of our imagination that exists in a different dimension.
501 A ghost light is traditionally left on all night in European and American theatres for safety concerns because the theatre would otherwise be unoccupied and completely dark. But there is also the superstition that the light appeases the ghosts inhabiting the theatre, by allowing them to perform on stage during the night. http://www.playbill.com/article/ask-playbillcom-the-ghost-light-com-153440 (Accessed 02.05.2015).
221
This is where the threads of our memory are woven… are standing at the door giving a long farewell to our childhood; we are standing helpless at the threshold of eternity and death. In front of us, in this poor dusky room, behind the doors… it is enough to open them…502
Corresponding again with Kantor’s theory, the doorjamb becomes the threshold or
the edge of an ‘impossible’. In The Chairs (Figure 4.30), the doorjamb structures
and conditions the audience’s perceptual field503 because it is an object of
‘impossible’ paradox which, again, attempts to provoke the spectatorial curiosity
into knowledge and action.
Figure 4.30: The Chairs: black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2014).
502 (Kantor 1993) 143 503 (Kobialka 2002) 77
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The door onto the stage, hidden by a curtain… waiting, anticipating the moment to
enter into the light; the moment of revelation and of illumination within the consciousness of the scenographer. (Extract from journal, 02.07.2014)
4.27 Drawn to reveal
What counts here is the between, the in-between-ness of the hymen. The hymen “takes place” in the “inter-”, in the spacing between desire and fulfilment, between perpetration and its recollection.504
Jacques Derrida’s ‘in-between-ness of the hymen’ could also refer to the veiled
space of the theatre curtain where there is ‘confusion between the present and the
nonpresent…within the whole series of opposites (perception/nonperception,
memory/image, memory/desire)’.505 As Rayner argues, ‘the proscenium
curtain…reproduces a structure of desire…it materialises a desire to see more, to
see truth, to see real’.506 However, Sam Trubridge proposes that the theatre curtain
is also an object of moral prudery that hides or masks forbidden desires:
Theatre reverted to an almost religious modesty by dressing the architecture from top to toe in black drapery producing a ubiquitous and uniform darkness. As such it is conceived as an ‘anti-dressing’, a dressing to hide dressing, or to hide the fact that there is no dressing – a strange kind of nothing, or the ‘notational invisibility’ that Wiles ascribes to the black box theatre. Thus, the curtain’s excessive baroque origins lived on within the black box in a state of Calvinist penitence, reduced in tone to a kind of invisible decoration.507
504 (Derrida 1992) 164 505 (Derrida 1992) 164 506 (Rayner 2006) 141 507 (Trubridge 2012) 17
223
It is interesting to note here that the black theatrical masking of the traditional
proscenium theatre is called tormentors (legs) and teasers (skirts), which are the
vertical and horizontal drapes respectively. Their description reinforces the concept
of the theatre curtain as a fetishised object of desire, and the spectator as a voyeur.
Theatre curtains, voluminous, luxurious folds of red velvet – an illusory trompe l’oeil, a ‘trick of the eye’; frayed, stained calico lit from behind to reveal mysterious shadowy forms; a sumptuous arras swathed in fly lines abruptly dividing the space; a sheer muslin veil shrouding the stage. The black wool drapes of the tormenters and teasers masking the stage, hiding, obscuring until the moment of revelation, of illumination, of enlightenment. The curtains, framing the proscenium, are the boundary between the reality of the spectator in the auditorium and the illusion created by the actor on the stage. (Extract from journal, 17.04.2014)
Gilles Deleuze in The Fold (1993), employed an analogy of the theatrical curtain as
a baroque fold of labyrinthine space that ‘endlessly produces folds…twists and
turns… the Baroque fold, (of the curtain) unfurls all the way to infinity’.508 Figure
4.31, a theatrical red curtain, is an apt choice for Deleuze’ book, The Fold.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.31: The Fold (Gilles Deleuze, 2006); translated by Tom Conley (A&C Black).
Rayner questions: Does anyone ask: What does that curtain mean? What does it
signify or represent? One is more likely to ask: What does that curtain hide? What
is behind it?509
508 (Deleuze 1993) 3 509 (Rayner 2006) 147-8
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The folds of the curtains, like the door, are a theatrical device for revelation and
concealment, anticipation, desire, and fulfilment. The lifting or drawing back of the
stage curtain signals to the spectator the moment of the ‘suspension of disbelief’.
The spectator becomes the voyeur. The curtain parts to reveal a mise-en-scène, a
micro drama. The curtain can frame a scene, separate or divide; and, when closed,
like doors, creates an air of expectation and suspense, of things hidden. The image
or sign of the red theatre curtain, like the milky semi-opaque glass door, is also a
primary recurring motif in both my art and scenographic practice. In The Chairs,
the baroque red curtain is also a meta-theatrical conceit which constantly reminds
the spectator that they are in a ‘theatre’. As Trubridge again suggests, ‘the curtain
is indeed a sign, a character, even before it performs its time-honoured role of
opening the scene and revealing … the “elusive realities” within’.510
4.28 The trompe-l’œil of the baroque red curtain
Figures 4.32-33 are photographs of two derelict nineteenth century theatres,
showing the trompe-l’œil red drapes on the asbestos safety curtain.511 The fourth
wall of the theatre is a trompe-l’œil of the baroque red curtain: a painted ‘trick-of-
the-eye’ which fools the spectator into believing that they are gazing upon the
luxurious folds of a red velvet curtain instead of the fire safety wall.
510 (Trubridge 2012) 14 511 Asbestos was used as a fire-retardant material in the proscenium theatre. The nineteenth century spectator would have been reassured by the large sign ASBESTOS. https://au.pinterest.com/source/forgottendetroit.com/ (Accessed 23.05.2017).
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Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.32: Photograph of the National Theatre, Detroit (David Kohrman, 2004).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.33: Photograph (Reginald Van de Velde, 2008) of Emile Claes’ early 1910s’ abandoned Cinéma Theatre (Varia, Belgium). https://s-media-cache- ak0.pinimg.com/originals/d0/8b/4e/d08b4e8305ebf0be627da5c47ec47b77.jpg (Accessed 23.05.2017).
The image or sign of the red theatre curtain remains an effective, recurring theatrical
device in contemporary theatre, film,512 and advertising. An exemplary example is
Apple’s shrouding of their New York City flagship store in 67th Street Broadway
in a massive latex graphic of a baroque red curtain as a taunting teaser to the passing
consumer/spectator. In one section of the image, the curtain was provocatively
raised to reveal the Apple logo and the words: Opening soon. Apple Store, Upper
West Side (Figure 4.34). The intent here, as in the theatre, was to arouse anticipation
and aspiration. As Rayner suggests, ‘the curtain, like a boundary and barrier to
visibility, thus seems to hold instinctive pleasures in its folds’.513 The store opened
in November 2009 to a massive crowd of desiring consumers and passing
voyeurs.514 Figure 4.35 shows the unveiling of the Shanghai Apple Store. This
photo succeeds in debunking or stripping naked the mystique of the trompe-l’œil.
512 The Red Curtain Trilogy is made up of the three films directed by Baz Luhrmann and designed by Catherine Martin: Strictly Ballroom (1992), Romeo & Juliet (1996), and Moulin Rouge (2001). http://www.dvdactive.com/reviews/dvd/red-curtain-trilogy-box-set.html (Accessed 16.05.2014). 513 (Rayner 2006) 143 514 (Kahney 2009) NPF
226
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.34: Apple’s concealed Upper West Side store. (Tuesday 27 October, 2009; 12:45 pm PT (03:45 pm ET) http://appleinsider.com/articles/09/10/27/fourth_manhattan_apple_store_shrouded_with_red_curtain (Accessed 16.03.2016).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 4.35: Unveiling of Shanghai Apple Store. http://www.archdaily.com/author/karen-cilento Photo credit CNet. (Accessed 16.03.2016).
4.29 The trompe-l’œil baroque red curtain in The Chairs
The two drawing panels from The Chairs (Figure 4.36) identify the trompe-l’œil
theatricality of the ‘painted curtain’. Instead of fabric curtains on stage, they are a
representation of painted scenic flats which look like three dimensional ‘real’ red
velvet curtains. This view of the panoramic drawn work is a simultaneous ‘mind’s
eye view’ of the ‘in-between-ness’515 of the front firewall (right) and backstage
view, signified by the safety curtain sign (left). Also, both panels reveal the notion
of the single door, slightly ajar as an escape, or maybe an entry into the
artist/researcher’s room of imagination and memory.516
515 (Derrida 1992) 164 516 (Kobialka 1992) 62
227
Figure 4.36: The Chairs: two panels of twelve; black and red pen, collage on watercolour paper, 594 x 941mm (Sue Field, 2014).
The curtain in The Chairs becomes a self-conscious, constructed theatricality; a deliberate
interruption of disruption, revealing contradicting impossible spaces of the real and its double. The spectator is abruptly made aware that they are ‘seeing’ theatre. (Extract from
journal, 13.06.2014)
As Arnold Aronson comments: ‘…postmodernism is inherently theatrical, and the
proscenium (or proscenium-like arrangement) remains the prime semiotic
embodiment of theatricality in our visual vocabulary’.517
4.30 Exhibiting The Chairs
In 2014, I was selected to present a paper titled Drawn to the Light: the drawing
from the dramatic text stages the act of viewing, at the DRN, Postgraduate Event,
Coventry University (United Kingdom).518 The drawing I was to discuss in my
presentation was my very nearly completed panoramic work, The Chairs. However,
prior to the conference I was presented with a dilemma: the drawing, now nine
517 (Aronson 2005) 26 518 DRN Postgraduate Event, Coventry University (United Kingdom), 2014.
228
metres long, was too difficult to represent as still photographs, which I would
normally have exhibited at a conference in a PowerPoint presentation. I attempted
many experiments in photographing the work in a black space at NIDA, but was
unable to capture the drawing in its entirety without having to stand back and zoom
out from the image. This rendered the drawing illegible. Thus, the photographic
image below (Figure 4.37) reveals only half of the drawing.
Figure 4.37: Panoramic drawing The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script and sheet music, approximately 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2014).
4.31 The video of The Chairs
It was then that I decided to video the drawing to make it possible to view the work
as a whole. This decision led to what Stephen Scrivener identifies as cognitive
surprise:519 a serendipitous moment that altered the direction of the research. The
video was shot at NIDA in a black box performance space, intentionally mirroring
519 (Scrivener 2010) NPF
229
the context of the drawn work which is ambiguously set in the windowless
backstage spaces of an abandoned proscenium theatre. The oculus of the camera
lens mimicked the eye of the moving spectator; in this case, my spectatorial eye.
The panoramic scale of the work demanded the camera be attached to a dolly to pan
across the drawn performative space, to constantly back-track, stand back, and/or
move in closely to absorb the detail of the work.
Felix Kulakowski (NIDA) and I edited the video of The Chairs520 with a
soundscape that is a combination of two very different acoustic compositions. First,
there is the hypnotic sound of lapping waves, underscored by the dulcet and mellow
tones of the French cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier crooning Paris sera toujours
Paris. This song is mentioned by the character of the old man in Ionesco’s Les
Chaises… ‘there is nothing left of it now, except a song…A lullaby, a parable:
"Paris will always be Paris.".521 The pages of the musical score Paris sera toujours
Paris, composed by Casimir Oberfeld, blows through the drawn space of The
Chairs.522 However, this ambience is continuously interrupted by the persistent,
intrusive noise of an abrasive telephone ring and high-pitched doorbell. The
challenge here is to prevent the spectator from becoming lulled into a state of
nostalgia by both the objects and the soundscape. The soundscape is a post-dramatic
device by which the spectator is abruptly distanced from subconscious emotional
involvement by what Bertolt Brecht defined as the ‘effect of alienation’.523 The
520 Felix Kulakowski: AV Supervisor, NIDA. 521 (Ionesco 1965) 131 522 Casimir Oberfeld was a Jewish Polish-born French composer. He worked on many film scores and wrote popular songs of the 1920s and 1930s. He died in an Auschwitz concentration camp in 1945. 523 Bertolt Brecht proposed the ‘effect of alienation’ or ‘estrangement-effect.’ http://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803095758798 Accessed 11.5.2016.
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spectator’s attention is constantly drawn to meta-theatrical conventions which, in
turn, transport them into the ‘here and now-ness’ where they are aware of their own
presence gazing at the drawing.524
4.32 Drawing conclusions
The video of The Chairs prompted an animated and constructive debate among the
other conference participants, university academics and general spectators.
Returning to Australia, I then began a series of generative drawings that integrated
the panoramic drawing with the video (Figure 4.38). It was at this point in my
development that I realised my research practice was moving towards a
performative installation that involved drawings, video projections, and a
soundscape.
524 (Bleeker 2008) 65
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Figure 4.38: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm. (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
I now wanted this performative space, not just the drawing, to evoke a mobile spectatorial embodied gaze. Within the installation, there was also to be the ambivalent sense that someone has just left the ‘room’. The spectators, as the performers within the performative space, must move around the space to view its different parts and create their own narratives or meanings from it. There is an
‘absent presence’. The absentees in the space are the actors who have fled the scene, and the drawer whose performance is completed. My objective here was to show that the absence of these players in the drama somehow causes the present spectators to reflect on the post-dramatic staging of the drawing, and their own
232 spectatorship in the theatre of the artwork. Again, my intention here was for the installation to also evoke the sense of an event that has just taken place. The spectators have arrived on the scene too late to do anything to influence the action, and their role is more that of a forensic investigator.
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CHAPTER FIVE: No Exit
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5.1 Introduction
VALET: Outside? GARCIN: Damn it, you know what I mean. Beyond that wall. VALET: There’s a passage. GARCIN: And at the end of the passage? VALET: There’s more rooms, more passages, and stairs. GARCIN: And what lies beyond them? VALET: That’s all. (Extract from Huis Clos)525
In late 2015, I embarked on a studio art residency at the Cité Internationale des
Arts, Paris.526 This extraordinary experience marked an epiphany in my research
practice. My first-hand encounter with Paris, with all the wonders and horrors527 it
offered, generated a fresh set of strategies which provided a new framework in
which to further experiment, develop, and design a hybrid genre of drawing. This
new genre is both an expanded drawing and a different form of post-dramatic
theatre in which an absent presence is manifest. A multitude of drawings exhibiting
different techniques and purposes were produced during my residency; these
included thinking drawings but also many observational drawings or ‘drawings
from life’. The observational drawings emerged in conjunction with an examination
of the dérive or ‘drift’, an unplanned walk conceived by the French Situationist Guy
Debord.528 Together, the thinking and observational drawings influenced the
content, technique, and rendering of the larger panoramic drawings (1020 x
660mm) executed during and after my residency. What was particularly evident
was the introduction of colour, the departure from a monochromatic palette, and the
emergence of distinct Parisienne characteristics and ‘psycho-geographies’ that
525 (Sartre 1989) Extract from Huis Clos. 6 526 The three-month studio art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris was awarded by University New South Wales, UNSW, 2015. 527 The Paris terrorist attacks occurred midway through the residency on Friday 13 November 2015. 528 (Wigley 2001) 47
235 appeared throughout the drawn space. These larger drawings were eventually
(2017) combined into the nine-panelled, panoramic drawn work (12 240 x 660mm),
No Exit.
This chapter is underpinned by the phenomenology of the gaze, in particular, the notion of being watched by the ‘Other’—the gaze of an absent presence. The philosophical works of the German cultural critic Walter Benjamin, and French philosopher and playwright Jean-Paul Sartre are examined in this context. This chapter also identifies the emotive states experienced in the creative process of embodied making and learning. These emotive states, the ‘gap’ and ‘flow’, resulted in drawings that I classify as flow thinking drawings. These particular drawings illuminate further the underlying concept of an absent presence in the final panoramic drawn work, No Exit.
5.2 The observational drawing
A critical development during my residency in Paris was the observational drawing, which sparked a catalyst—a transformative change in the research process. The observational drawings are a first-hand visual journey and eye-witness record of drifting through the streets of central Paris. Drawing from life is spontaneous and immediate, capturing transient moments in time. No Exit is a blend of memories, and those random and unexpected ‘present’ moments.
All the following observational drawings identified in this chapter were sketched on site in fine black pen, and then developed further and rendered in coloured ink
236 and pencil back in my studio in the Cité. I did not use graphite pencils or erasers: the black line pen was directly applied to the blank page in the journal. Figures 5.1-
2 are observational drawings from my research journal of the exterior of the Cité.
In both cases, I sat and sketched directly from life in the grounds of the Cité. What became evident, three months later on my return to Sydney, was that there were no human figures in any of my observational drawings. This had not been a conscious decision at the time of drawing but, despite this absence, a ‘presence’ remains within the drawn spaces. This chapter examines my research process in producing thinking and observational drawings in the creative production of the second panoramic work, No Exit.
237
Figure 5.1: Observational drawing of the exterior of the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
238
Figure 5.2: Observational drawing of the exterior of the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
5.3 The dérive
The infamous dérive is itself already a kind of drawing. The drifter, responding to the resonances between the hidden forces of the unconscious and the hidden forces in the city, draws a meandering line through the city. The drift is an automatic drawing that subverts the official city plan by exploiting unmapped sensual and subliminal qualities.529
529 (Wigley 2001) 47
239
Guy Debord first proposed, in Les Lèvres Nues (1957), the notion of the dérive. A
derive, or ‘drift’, is an unplanned walk in which the walker creates ‘psycho-
geographies’, or mental images, of the modern city as he/she drifts randomly
through the urban landscape. The drifter is not Walter Benjamin’s flâneur or
‘dreaming idler’, but is fully alert to the process of traversing the urban terrain or
psycho-geography. As Debord suggests, ‘Dérives involve playful-constructive
behaviour and awareness of psycho-geographical effects, and are thus quite
different from the classic notions of journey or stroll’.530 Figure 5.3 is an
observational journal drawing which I initiated while drifting along the Seine. I
rested my journal on the stone wall and sketched in black ink pen the strange green
‘triffid-like’ lights sprouting from the river’s edge. It was dawn. I later returned to
the studio and developed the drawing further with coloured ink and pencils.
Figure 5.3: Observational drawing of meandering along the Seine, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal. 2015).
530 (Williams 2011) 152
240
Debord’s dérive becomes a method by which the ‘drifting spectator’ can actively participate as a witness, rather than passively watch or view. It is an improvised mobile, embodied spectatorial gaze which can produce unmapped meaning—or none at all. This was Debord’s deliberate attempt to steer the urban individual away from the rampant modernist forces of consumerism and capitalism, where the hostile landscapes of the labyrinthine and entropic city generate urban neuroses, estrangement, and alienation. Debord sought a very different encounter, where the
‘alive’ spectator becomes intimately and emotively immersed in the sensual experience of moving through the urban environment. Figure 5.4 is another observational journal drawing that I did while meandering along the Seine.
Figure 5.4: Observational drawing of meandering along the Seine (Paris): black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Debord & Asgar Jorn jointly produced a work called The Naked City in 1957. A map of central Paris was cut up into 19 pieces and then randomly pasted back
241
together. They then drew arrows that linked parts of the city, and the spectators of
the drawing could devise their own meaning, or their own drift through the urban
terrain of central Paris (Figure 5.5).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 5.5: The Naked City (1957), Guy Debord & Asgar Jorn. https://situationnisteblog.wordpress.com/2015/06/07/the-naked-city-illustration-de-lhypothese-des- plaques-tournantes-en-psychogeographique-sic-1957/ (Accessed 12.05.2017).
Below is an extract from the handwritten text in my journal (Figure 5.6). This
chapter continues to use extracts from my handwritten visual diaries, illustrating
the informality and personal reflections of the ‘performative writing’ process
throughout the creative production of No Exit. These extracts are again
differentiated by a framed grey background and are written in the digital font Times
New Roman.
Figure 5.6: Handwritten journal extract: black pen on bond paper (Sue Field, 2015).
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Prompted by Guy Debord’s & Asgar Jorn’s drawing, The Naked City, 1957, I produced my personal drift. I chopped up a map of central Paris which I printed out in the Cité studio and then proceeded to walk the streets of Paris. When I became hopelessly lost I would ask a stranger in execrable French: Quelle direction est la Seine? (Which direction is the Seine?). (Extract from journal, 08.10.2015)
Figure 5.7 is my drift through central Paris. The red ‘meandering line through the
city’531 was added as I wandered from one section of the drawing/map to the next.
I set out from the Cité at 9.15am and concluded the drift at 6.20pm. Every so often
I stopped and sketched observational drawings in my journal.
531 (Wigley 2001) 47
243
Figure 5.7: Drawing and collage of a map of Central Paris (Sue Field, 2015).
The ‘drift’, executed early in my residency, was seminal in introducing colour into my practice. Paris in autumn was enveloped in the colours of orange, yellow, and red against a piercing blue sky. In Experiment One, The Chairs (2015), the only colour employed was red. Figure 5.8 is an observational drawing of the Jardin
Tuileries, completed after returning to the Cité studio.
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Figure 5.8: Observational drawing of Jardin des Tuileries, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Debord’s dérive enabled me to drift through the urban landscape of Paris to discover at random new and different encounters which prompted a multitude of observational drawings. These encounters appeared later as memories in the larger, panoramic drawn work, No Exit. In other words, the dérive produced a different mobile embodied spectatorial gaze through the experience of drawing from life.
Figure 5.9 is another journal drawing of drifting through the streets of Paris in autumn.
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Figure 5.9: Observational drawing of drifting through the cobbled streets of Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
The residency in Paris gave me the luxury of time – time to immerse myself in the philosophical works of Walter Benjamin and French philosopher and playwright Jean- Paul Sartre. But above all, time to wander aimlessly through the cobbled streets, haunt museums, libraries and art galleries and drift blissfully carefree along the nineteenth century Parisian arcades and passages in the pursuit of unmapped meaning and the perfect drawing. (Extract from journal, 06.03.2016)
246
Figure 5.10 is an observational journal drawing of a view from a street light of the
Pompidou Centre. Again, this was an outcome of the artist/researcher as a drifting spectator immersed in her dérive.
Figure 5.10: Observational drawing of the Pompidou Centre, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
5.4 Arcades Project
My research draws motivation from the phenomenology of the gaze to deepen an investigation into the notion of ‘being watched’, or the gaze as an absent presence.
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In Arcades Project/Das Passagen-Werk,532 Walter Benjamin writes of the
ambulatory gaze of the flâneur, or the ‘dreaming idler’, strolling ‘aimlessly’533
along the covered arcades of nineteenth century Paris (Figures 5.11-13).
Figure 5.11: Observational drawing of an arcade, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
532 Arcades Project (Das Passagen-Werk) was written between 1927 and 1940, remained unpublished until 1982, finally appearing in English in 1999. 533 (Benjamin 1999) 417
248
Figure 5.12: Observational drawing of an arcade, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.13: Observational drawing of an arcade, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
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Benjamin identifies the flâneur's experience within the crowded and claustrophobic
arcades as the ‘colportage phenomenon of space’,534 where the flâneur perceives
everything simultaneously. Here, chronological sequence is replaced by
simultaneity. Multiple compressed layers of the past unfold before the gaze of the
flâneur as a ‘phantasmagoria, in which the city appears now as landscape, now as
a room’.535 Benjamin’s strobing, phantasmagorical scenes are similar to the
multiple-perspectival frames of post-dramatic theatre.536 As Benjamin further
suggests:
Thanks to this phenomenon, everything potentially taking place in this one single room is perceived simultaneously. The space winks at the flâneur: What do you think may have gone on here? 537
‘What do you think may have gone on here?’538 also elicits the idea of an absent
presence, where the space is taunting the vain flâneur with multiple reflections in
the glass shop-front windows. There is a feeling that the flâneur is being watched
by an absent presence and the ‘sensation of seeing for the first time what [he] has
seen many times before…that moment of unforgetting, when the familiar world
suddenly seems strange and new or impossible’.539 As Alice Rayner proposes:
‘Seeing what we saw before’ implies recognition in the root sense of the word, a reknowing, and thus is related to the idea of unforgetting. A phenomenological ground for such recognition suggests the moment when one perceives that one is perceiving what has been there all along. That is to say the ‘world’ as perceived has been there before, but the moment
534 (Benjamin 1999) 418 535 (Benjamin 1999) 21 536 For example, the British theatre group Punchdrunk production, Sleep No More (2011), McKittrick Hotel, New York. The production is set in 100 rooms as multiple, simultaneous, and cinematically framed scenes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth. 537 (Benjamin 1999) 418 538 (Benjamin 1999) 418 539 (Rayner 2006) xix
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of perception is one in which the world appears in what Heidegger called its ‘unconcealedness’.540
The arcades metamorphose into a labyrinthine dream541where the past returns as a
‘sensation of seeing for the first time what one has seen many times before’.542
Benjamin’s ideas resonate with the drawings for this research as they are layers of
memory, autobiographical images, and personal monologues. There is no linear
form to these memories. They are a ‘mind’s eye’ view intertwined in memory,
imagination, and reality—a multi-perspectival form of perceiving. The panoramic
performativity of the drawings resonates with Benjamin’s flâneur strolling
languidly down the labyrinthine arcades of Paris, occasionally catching a glimpse
of his reflection, or perhaps every now and then, his curiosity is awakened as he
passes the dazzlingly lit shop facades.
Benjamin described his book Arcades Project, as a literary montage, a colportage
or a ‘peddling’ inspired by the Parisian arcades.543 Likewise, the drawings for this
research are a colportage, a manifestation of the artist/researcher’s autobiographical
interior monologue or ‘stream of consciousness’. For instance, (Figure 5.14) is a
large drawing I completed in Paris in 2015, the first of nine panels for the panoramic
drawing No Exit. It is constructed with multiple layers of paper, representing a
windowless space that evokes loneliness, nostalgia, and the passage of time.
540 (Rayner 2006) xix 541 (Benjamin 1999) 429 542 (Rayner 2006) xix 543 Colportage: To peddle books and newspapers. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/colporteur (Accessed15.06.2014).
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Figure 5.14: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
Following my examination of Benjamin’s Arcades Project, and after my numerous
drifts through the nineteenth century Parisienne passages and arcades, the question
I asked myself was: How can my research practice engender a similar spectatorial
encounter to that of the Parisian flâneur? Where the drawn space winks at the
spectator: What do you think may have gone on here? 544 Where there is a feeling
of being watched, but by whom?
5.5 The Other
The writings of the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre are also pertinent to this
research, in particular, his seminal text Being and Nothingness: An Essay on
Phenomenological Ontology (19430 and his existentialist play Huis Clos (No Exit),
544 (Benjamin 1999) 418
252
(1944). Both texts were written during World War Two when Paris was under the
tyrannous reign of the Nazi-controlled Vichy government (1940-1944). Sartre was
a prisoner of war between 1940 and 1941. It was during this period that he read
Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time (1927), which prompted him to respond with
Being and Nothingness. Huis Clos, which followed soon after, exemplifies the
arguments proposed in Sartre’s major philosophical text. I chose Huis Clos as the
absurd existentialist text to trigger my second major experiment or drawn work, No
Exit.
5.6 Being and Nothingness
Being and Nothingness is a study of the consciousness of being. It is particularly
pertinent to this research because the chapter, The Existence of Others, defines
Sartre's phenomenon of the experience of being fixed in the gaze of the Other—a
phenomenological portrayal of the encounter with the Other via ‘the look’ or le
regard. The gaze—or as Sartre referred to it, the ‘look’—is that which permits the
subject to realise that the Other is also a subject. We only become aware of
ourselves when confronted by the gaze of the Other. It is this awareness of being
watched that enables us to be aware of our own presence. Sartre suggests a
provocative example of how the unexpected gaze of the Other can lead to the
objectification of ourselves. You are alone in a room and peering through a keyhole
of a door. At this point, you are in a state which is ‘…a pure consciousness of things,
and things, caught up in the circuit of (your) selfness’.545 However, suddenly you
hear footsteps in the space beyond the door. It is the Other, who then turns and
545 (Sartre 1956) 259
253
stares back at you through the keyhole. You now see yourself because somebody
sees you. As Sartre argues:
This means that all of a sudden I am conscious of myself as escaping myself, not in that I am the foundation of my nothingness but in that I have my foundation outside myself. I am for myself only as I am a pure reference to the Other.546
It is through this becoming aware that we are being watched and, hence, objectified;
that we begin to objectify ourselves.
5.7 Huis Clos
GARCIN: …Sorry I fear I’m not good company among the dead. ESTELLE: Please, please don’t use that word. It’s so - so crude. In terribly bad taste, really. It doesn’t mean much, anyhow. Somehow I feel we’ve never been so much alive as now. If we’ve absolutely got to mention this - this state of things, I suggest we call ourselves - wait! – absentees. Have you been – been absent long? (Extract from Huis Clos)547
Huis Clos is Sartre’s theatrical manifestation of Being and Nothingness.548 Three
damned souls find themselves trapped altogether in the same room for eternity. This
is hell according to Sartre. Sartre argued ‘hell is other people’, or l'enfer, c'est les
autres.549 Each cannot escape the unblinking gaze of the other two. They cannot
hide from the Other. They are alone except for the mysteriously elusive valet whose
ambiguity could be the Devil in disguise. As Joseph McMahon comments in
Humans being: The world of Jean-Paul Sartre, 1971:
…this hell is created by the individual as his response to the Other who terrifies him…each is in hell where the interaction of their conciousnesses can change nothing. They are fixed and presumably inalterable because their past, now that it is over, has the quality of an object. Nothing that they say or do now can redefine, reform, or compensate for what they were then. They are locked up together to play a rueful endless game whose rules have
546 (Sartre 1956) 260 547 (Sartre 1989) Extract from Huis Clos.12 548 (Senejani 2013) Abstract 549 (Sartre 1989) 45
254
been traced out from the patterns of their lives and whose outcome brings them fruitlessly back to the beginning.550
The three characters or—as they are described—‘absentees’551 are trapped in
Benjamin’s labyrinth ‘of eternal recurrence’,552 where for eternity they cannot
escape the grasping gaze of the Other. They are all aware of being watched, of
being objectified. ‘Their lived experience, their past, has now become an object’.553
5.8 The ‘look’ as an action of grasping
INEZ: To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore. Your silence clamours in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out – but you can’t prevent your being there. Can you stop your thoughts? I hear them ticking away like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and I’m certain you hear mine. It’s all very well skulking on your sofa, but you are everywhere, and every sound comes to me soiled, because you have intercepted it on its way. (Extract from Huis Clos)554
Sartre defines the ‘look’ as an action of grasping, of a desperate seizing of the look
of the Other and visa-versa. The ‘look’ is intercepted by the Other.555 This conjures
up a terrifying image of a disembodied form clutching through the tiny orifice of a
keyhole. Sartre argues:
I grasp the Other’s look at the very centre of my act as the solidification and alienation of my possibilities…Hitherto I grasped these possibilities thetically on the world and in the world in the form of the potentialities of instruments: the dark corner in the hallway referred to me the possibility of hiding – as a simple potential quality of its shadow, as the invitation of its darkness.556
550 (McMahon 1971) 72 551 (Sartre 1989) Extract from Huis Clos. 12 552 (Benjamin 1999) 116 553 (McMahon 1971) 79 554 (Sartre 1989) Extract from Huis Clos. 22 555 (Sartre 1989) Extract from Huis Clos. 22 556 (Sartre 1956) 256
255
The notion of the gaze as the act of grasping in an acquisitive manner harks back to
the ancient and medieval ‘gaze of devotion’. Ivan Illich comments in The Scopic
Past and the Ethics of the Gaze:
No matter the school to which the antique opticians belong, they all agree that the gaze reaches out, projects itself in an organic erection of the eye; that it is the projection of flesh into the world. For all of them, the visual ray - the ejaculation of the visual sense – itself organic, an organ that is awakened when the lids are opened. 557
The antique opticians identified the gaze as a physical, embodied protrusion that
gropes out from the eye. Illich further argues that the medieval Franciscan scholars
in England, particularly Roger Bacon and William of Ockham:
…try to understand cognition as the result of a so-called multiplicatio specierum, a kind of metaphysical simulacrum swarming out from the object of cognition to be grasped, embodied and named as the knowing subject.558
The contemporary Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, in The Eyes of the Skin:
Architecture and the Senses (2005), also identifies the gaze as a fleshy organ that
reaches out, not to grasp, but to stroke. He suggests:
…vision reveals what the touch already knows. We could think of the sense of touch as the unconscious of vision. Our eyes stroke distant surfaces, contours and edges, and the unconscious tactile sensation determines the agreeableness or unpleasantness of experience. The distant and the near are experienced with the same intensity, and they merge into one coherent experience.559
Again, in a similar vein, Maurice Merleau-Ponty identifies the gaze as a veil of
flesh:
557 (Illich 2010) 5 558 (Illich 2010) 9 559 (Pallasmaa 2005) 42
256
… things we could not dream of seeing “all naked” because the gaze itself envelops them, clothes them with its own flesh … How does it happen that my look, enveloping them, does not hide them, and finally, that veiling them, it unveils them?560
5.9 No Exit and the Other
The panoramic drawing No Exit is a representation of the windowless space of
backstage; with the exception of the running man exit sign, there are no drawn
human figurative elements (Figure 5.15): the actors have left the space. However,
there remains a presence, the sense of being watched, of being grasped in the fleshy
gaze of the Other hidden behind the billowing curtains, the doorjamb or, perhaps,
the painted backcloths. The aim here is to prompt a spectatorial encounter with
Rayner’s ghost or ‘shiver’.561 The spectator, as voyeur, encounters the voyeuristic
hidden gaze of the Other.
Figure 5.15: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
560 (Maurice Merleau-Ponty 2004) 249 561 (Rayner 2006) xiii
257
5.10 The voyeuristic gaze in Sartre’s Huis Clos
In Huis Clos, Sartre generates a heightened sexual tension between the grasping
gaze of the three absentees.562 Huis Clos is an idiomatic French legal term meaning
‘in chamber…exclude the public’;563 the ‘secret’ proceedings of a court hidden
behind locked doors where no-one can either enter or exit the room. Huis Clos can
also be translated as denoting in camera, where ‘camera’ is a vaulted, darkened
chamber.564 This definition is evocative of the black box camera with its sealed
internal chamber and the concept of ‘being watched’. My research proposes that the
spectator, silently gazing into the hellish ‘chamber’ of Huis Clos, does so
voyeuristically from the shadows of the auditorium and from behind the fourth wall.
There is a sense that the ‘absentees’ on stage cannot escape the oppressive groping
gaze of the audience—or of each other— within the claustrophobic confines of the
black box theatre space.
5.11 The voyeuristic gaze of the theatre-going spectator
There is extensive dialogue examining the voyeuristic gaze of the theatre-going
spectator, particularly in relation to the conventions of the traditional proscenium
theatre, where the spectators are hidden behind the fourth wall in the darkened
auditorium, protected in ‘a legalized and safe environment for that interaction.’565
562 (Sartre 1989) 12 563 (Bridge 1994) 152 564 In camera: http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=in+camera (Accessed 10.08.2016). 565 (Rodosthenous 2015) 3
258
George Rodosthenous suggests in Theatre as Voyeurism: The pleasure of watching
(2015):
The presence of the binoculars in the grand circles and balconies of the Victorian playhouses is a constant reminder that theatre is associated with voyeurism. The binoculars give the audience permission to spy, to come closer to the happenings on stage while remaining at a safe distance in the dark. It is, yet, another unspoken authorization to watch: a silent agreement licensing voyeurism.566
In a similar vein, Eric Bentley argues that:
It is the modern age that worked out the idea of a pitch-dark auditorium. Scholars call the modern stage the peepshow stage. The corollary is that this is a theatre for Peeping Toms… The pleasure of looking on is in itself an equivocal thing. It includes such delights as feeling one has committed the crime yet is able to escape the penalty … the pleasure of watching is continuous with the pleasure of peeping.567
As Tori Haring-Smith also posits, ‘with the use of electric light came the rise of the
fourth wall that encases the audience …inside an impermeable box’.568
Furthermore, she argues that plunging the audience into darkness, and the actors
into light, resulted in ‘two very different and separate worlds, one alive and dynamic
and the other sedentary and increasingly comatose...[the actors] lived in a separate
world, under the observation of paying audience members’.569 No longer were the
audience and actors occupying the same space; the audience, in effect, ‘had become
voyeurs’.570
566 (Rodosthenous 2015) 22 567 (Bentley 1991) 156-57 568 (Maria M Delgado 2002) 98 569 (Maria M Delgado 2002) 99 570 (Maria M Delgado 2002) 99
259
The voyeuristic presence in Western dramatic tradition can be traced back to the
concept of the theological stage.571 The theological stage is a microcosm of absolute
creation where the author/creator is an absent presence, ‘removed from the action,
watching over its eventuation; regulating, dispensing, deregulating, guiding the
actors, who represent characters whose actions are representations of the will of the
creator’.572 The ‘unrepresentable’ is represented by the representatives—the
director and actors. The spectator is the passive voyeur of the spectacle represented.
In The Theatre of Cruelty and the Closure of Representation (1978), Jacque Derrida
argues:
… the theological stage comports a passive, seated public, a public of spectators, of consumers, of “enjoyers” … attending a production that lacks true volume or depth, a production that is level, offered to their voyeuristic scrutiny.573
Anne Übersfeld’s The Pleasure of the Spectator (1982) proposes that:
Theatrical pleasure…is the pleasure of the sign; it is the most semiotic of all pleasures. What is a sign, if not what replaces an object for someone under certain circumstances? Surrogate sign, a presence which stands for an absence: … the stage for an absent "reality." Theatre as sign of a gap-being-filled. It would not be going too far to say that the act of filling the gap is the very source of theatrical pleasure. Memory and utopia, desire and remembrance, everything that summons up an absence is, in fact, fertile ground for theatrical pleasure.574
However, as Übersfeld further argues, theatrical pleasure is left unfulfilled because
the grasping, groping gaze of the pleasure seeking, theatre-going spectator is always
blocked; trapped by taboos against touching and seeing in ‘the ever-increasing gap’
of ‘no man's land’ in which the voyeuristic gaze ‘travels between fiction and
571 (O'Connor 2010) 55 572 (O'Connor 2010) 55 573 (Derrida 1978) 9 574 (Übersfeld 1982) 129
260
reality’.575 Übersfeld concludes that the spectator is constantly left discontented,
unable to fill the gap because:
The relationship between the spectator's desire and the stage is one of endless wandering but also one of permanent frustration. And it is not desire alone that is frustrated; the totality of the stage space is the object of demands that cannot be met. The essential situation of the spectator is dissatisfaction, not only because he cannot possess the object of desire … but because his intelligence itself is unable to bridge the gap.576
However, I agree with the view proposed by Maaike Bleeker in Visuality in the
Theatre: The Locus of Looking (2008) that, in post-dramatic theatre, voyeuristic
pleasure does not define the spectatorial presence. She maintains:
…although some theatre traditions and theatre practices do exploit the voyeuristic pleasure of peeping through a keyhole into another world while remaining invisible in the dark, a wide range of other theatrical practices demonstrate that this is not a necessary characteristic of the theatre event, nor is it a necessary precondition for the intense experience referred to as “presence”. 577
Bleeker defines this intense experience or presence in post-dramatic theatre as a
‘here and now-ness’, where the spectator is made acutely aware that they are
watching actors, objects, and theatrical machinery.578 It is Bleeker’s post-dramatic
experience as a ‘here and now-ness’ which is the key to this research’s final
outcome, as identified in Chapters Six and Seven.
5.12 No Exit, produced by Electric Company and Virtual Stage
The theatrical production of Huis Clos/No Exit, produced by Electric Company and
Virtual Stage and directed by Kim Collier in Vancouver, Canada (2008), is a re-
575 (Übersfeld 1982) 138 576 (Übersfeld 1982) 138 577 (Bleeker 2008) 133 578 (Bleeker 2008) 65
261 imagining of Sartre’s existentialist text, and exemplifies the concept of an absent presence as the voyeuristic Other. The three live performers are hidden from the audience’s view, trapped in a closed, walled-off room with concealed cameras, thus literalising Sartre’s original meaning of his title Huis Clos. The stage is transformed into a cinema, the camera into a surveillance device, and the spectators into voyeurs.
The character of the Valet remained alone downstage, intimately interacting with the performance projected live on the three enormous screens upstage (Figures
5.16-18).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 5.16: No exit, 2008 (photo by Tim Matheson). http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/show/no-exit/ (Accessed 12.05.2017).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 5.17: No exit, 2008 (photo by Tim Matheson). http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/show/no-exit/ (Accessed 12.05.2017).
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 5.18: No exit, 2008 (photo by Tim Matheson). http://www.electriccompanytheatre.com/show/no-exit/. (Accessed 12.05.2017).
5.13 No Exit and a surveillant presence
Being watched…and watching and waiting. Paris the city of lights and cameras…watching…a surveillant presence…an absent presence. (Extract from journal, 15.12.2015)
The panoramic drawing, No Exit, also has concealed security cameras within the folds of its billowing curtains. Figure 5.19 is a thinking drawing showing the preliminary ideas of employing cameras. Figures 5.20-21 are observational
262 drawings executed after the Paris terrorist attacks on 15 November 2015. Figure
5.22 is a detail of a drawn panel in which these objects represent the intrusive surveillance apparatus of the theatrical space, as memories evocative of the heavy anti-terrorist presence in central Paris, and as an analogy for the voyeuristic hidden gaze.
Figure 5.19: Thinking drawing, No Exit: 120x150mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
263
Figure 5.20: Observational drawing of the interior of the Paris Metro: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
264
Figure 5.21: Observational drawing of Belleville, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
265
Figure 5.22: Detail from one of nine panels of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
5.14 Paris
October 1, 2015, I was on the travelator at Kingsford Smith Airport, Sydney, when suddenly an extraordinary, cathartic moment of complete freedom enveloped me…I was free…It was an inconceivable feeling. When I finally arrived at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris - feelings of trepidation began to emerge but they were rapidly overwhelmed by this euphoric sense of freedom…freedom from the running man. (Extract from journal, 18.12.2015)
Who is the running man? He was born in 1979 in Japan and first came to Australia in 2004. I was constantly aware of him in my theatre design . practice…always there in the background – in the auditorium, backstage and even lurking in the foyer bar (Figure 5.23). (Extract from journal, 18.12.2015)
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Figure 5.23: Photograph of the running man at NIDA (Sue Field, 2015).
The strange thing is that it was not until 2014 that I became conscious of him in my drawings. He had appeared a few years earlier but I had not noticed him or recognised
his significance. He is the running man exit sign…now a recurring metaphor in my drawing practice. I remained undeterred by his presence – however there was always the unnerving feeling of being watched. (Extract from journal, 18.12.2015)
In Figure 5.24 there is a French exit sign that I saw in the Pompidou Centre (Paris).
In this sign, the running man has no illuminated door to run towards; rather, he is being chased by flames to nowhere. He is trapped in a place without doors or windows. This new detail has appeared in the panoramic drawing No Exit as another symbol of Hell (Figures 5.25-26).
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Figure 5.24: Photograph of a French running man in the Pompidou Centre, Paris (Sue Field,
2015).
Figure 5.25: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
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Figure 5.26: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
5.15 The objects in No Exit are symbols of Hell
The etymology of the word ‘Hell’ is a ‘concealed space’.579 Within the drawn
windowless spaces of the panoramic drawing No Exit are certain objects that are
alluding to the dark ‘concealed space’ of a ‘fiery’ Hell. These objects are the banal
conventions, dictated by W.H.S, that populate the theatre backstage spaces. For
example, the running man exit sign on fire, with no visible illuminated exit door;
the red fire extinguisher, empty and abandoned; the red fire hose, left turned on to
flood the space; the spilt bottle of fire-retardant; and the emergency red telephone
left forgotten off the hook, again exemplify an absent presence (Figures 5.27-31).
There is the feeling that a spectre/presence remains, even though there are no visible
579 (Hoad 1986)
269 humans present in the drawn space. This drawn space evokes disorientation, bewilderment and, ultimately, loneliness for the artist/researcher.
Figure 5.27: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
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Figure 5.28: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.29: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
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Figure 5.30: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 5.31: Detail of panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper (Sue Field, 2017).
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5.16 The Gap or ‘in-between’ space
The silence on stage was interrupted by Kantor’s voice from a loudspeaker:
Again, I am on stage. I will probably never fully explain this phenomenon either to you or to myself. To be precise, I am not on stage, but at the threshold. In front of me, there is the audience – you, Ladies and Gentlemen – that is, according to my vocabulary. REALITY. Behind me, there is the stage, that is ILLUSION, FICTION. I do not lean toward either of the two sides. I turn my head in one direction, then in the other direction. A splendid resume of my theory.580
The above statement, spoken by the disembodied voice of the absent director
Tadeusz Kantor, identifies the concept of the ‘threshold’ between reality and
theatrical illusion, of the stage as a ‘folded space’. Kantor, repeatedly wrote of this
limen, this interface, as the ‘in-between space; …as a found reality – an autonomous
spatial fold that exists in a space of variable dimensionality’.581 Historically,
playwrights, theatre theorists, directors, and actors have, in relation to performance,
been fascinated and preoccupied by, and even fearful of, this ‘gap’—or ‘other
spaces’—of the theatre.
The ‘in-between’ spaces in the theatre – backstage, the wings, dressing rooms, corridors and the edge of the stage…a thin space or limen - the fourth wall. Unformed spaces constantly in flux… ambivalent, unpredictable gaps, go-between passages of binary constructs; visible/invisible, true/false, dark/light, reality/illusion, presence and absence, known and unknown, past and future... (Extract from journal, 01.05.2011)
580 (Kobialka 1992) 334 581 (Kobialka 1992) 332
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Victor Turner views the limen or threshold as ‘a noman’s-land betwixt-and-
between the structural past and the structural future’.582 The director and theorist
Richard Schechner wrote of this interface as:
A limen…a threshold or sill, a thin strip…the thin space of the limen is expanded into a wide space both actually and conceptually. What usually is just a “go between” becomes the site of action…It is enlarged in time and space yet retains its peculiar quality of passageway or temporarliness…Conceptually, what happens within the liminal time and space is reinforced, emphasised.583
The Canadian director Richard Foreman suggested that this space is a void or gap,
‘I’m not getting enough collision, I’m not getting enough spark gap – spark jumping
the gap’.584 Marvin Carlson said that it is a ‘contiguous empty space… like the body
of the actor that exists before it interpellated into a character, has the potential, often
realised of “bleeding through” the process of reception, the process I have called
ghosting’.585 Gay McAuley wrote: ‘it is the outer edges of a given space and
particularly at the interface between two spaces, at the border zones that the analysis
becomes most interesting’.586 Like Kantor, Alice Rayner suggests that this
‘membrane’ is permeable and confounding in its ability to interchange between
reality and illusion. She observed that:
It is so alternately charming and unsettling… (to see) an actor peer through the proscenium curtain to check out the audience…in part, we see her human curiosity, which comes from that ‘other’ world of characters and representation and focuses on our world.587
582 (Turner 1990) 11 583 (Schechner 2002) 58 584 (White 2006) 138 585 (Carlson 2001) 133 586 (McAuley 2000) 86 587 (Rayner 2006) 150
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And again, as Herbert Blau commented in The Audience, ‘the edge of the stage is
the point of contact between the hallucinations of the theatrical spectacle and the
viewing world’.588 The panoramic drawing No Exit is a manifestation of Victor
Turner’s limen or threshold: ‘a noman’s-land betwixt-and-between the structural
past and the structural future’.589 Within this drawn space, is a trace or trait of an
absent presence; a space un-filled that allows for possibility, invention and, for the
artist/researcher, more imagining.
5.17 The creative process of No Exit
The panoramic drawing No Exit further tested, reflected on, and contextualised my
personal practice of making drawings. I used the investigative process of drawing
as an analytic instrument, and the completed panoramic drawn work as a
performative outcome which explicitly evidenced the research. The following
analysis, arising from the results in Chapter Four, examines my practice in creating
the panoramic drawing No Exit, specifically focusing on the emotive states I
reached in the process of embodied making and learning. These emotive states,
identified as the ‘gap’ and ‘flow’, further illuminated the underlying concept of an
absent presence.
5.18 The embodied cognitive hand
The freehand thinking drawing is the haptic cognitive tool which, sparked by a
dramatic script such as Sartre’s Huis Clos, expedites the discovery of new and novel
588 (Rayner 2006) Cites Herbert Blau, The Audience, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). 142 589 (Turner 1990) 11
275 spaces. Figure 5.32 is a thinking drawing for the panoramic drawn work No Exit, revealing the embryonic thoughts and memories of Paris which later developed into the completed panel (Figure 5.33).
Figure 5.32: Thinking drawing for No Exit: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
Figure 5.33: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
It is through drawing that I cognitively process images observed from life, or
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unearthed from the ‘mind’s eye’.590 The hand thinks in collaboration with our
neural system. As Petherbridge suggests, drawing is:
…the movement of the hand and its extension of pen, quill, brush, chalk or lead which reveals the process of describing lines and its ideation. The difficulties of erasure implicit in most of its methods means that lines are left in place as a record of the processes of the moving hand.591
In his essay What Calls for Thinking (1951), Martin Heidegger defines humanness
through the hand, because the hand differentiates humans from all other organisms.
It can grasp, point, sign, and draw the artist or designer’s thoughts. He further posits:
The hand is something altogether peculiar. In the common view, the hand is part of our bodily organism. But the hand’s essence can never be determined, or explained, by its being an organ that can grasp…The hand is infinitely different from all grasping organs…different by an abyss of essence. Only beings who can speak, that is think, can have hands and can handily achieve works of handicraft…Every motion of the hand in every one of its works carries itself through the element of thinking.592
5.19 The thinking drawing in imaging the early conceptual phase of No Exit
The thinking drawing is critical in maintaining fluid, agile, and malleable cognitive
processes between the images in my mind’s eye and the hand. My drawing practice
begins with a spirit of adventure and discovery, unfettered by the constraints and
practicalities of realism. This is where an embodied cognition is at its most critical.
However, I discovered early in my investigations that achieving this state is
determined by two very different emotional conditions. First, there is a sense of
frustration—marked by hesitancy, anticipation, and trepidation—which
overwhelms me when initially confronted by the blank page. It is at this moment
590 Hamlet Act1, Scene 2. In the mind’s eye was first coined by Shakespeare in Hamlet as the visualization of his mind. 591 (Petherbridge 1991) 11 592 (Heidegger 1999) 380-381
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that I am desperate to grasp that elusive image or, as the neuro-scientist Antonio
Damasio suggests, the ‘knowledge of the moment’.593 Second, there is the more
pleasurable sensation when an extraordinary haptic relationship finally emerges
between the images in my mind’s eye and the hand physically drawing in pencil,
pen, or ink. This connection generates an embodied neurosensory experience or, as
the cognitive psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi proposes, flow.594
There manifests right at the beginning of designing and drawing an initial fear. Fear of the empty page. Fear of never finding that pivotal image that sparks cognitive surprise, wonder and astonishment. I am haunted by this elusive absent presence or gap between visual perception and the actual gestural mark where the vague intangible idea can suddenly disappear without warning into an abyss. (Extract from journal, 02.05.2011)
5.20 The gap
Damasio writes of:
… a gap between our knowledge of neural events, at molecular, cellular, and system levels, on the other hand, and the mental image whose mechanisms of appearance we wish to understand. There is a gap to be filled by not yet identified but presumably identifiable physical phenomena.595
As Damasio also maintains, it is in the ‘knowledge of the moment’596 that the gap
is made real. These gaps are seized by the desperate grasping gaze, only to disappear
in a blink-of-an-eye. The thinking drawing becomes the means of capturing visually
those fleeting, fragmented moments which are a ‘state of feeling made
conscious’.597
593 (Damasio 1999) 125 594 (Csikszentmihalyi 1993) 176-177 595 (Damasio 1999) 323 596 (Damasio 1999) 125 597 (Damasio 1999) 125
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5.21 In a blink of the eye
GARCIN: …That’s why there’s something so beastly, so damn bad mannered, in the way you stare at me. They’re paralysed. VALET: What are you talking about? GARCIN: Your eyelids. We move ours up and down. Blinking, we call it. It’s like a small black shutter that clicks down and makes a break. Everything goes black; one’s eyes are moistened. You can’t imagine how restful, refreshing, it is. Four thousand little rests per hour. Four thousand little respites – just think!... So that’s the idea. I’m to live without eyelids. Don’t act the fool. You know what I mean. No eyelids no sleep; it follows, doesn’t? I shall never sleep again. (Extract from Huis Clos)598
According to the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, this gap is also a trait or trace
that in:
…the time of the (clin doeil) that buries the gaze in the batting of an eyelid, the instant called the Augenblink, the wink or blink, and what drops out of sight in the twinkling of an eye.599
This gap or trait can separate further into a void, where a memory or an image can
disappear in a blink of an eye; in an instant in the moment when ‘the small black
shutter that clicks down and makes a break’.601 ‘As soon as the draughtsman
considers himself fascinated, fixed on an image, yet disappearing before his own
eyes into the abyss, the moment by which he tries desperately to recapture himself
is already, in its very present, an act of memory’.602 Fascination and anticipation
can lead to fear and loss, where ‘the draughtsman is prey to a devouring
proliferation of the invisible’. 604Derrida comments:
My hypothesis…is that the draughtsman always sees himself prey to that which is each time universal and singular and would thus have to be called ‘unbeseen’, as one speaks of
598 (Sartre 1989) Extract from Huis Clos.5 599 (Derrida 1993) 48 601 (Sartre 1989) 5 602 (Derrida 1993) 68 604 (Derrida 1993) 45
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the unbeknownst. He recalls it, is called, fascinated, or recalled by it. Memory and without memory, in memory and without memory. 606
Confronted by the vacant page, by a presence that is absent, I frantically begin to draw those first marks, only to find those fleeting images disappearing into the gap - disappearing in the blink of an eye. I find myself in a frenzy trying to prevent the spectre of thought escaping in the blink of an eye… the intangible, the ambiguous, the indiscernible and ‘unbeseen’. (Extract from journal, 01.08.2011)
The American artist Terry Rosenberg also alludes to this gap or ‘unbeseen’ space.
He suggests that for the artist drawing, there is:
...the impulsion…to form and transform. In this notion of blankness, drawing is thinking and acting between the not-yet-formed and the formed, in the space between form and form at the threshold between form and anti-form.608
Drawings and more drawings are attempted, screwed up and thrown to the floor – pages and pages with only a meaningless scribble. I begin with a desperate frenzy, hoping that at least one drawing illuminates, lights up, what is dancing tantalisingly but elusively in the mind’s eye. (Extract from journal, 01.08.2011)
Derrida’s blind draughtsman is haunted by the ‘spectre of the instant (stigme) and
of the stylus, whose very point would like to touch the blind point of a gaze’.609
Derrida asks the question:
…does he not also try in vain, up to the point of exhausting a ductus or stylus, to capture this withdrawal (retrait) of the trait, to remark it, to sign it finally – in an endless scarification.611
606 (Derrida 1993) 45 608 (Garner 2008) 114 609 (Derrida 1993) 64 611 (Derrida 1993) 56
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‘Endless scarification’ is an apt description of the unrelenting desire to press harder and harder with the implement (pencil, stick), repeating lines over and over, inscribing the same mark over and over again, hoping for revelation, illumination. Ugly frustrated scars are left on the page, permanent marks of ugliness- a frustrated hope attempting ‘to capture this withdrawal (retrait) of the trait.’ (Extract from journal, 01.08.2011)
Emma Cocker also posits the concept of scarification; of scarifying the ground as
an artistic practice:
For the artist, to prepare for the unexpected has a dual function. It is the gesture of developing readiness (for anything), a state of being at the cusp of action, mind and body poised. It is also an act of scarifying the ground, an attempt to create the germinal conditions within which something unanticipated might arise.613
An example of scarification as a drawing technique is the thinking drawing (Figure
5.34). There is an uncertainty and hesitancy inherent in this drawing, distinguished
by the staccato application of the marks, the oblique gaps in thinking, and the
repetitious erasure leaving only a trace. However, despite the frustration revealed
in its execution, this drawing was not discarded, but developed into the larger drawn
panel for No Exit, (Figure 5.35).
613 (Cocker 2013) 127
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Figure 5.34: Thinking drawing for No Exit: black pen on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
Figure 5.35: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
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5.22 The drawing as apocalypse
Derrida ultimately viewed drawing and the act of drawing as an ‘Imploration
revelation, sacrifice…the allegory of drawing as apocalypse’.614 For the panoramic
drawing No Exit, the monumental heavy drapes billowing throughout the drawn
space employ the textile backgrounds from the French Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse
(1377-1382), again, as a symbol for a ‘hellish space’.
Figure 5.36 is a detail from the medieval tapestry, showing a large flower motif on
a flat ground of blue. Figure 5.37 is an observational journal drawing which I
sketched in Montmartre two days after the Paris terrorist attacks (Friday 13
November 2015), when the buildings were draped in French flags as an emblem of
defiance and mourning. Figure 5.38 is a drawn panel from the panoramic work No
Exit, illustrating my process in constructing the drawing with layers of paper from
memory. Figure 5.39 is the completed panel, exhibiting the use of the medieval
pattern from Figure 5.36.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 5.36: Detail from the Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (1377-1382).616
614 (Derrida 1993) 121 616 (Delwasse 2008) 49
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Fig 5.37: Observational drawing of the rooftops of Montmartre, Paris: black pen and coloured ink on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
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Figure 5.38: Incomplete panel of the panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2016).
Figure 5.39: One of nine panels of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2016).
The Figure 5.39 drawing reveals beyond the baroque curtain left of the picture frame, a surreal theatrical backdrop or trompe-l'œil of Parisienne roof-tops. This is
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a landscape devoid of a human presence; there only remains an empty, ghostly
presence, an absent presence. It is this drawing that made visible ‘the devouring
proliferation of the invisible’; 617 memories not only of that horrific night, but also
of past childhood events that emerged as an absent presence to haunt the work.
5.23 Drawing out memories as a trace in the drawing
Drawing memories leads to broken lines, fragmented and ambiguous forms, indeterminate shapes and unpredictable but extraordinary accidents. Incomplete structures, sometimes only scribbles and blotches, all help the mind - the consciousness - to unravel the proliferation of memories and images that are often confusing and irrelevant. This state of anarchy, merged with an almost paranoid fear, is where I begin.
‘Found’ images stimulate the memory and unearth memories hidden in the dark spaces of consciousness. Memories become interwoven with the present, with images from direct observation or from material researched. Memories emerge as recurring metaphors in my work. Beginning this process, drawing requires a saturation of the mind with images, with material sourced externally and internally, serving as points of reference buried deep in the memory and emerging as a trace in the drawing; as an autobiographical monologue. (Extract from journal, 04.03.2011)
5.24 A journey into self/memory: the dramatic script of monologues as a
trace in the drawing
Memories as an autobiographical monologue, combined with the dramatic
monologue, are embedded as a trace within the drawings produced for this research.
I have discovered since embarking on this journey that in my past scenographic
practice, I have a consistent recurring theme where dramatic text is used as a
primary motif in both the scenographic design drawings and the final realisation of
the theatrical production. For instance, for The Heidi Chronicles (Director, Adam
Cook, 1992), the text was enlarged to over three metres in height, and was painted
617 (Derrida 1993) 45
286 on the black walls of the theatre. In The Curse of the House of Atreus (Director,
Helmut Bakaitis, 1998), the dramatic script was shredded like fallen leaves across the entire stage; in certain scenes, the script blew through the theatrical space, forming piles of paper knee deep, through which the performers emerged (Figures
5.40-41).
Figure 5.40: Production photograph for the theatre production of The Curse of the House of Atreus, (directed by Helmet Bakaitis (Branco Gaica, 1998); set and costume design by Sue Field.
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Figure 5.41: Production photograph for the theatre production of The Curse of the House of Atreus, (directed by Helmet Bakaitis (Branco Gaica, 1998); set and costume design by Sue Field.
It is through undertaking this research, I have discovered why I have this recurring trope in both my artistic and my scenographic practice. Since studying scenographic design at NIDA, I have been fascinated with the printed word as a photocopied representation of the dramatic script. This has evolved into my drawing practice, where I repeatedly embed torn and shredded photocopies of the dramatic script into the drawing. It is a technique of embedding the monologue into the layered fabric
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of the palimpsest,619 where the dramatic text is transformed into a trace, the post-
dramatic scenographic script. Figure 5.42 is an example from No Exit, indicating
the use of this collage/drawing technique. To the bottom right and left corners of
the image is Sartre’s script Huis Clos, printed on brown packaging paper. Layered
throughout the image of the piano and sea are pages of Sartre’s philosophical text
Being and Nothingness, and blowing through the drawn space is the French musical
score Tout Seul (On Top of the World, Alone).620
Figure 5.42: Detail of the panoramic drawing No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 1020 x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
619 Palimpsest: A parchment or other writing surface on which the original text has been effaced or partially erased, and then overwritten by another; a manuscript in which later writing has been superimposed on earlier (effaced) writing. (O.E.D). A contemporary meaning is the surface becomes an interface inscribed with layers of history and memory. 620 Tout Seul, (On Top of the World, Alone) composed by Richard A. Whiting. The lyrics, written by Leo Robin, are set on the rooftops of Paris.
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The scattered and blowing paper is not only an analogy for the transient, ephemeral
core of theatre but also, in relation to the artist/researcher, a visualisation of the
temporality and uncertainty of time.
I belong to a generation that fell in love with the photocopier, experimenting with this extraordinary technology which so easily manipulates and changes the drawing - transforming, copying, enlarging, reducing, multiplying and inverting the image over and over again. Sometimes, as the copy is extruded from the machine, the transformation which is revealed is a ‘shocking’ vision, a jolting of previous notions. Suddenly one is looking at something which is exhilarating, exciting and extraordinarily illuminating. The drawing becomes a montage of photocopies: of disparate, scattered fragments of the text. The roughness, the ripping, pasting, screwing up papery sensation is very satisfying. (Extract from journal, 04.09.2011)
5.25 Flow
The frenzy of drawing is exhilarating. The sense of anticipation is intoxicating. Procrastination gives way to anticipation, the exhilarating thought of what is to begin; the desire to reveal the thoughts, the images, through the intoxicating action of drawing. In a stream of consciousness, shadowy images pour forth from the mind, gushing out through the finger tips, through the pencil, flowing onto the paper - bubbles of champagne exploding, rippling notes of Mozart, as the eyes blur into a trance-like state of euphoric transcendence. (Extract from journal, 04.09.2011)
Once the ‘knowledge of the moment’621 is captured on the page, there manifests
this wonderful sensation of becoming totally immersed in the experience of
drawing; of a complete lack of awareness of disappearing time and space, other than
the ‘intoxication of the pencil or the brush’.622 Csikszentmihalyi describes this
sensation as flow experiences. In his book The Evolving Self; A Psychology for the
Third Millennium, (1994), he comments on when he first became aware of ‘how
621 (Damasio 1999) 125 622 (Baudelaire 1964) 17
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totally involved the artists became with what was transpiring on canvas. An almost
hypnotic trance seemed to seize them as they struggled to give shape to their
vision’.623 He also discovered what was most significant and ‘so enthralling … was
not the anticipation of a beautiful picture, but the process of painting itself’.624 He
further interrogates these feelings as intense sensory states of being:
Such feelings – which include concentration, absorption, deep involvement, joy, a sense of accomplishment – what people describe as the best moments in their lives. They occur almost anywhere, at any time, provided one is using psychic energy in a harmonious pattern…I have called these feelings flow experiences, because many respondents in our studies have said that during these memorable moments they were acting spontaneously, as if carried away by the tides of a current.625
Csikszentmihalyi suggests that both the higher the level of skill and the greater the
test of one’s ability produce ‘this rare state of consciousness’.626 What amazes me
is that it is only when I experience this state that I produce my best, most innovative
work:
The self is flooded with a sense of exhilaration when we undertake a task that requires complex skills, that leads to a challenging goal. In those moments we feel that, instead of suffering through events over which we have no control, we are creating our own lives.627
The drawings in reaction to a piece of dramatic text can produce this intense
experience of flow; for instance, (Figure 5.43) is both a visual experimentation and
a spontaneous expressive response to the act of drawing itself. I call these particular
thinking drawings flow drawings. These flow drawings are almost always
completed in black pen and ink wash (Figure 5.44). Sometimes, photographic
623 (Csikszentmihalyi 1993) 6 624 (Csikszentmihalyi 1993) 12 625 (Csikszentmihalyi 1993) 176-177 626 (Csikszentmihalyi 1993) 8 627 (Csikszentmihalyi 1993) 175
291 collage material is incorporated as a swift visualisation technique (Figure 5.45).
These primi pensieri or first thoughts, inspired by the images collected, are rough, rapid, and repetitive works. They are a beginning and, because they are permanent, indelible marks, they can only be erased by pasting another piece of paper on top.
Figure 5.43: Flow drawing: collage, black pen, ink and wash on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
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Figure 5.44: Flow drawing: black pen, ink and wash on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
Figure 5.45: Flow drawing: black pen, ink and wash on bond paper, 148 x 210 mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2015).
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I consider the flow drawings as the warm-up – a loosening and energising of the transformative processes between the mind, eye and hand. These drawings digress from the original dramatic text and are devoid of direction and fixed parameters. As I begin each drawing there is the sense that I do not know what I am doing but by actually being aware of the process of drawing I somehow do know. (Extract from journal, 04.09.2011)
The flow drawings can potentially lead to an embodied sensory encounter with
something cognitively surprising, something of wonder and astonishment.
5.26 The vaudevillian dreamscape of post-dramatic theatre
As Gaston Bachelard proposes:
One might say that immensity is a philosophical category of daydream. Daydream undoubtedly feeds on all kinds of sights, but through a sort of natural inclination, it contemplates grandeur. And this contemplation produces an attitude that is so special, an inner state that is so unlike any other, that the daydream transports the dreamer outside the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity.628
The images which fill the consciousness are layered, fragmented, and divided by
walls, corridors, doors, and curtains. These theatrical devices, which separate and
divide images, also allow the spectator to hover in the realm of possibility: ‘an inner
state that is so unlike any other, that the daydream transports the dreamer outside
the immediate world to a world that bears the mark of infinity’.629 Damasio claims:
… that the core consciousness includes an inner sense based on images. I also suggested that the particular images are those of a feeling. That inner sense conveys a powerful nonverbal message regarding the relationship between the organism and the object: that there is an individual subject in the relationship, a transiently constructed entity to which the knowledge of the moment is seemingly attributed. 630
628 (Bachelard 1964) 83 629 (Bachelard 1964) 83 630 (Damasio 1999) 125
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It is this ‘knowledge of the moment’, the pulling back of the curtain, the opening of
a door, the ‘stepping into the light’, which is revealed and elucidated in the flow
thinking drawings. Damasio also suggests that creativity is generated through the
illumination of the consciousness and that ‘…consciousness is ever present in the
process of creativity, not only because its light is indispensable, but because the
nature of its revelations guide the process of creation, in one way or another, more
or less intensely’.631 The drawings produced early in my creative process illume this
‘knowledge of the moment’.
Consciousness is dense with images, yet infinite in its vastness and immensity; an ‘intimate immensity’ with the power to expand into infinity, yet also oppressive and overwhelming. Distant echoes unite into a single sensory experience. (Extract from journal, 04.09.2011)
Below is Ben Brantley’s apt description of the work of the Canadian post-dramatic
director/scenographer Richard Foreman; it resonates with my scenographic
aesthetic but, more particularly, with my drawing practice. He comments:
Foreman’s sets are capable of evoking a sense of wonder and exhilaration in their nearly overwhelming detail and riotous juxtaposition of images and objects. One seems to have stumbled into an attic crammed with the belongings of eccentric and long-forgotten inhabitants of a house from the last century; or perhaps we are at a surreal flea market…a “vaudevillian dreamscape”.632
It is from this point that I return ‘stumbling into the attic crammed with the
belongings of eccentric and long-forgotten inhabitants’ of Cottrell Manor, the
631 (Damasio 1999) 313 632 Ben Brantley’s review of I’ve got the Shakes (New York Times, 13 January 1999), as cited in (Aronson 2005)). 161
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derelict Georgian mansion of my early childhood in Wales. It is this image (Figure
4.2) and it’s imagined interior—a very palpable, endless staircase; long winding
corridors; mysterious closed doors—and frayed heavy red curtains that have
recurred again and again in my dreams and, hence, in my scenographic and drawing
practice.
5.27 Drawing conclusions
The transformative spiral, devised as a model for the methodology of this research,
has affected many of my design decisions, and subsequently changed my process
of drawing from the dramatic text. It has done this by forcing me to reflect back
onto ‘what I am drawing’ and, most significantly, ‘why I am drawing’. Prior to this
investigation, I primarily designed intuitively. I even believed and feared that if I
reflected too much on my practice I would lose spontaneity and organic expression
in my drawings. This research has dispelled this myth by unlocking a plethora of
‘doors’, which have greatly enhanced my practice in imaging the dramatic text
through drawing. It is through this research that I have delved into my own mind’s
eye and encountered ‘cognitive surprise’.633 The ‘cognitively surprising’
developments that occurred during my residency in Paris led finally to the testing
of new and novel concepts in the creative production of the panoramic drawing No
Exit, 2017 (Figure 5.46). The results of these discoveries are presented in Chapter
Six.
633 (Scrivener 2010) NPF
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Figure 5.46: Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
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CHAPTER SIX: Drawn to Perform
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6.1 Cognitive surprise
This definitive chapter identifies and examines a discovery that not only provoked
Stephen Scrivener’s cognitive surprise,634 but also led to a transformative change
in the culmination of my research: the scenographic-scaled set model,635 or
maquette.636 The model was pivotal in creating a point of intersection between
scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing as an art
practice. This serendipitous breakthrough offered a new and different alternative:
both a three-dimensional representation of the original panoramic drawn work, and
a hypothetical post-dramatic mise en scène within the expanded drawing.
What follows documents the final process in the use of the model to further
experiment with, test, and develop the impetus for this research: a new hybrid genre.
This chapter concludes with a reflection on my final exhibition for this project, The
Drawn Absence: A speculative scenographic mise en scène, 24-28th April 2018.
Along with the performative model, it presented a proposal for an expanded
drawing on a far larger scale; the model becomes an agency to provoke future
speculative thinking.
6.2 A different scenographic ideation tool
A primary outcome of my research was the completion of No Exit in March 2017.
This included the original panoramic drawing, the digital video of the drawn work,
and the non-diegetic soundscape. It was at this point in the research that I instigated
634 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 635 From this point on in the research, the scale scenographic set model will be referred to as ‘the model’. 636 Maquette is the European term for ‘set model’.
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a return to the critical review and analysis of the seven precedents in Chapter Three;
this, in turn, unearthed what should have been an obvious scenographic
methodology: the model. This revelation was the missing link, and was crucial in
advancing my research towards its final outcome. Inigo Jones, Robert Barker,
Norman Bel Geddes, Ricardo Scofidio/Elizabeth Diller and William Kentridge all
employed a model in their design process and, with the exception of Jones and
Barker,637 this scenographic device was also pivotal in the final artistic
installation—becoming itself a performative object.
For instance, in Futurama, designed by the American industrial designer and
scenographer Bel Geddes, the spectators eventually discover themselves inhabiting
the monumental architectural model installed in the General Motors Highways and
Horizons Pavilion (New York World’s Fair, 1939-1940). Having just had the
experience of viewing the model638 on a spectacular conveyor-belt ride of
armchairs, the spectators then enter a 1:1 version of the model where they are
transformed into pedestrians on the very street scene they had only minutes earlier
witnessed in miniature. The scale was altered from 1ʺ/200ʹ into a 1:1 spectatorial
performance (Figure 6.1). The model, both as a miniature and at a 1:1 scale, became
a performative object and the spectator became the performer within the ‘play’,
which was conceived by Geddes as a 1960s’ utopian future.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
637 (Thea Brejzek 2017) As Brejzek argues, there is very little is known of the use of scenographic models prior to the second half of the 18th Century. This is partly due to the ephemeral nature of the model as an ideation device. 30 638 The scale of the model was 1ʺ/200ʹ and covered 35,738 square feet.
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Figure 6.1: The spectatorial presence within Futurama (Norman Bel Geddes, 1939). http://www.wired.com/2010/04/gallery-1939-worlds-fair/ (Accessed 31.08.2016).
There is also the theatricalised performativity of the architectural model for Slow
House (1991), designed by the American architects Scofidio and Diller (Figure 6.2).
This particular version,639 which is part of the collection at Les Turbulences - Frac
Centre, (France), demonstrates how the model ‘stages’ an optical phenomenon
where perception oscillates between reality and theatrical illusion. The inserted
glass slides are ‘drawn’ vignettes, or a storyboard of a ‘reality show’ within an
American vacation house, again enhancing the heightened cinematic performativity
of the model as a theatrical object.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 6.2: Section model of Scofidio and Diller’s Slow House (1991) : Les Turbulences - Frac Centre (France). http://www.frac-centre.fr/collection-art-architecture/diller-scofidio/the-slow-house- 64.html?authID=60&ensembleID=143 (Accessed 12.03.2017).
Finally, there is Kentridge’s Black Box/Chambre Noire (2005), a miniature,
mechanised proscenium theatre employing projected animations of the artist’s
charcoal drawings, historical film footage, archival photographs of Namibia (South
Africa) and an accompanying soundscape.640 The model was placed in the centre of
the gallery space, with the original drawings exhibited on the surrounding gallery
walls. Chairs were placed in front of the performative model. However, the
spectators were also free to wander throughout the gallery space (Figure 6.3). As
639 There is another architectural model of Slow House at MOMA (New York). 640 (Geldenhuys 2006) 41
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Daniel G. Geldenhuys suggests, ‘Kentridge manages to simultaneously realise the
unique potential of the miniature theatre as sculptural object, projection, and
installation’.641 Again, the model becomes an autonomous, performative object in
itself.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 6.3: Black Box/Chambre Noire (William Kentridge, 2005); Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin). http://lunettesrouges.blog.lemonde.fr/2005/12/29/2005_12_william_kentrid/ (Accessed 19.09.2016).
The anthropologist Michael Taussig proposed that the model can transform into an
autonomous object, with its own character and power. He argued:
I call it the mimetic faculty, the nature that culture uses to create second nature, the faculty to copy, imitate, make models, explore difference, yield into and become Other. The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing of the character and power of the original to the point whereby the representation may assume that character and that power.642
Taussig suggested that this was ‘sympathetic magic’,643 meaning that the model is
imitative, comprising the power of the copy, which embodies the power and
character of the original. This recognition that the model can take on a life of its
own, transforming into an autonomous performative object beyond pragmatic
concerns, was critical in directing my research into under-explored scholarly
terrain. As Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallen argue in The Model as
Performance: Staging Space in Theatre and Architecture: ‘The autonomous
model…is neither process-driven nor representational but conceptualized and built
to be autonomous’.644 This chapter examines the results of experimenting and
641 (Geldenhuys 2006) 42 642 (Taussig 1993) xiii 643 ‘Sympathetic magic’ is discussed in detail in Chapter Three. 145 644 (Thea Brejzek 2017) 2
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testing within the model as an autonomous, performative object, both as a
scenographic mise en scène and as an expanded drawn space.
I had come full circle, or more specifically, undergone a complete spiral of
transformation. I had nearly reached the end—which was, in fact, the beginning.
This was demonstrated in Chapter Two by the representation of the structure of the
intertwined double helix. Working with a model brought me back to the beginning;
back to my original scenographic practice as a theatre/opera set and costume
designer before I embarked on this research journey.
6.3 Definition of a scale scenographic set model
The scenographic set model is a tangible, three-dimensional prototype and ideation
device, which enables the scenographer to play with, and understand theatrical
space in miniature. The geometric ratio most commonly used in Australian theatres
is 1:25. Spatial relationships between the scenographic objects within the theatrical
space can be clearly visualised, prompting different scenarios and possibilities. As
the Australian indigenous scenographer, Jacob Nash, comments: ‘The scale model
is a great communication device. It allows you to see your ideas exactly, and see if
it works’.645 However, the model can also extend beyond practical and functional
constraints. Like the freehand scenographic thinking drawings, the model creates a
hypothetical mise en scène, which can potentially generate unforeseen and
unpredictable outcomes. As Thea Brejzek and Lawrence Wallen suggest in The 1:1
Architectural Model as Performance and Double:
645 (Curtis 2014) 191
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As an expression of material exploration and experimentation, utopian ideals and speculative construction, the architectural model continues to occupy a critical role in the development of spatial ideas across a range of disciplines including stage design, exhibition design, interior design, installation art and architecture...646
As Marx Wartotsky also proposed:
The argument here is that models are more than abstract ideas. They are technological means for conceptual exploration leading to experimentation. But an experiment is something that has to be performed and not merely conceived to be useful. In this sense, models are experimental probes, essential parts of the human technique for confronting the future – but not as a passive encounter with something already formed. Rather, in a unique way in which human action is creative, such an encounter shapes the future. Thus, we may suggest, that models constitute the distinctive technology of purpose.647
Most significantly, these miniature worlds can manifest the wonder and
astonishment inherent in Scrivener’s ‘cognitive surprise’.648 For instance, Bruno
Latour and Albena Yaneva identified the model as an agency to astonish:
…the hundreds of models and drawings produced in design form an artistically created primal matter that stimulates the haptic imagination, astonishes its creators instead of subserviently obeying them, and helps architects fix unfamiliar ideas, gain new knowledge about the building-to-come, and formulate new alternatives and “options,” new unforeseen scenarios of realization.649
In the 1976 exhibition Idea as Model, the American architect Peter Eisenman
suggested that the model has the ‘capacity to render the unimagined visible and to
provide space for the unexpected’.650 The French philosopher Gaston Bachelard
proposed that the miniature:
…the minuscule, a narrow gate, opens up an entire world. The details of a thing can be the sign of a new world which, like all worlds, contains the attributes of greatness. Miniature is one of the refuges of greatness.651
646 (Thea Brejzek 2014) 96 647 (Wartofsky 1979) 148 648 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 649 (Bruno Latour 2009) 84 650 (Macken 2016) 40 651 (Bachelard 1994) 155
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Bachelard viewed the miniature as an intimate space of immensity. It is here that
the spectator, as voyeur, peers—as if through a keyhole—into a world that is
hidden; a world imagined. Working in miniature enables a myriad of possibilities
and, similar to drawing at this early stage in the scenographic process, the model is
also ‘a pure and untroubled thing – nothing to do with the practicalities of
realism’.652 For my research, the model stimulated the further discovery of new and
novel spaces.
6.4 Model-making process
The scenographer begins the model-making process confronted by an empty model
box of the architectural space within the theatre building or performance venue (this
can be interior or exterior). A scenographic model box is conventionally
constructed to the scale of 1:25, and is painted in black.653 To begin the process of
experimentation and testing of new ideas, I first assembled a model box of The
Space Theatre, located at NIDA (Figures 6.4-5). I chose this venue because it is not
a traditional proscenium theatre; it is simply a black box, a large empty space
without fixed seating and surrounded by four painted black brick walls, ceiling and
floor. The ambiguity of the space enabled my research practice outcome to remain
undefined; is it a drawing, a performance or a new hybrid genre?
652 (Kristen Anderson 2001) 155 653 A black model box represents the dark interior of a theatre space before a scenographic set is installed. The architectural model is traditionally constructed in white card.
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Figure 6.4: Thinking drawing of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017): black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.5: Empty black model box of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017), showing its four walls (Sue Field, 2017).
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The plan of The Space indicates that there are four brick walls enclosing the theatre
and a defined entrance, opposite prompt (OP or stage right), and three exits, prompt
(P or stage left) (Figure 6.6).654 There is no proscenium, and the seating bank is
removable.
Figure 6.6: Plan of The Space Theatre (NIDA). http://my.nida.edu.au/course/view.php?id=124§ion=7 (Accessed 02.05.2017).
654 In a theatre, the prompt corner or prompt box (stage left) is the place where the prompter (stage manager) stands in order to coordinate the performance and to remind performers of their lines when required.
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The model box I constructed has one wall removed to enable a digital video to be
projected into the model, and to allow easy access to and visibility of the objects
contained within the model (Figure 6.7).655
Figure 6.7: Empty black model box of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017), with one wall removed (Sue Field, 2017).
Pamela Howard provides an apt description of the empty model box:
The empty maquette…exposes the bare bones of the space…the use and manipulation of scale on the stage is a scenographic art that stretches space from the maximum to the minimum to give it meaning…Through this process the dynamic that the space provides can be moulded and sculpted until it starts to speak of the envisaged production.656
Confronted by an empty black model box, I made the serendipitous decision to test
a new direction in my research; and so, armed again with the post-dramatic
655 It is very difficult to photograph the model from the perspective of the spectator standing in the space without one of the model box walls being removed. Otherwise, all the photographs would have to be a ‘bird’s eye view’ (from an aerial perspective through the ceiling plane.) 656 (Howard 2009) 2
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scenographic tropes collected in Chapter Three, I began an exploratory phase
testing the potential that the model might afford.
6.5 The post-dramatic scenographic tropes
For this research, it was important to keep returning to the post-dramatic
scenographic tropes gleaned from the examination of the precedents in Chapter
Three. This was because they focused and supported the research throughout the
periods of experimentation. The post-dramatic scenographic tropes are again listed
below:
• Panorama: 2D and 3D
• Spectatorial promenade performance
• Theatricalisation: meta-theatricality, exaggeration, audience participation
• Non-linear and/or non-chronological
• Departure from fiction in favour of the 'real'
• Monologues instead of dramatic dialogue
• Subordination of the word/text
• Theatre of scenography/images
• Multiplication of frames: absence of invisible fourth wall
• Music/soundscape
The spectator, as the performer, becomes the pivot about which all the other
elements revolve.
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6.6 The absent ‘actor’
It has always been my research intention to remove the ‘actor’ from the post- dramatic space of the expanded drawn works. This is because, in the original panoramic drawings The Chairs (2015) and No Exit (2017), there are no representations of human figures, except for the running man exit sign. Instead, the spectator becomes the performer. I, the artist, scenographer, director, and playwright, along with the original drawing, become an absent presence; that is, a spectral presence or ‘other’. Therefore, there are no ‘live’ humans, or representations of ‘live’ humans, other than the spectator (represented by a model figure, painted black) within the proposed scenographic space of the scale model
(Figure 6.8).
Figure 6.8: A model of the spectator (painted black) in the empty model box of The Space Theatre (NIDA, 2017).
The following are different explorations that employ scenographic thinking drawings to investigate proposed spatial scenarios using the model. Within these
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different spaces, the spectator, scenographic set, and its representations become the
performers and the ‘play’.
6.7 Explorations
In Figures 6.9-10, the completed panoramic drawing is exhibited on a curved black
scenic flat, alone in the otherwise empty black box theatre. The scenic flat is
necessary because the drawings cannot be exhibited in their entirety on the brick
walls of the theatre. These are divided by pilasters or architectural articulations that
would interrupt the panoramic flow of the drawings.
The conventional method of viewing a panoramic drawing is where the spectator
‘walks along’ the drawing. In this setting, the spectator remains distant from the
drawing, separated by the invisible fourth wall of the picture plane. As Michael
Fried suggests, the artist ‘neutralises and negates the beholder’s presence’ by
establishing ‘the fiction that no one is standing before the canvas’.657 However, my
premise from the beginning of this research was not to deny the ‘beholder’ or
spectators, but to embrace their presence and gaze. The length of the drawing,
approximately ten metres, also compels the spectator to promenade rather than to
be inert in a chair.
657 (Fried 1988) 108
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Figure 6.9: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Figure 6.10: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
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In Figure 6.11, the digital video of the panoramic drawing is projected onto screen/screens in the otherwise empty black box theatre. The video is accompanied by a non-diegetic soundscape, which would resonate throughout the space.
Figure 6.11: Thinking drawing for The Chair: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
This setting would produce a similar experience to that of viewing a medieval panoramic tapestry such as the Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (1377-1382), which I studied in November 2015 in the gallery space at Château d'Angers, France (Figure
6.12). The large digital screens, with multiple scenes running consecutively, parallel this contemporary exhibition of the woven wool panels of larger-than-life objects, mythical creatures, and biblical human figures throughout the tapestry. The
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spectators, in both instances, remain separated from the works; as in Michaels
Fried’s ‘beholder’, their presence658 becomes irrelevant to the screen or tapestry.
Figure 6.12: Jean Bondol & Nicolas Bataille’s Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (Château d'Angers, Paris); commissioned by Louis I, the Duke of Anjou (1377-1382).659
This spatial scenario remains a museum/art exhibition. The spectator moves from
screen to screen, but contemplates at a distance.
Figure 6.13 demonstrates the completed panoramic drawing, the video of the
drawing, and the non-diegetic soundscape in the black box theatre. This includes
the curved scenic flat and screens that enable the spectator to view both the original
drawing and an exploded ‘upscale version’ as a digital, cinematic representation.
This could stimulate a spectatorial curiosity and intrigue, but remains dissatisfying
in terms of an immersive performative experience because it remains a ‘curated
display’ of art works.
658 (Fried 1988) 108 659 (Delwasse 2008) 2
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Figure 6.13: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
In Figure 6.14, the video of the panoramic drawing is projected on the four black
brick walls, accompanied by the non-diegetic soundscape. There is no ‘lighting’,
other than the illumination from the digital projections and mandatory exit signs.
Cinematic imagery on a black surface creates a ‘ghostly’ quality, with the
chiaroscuro-like forms emerging from the darkness. This setting could potentially
evoke a similar immersive experience to that of Villa dei Misteri (Pompeii, 60 BC),
Robert Barker’s wrap-around panoramic painting View of the Cities of London and
Westminster (1792) and Norman Bel Gedde’s Map Lobby, Futurama, (1939-40).660
660 The Villa dei Misteri (Pompeii, 60 BC), Robert Barker’s wrap-around panoramic painting of London (1792), and Norman Bel Gedde’s Map Lobby, Futurama, (1939-40) are examined in detail in Chapter Three.
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In these works, the spectator becomes enveloped in a theatre of scenography/images or an all-around-surround sensory encounter. This exploration could potentially evoke multiple spectatorial experiences and evolve towards a post-dramatic encounter, because theatricality is inherent within the space.
Figure has been removed due to copyright restrictions.
Figure 6.14: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
Theatricality, which was examined in detail in Chapter One, is a key trope defining post-dramatic theatre. Josette Féral and Ronald P. Bermingham posit the question in Theatricality: The Specificity of Theatrical Language (2002):
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You enter a theatre. The play has not yet begun. In front of you is a stage; the curtain is open; the actors are absent. The set, in plain view, seems to await the beginning of the play. Is theatricality at work here? 661
Féral and Bermingham later favour the affirmative because, despite the absence of
the actors, a deliberate theatrical mise en scène has been established. In Figure 6.14,
certain theatrical signs are in place; this constitutes a theatricality that is lacking in
(Figures 6.10-13). The ghostly effect of moving images on the brick walls of the
black box theatre, the poignant ‘emptiness and darkness’, the non-diegetic
soundscape, and the exposed theatre paraphernalia (floorboards, exit signs, fire
hose, and fire extinguisher) all create an emotive theatrical state: ‘A semiotisation
of space has already occurred, the spectator perceives the theatricality of the stage,
and of the space surrounding him’.662
This condition, where ‘theatricality seems to stem from the spectator's awareness
of a theatrical intention addressed to him’,663 is also expressed in (Figure 6.15) in
which the ‘real’ objects, (Chippendale chairs) represented in the original panoramic
drawing, The Chairs (2015), create a scenographic set in the black box theatre. A
non-diegetic soundscape would also resonate throughout the theatrical space. There
are no ‘auditorium’ chairs for the spectators to sit on. However, they could choose
to sit on the Chippendale chairs because the post-dramatic space ‘affords’ them the
opportunity664 and allows the spectator to actively participate in the drama. Both
661 (Josette Féral 2002) 95 662 (Josette Féral 2002) 96 663 (Josette Féral 2002) 96 664 (Gibson 1979) 127 James J. Gibson proposed in his seminal text The Ecological Approach To Visual Perception, the concept of affordance: ‘The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill. The verb to afford is found in the dictionary, the noun affordance is not. I have made it up. I mean by it something that refers to both the environment and the animal in a way that no existing term does. It implies the complementarity of the animal and the environment.’
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the spectator and the spectre can sit, stand, or ‘walk’ throughout the theatrical space
to view the objects.665 The actors, original drawings, and video of the drawings are
absent from the space. This setting echoes Alice Rayner’s notion of the empty chair
as: ‘The pathos of an empty chair holds both memory of a loss and anticipation of
return …a chair, in short, is also a memorial device’.666 The haunting ambiguity of
this setting again evokes a palpable absent presence because theatricality resonates
throughout the space.
Figure 6.15: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
In Figures 6.16-17, the original panoramic drawing is exhibited in a corridor created
within the black box theatre, but separated from the main performance space. The
665 In the original text Les Chaises, written by Eugène Ionesco (1952), the multitude of chairs in the dramatic space were inhabited by ghosts/spectre or absent people. 666 (Rayner 2006) The chair is examined in detail in Chapter Four. 228
318 spectator enters through entrance OP (opposite prompt or stage right), and then views the original panoramic drawing in a corridor before entering the main area in which the digital video, non-diegetic soundscape, and life-size objects are displayed. The spectator then leaves through the P exit (prompt or stage left).
Figure 6.16: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
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Figure 6.17: Thinking drawing for No Exit: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2017).
This scenario (Figures 6.16-17) depicts the maximum potential of all the versions presented. This is because the scenographic setting in the model encapsulates all
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the primary components of my research practice—the original panoramic drawing,
the digital video, the non-diegetic soundscape, and the scenographic life-size props.
Mounted together in this scenario, they could provoke a spectatorial encounter with
an absent presence through the action of ‘walking’ throughout and around the post-
dramatic mise en scène. The spectators are not just viewing the drawing; they
inhabit the drawing with the ‘other’. In this different theatrical space, the spectators
actively engage and participate as witnesses in the drama. As Féral and
Bermingham again suggest:
Theatricality seems to be a process that has to do with a "gaze" that postulates and creates a distinct, virtual space belonging to the other, from which fiction can emerge…This space is the space of the "other"; it is the space that defines both alterity and theatricality.667
6.8 The ‘Room of Imagination’ and the ‘Room of Memory’
The spectator inhabits the drawn space of (Figures 6.16-17), becoming immersed
in the artist’s private spaces: the ‘Room of Imagination’ and the ‘Room of
Memory’.668 This is an extension of Kantor’s concept of a performative ‘folded
space’: a collapsed space that is potentially a site where performance and
spectatorial perception and presence become conflated. It is this scenario, which
my research now creates as a three-dimensional representation in the model. The
model becomes an alternative and complementary space of communication but
more significantly, transforms into an autonomous, performative representation.
Two models were constructed for each of the panoramic drawings, The Chairs
(2015) and No Exit (2017).
667 (Josette Féral 2002) 97 668 (Kobialka 1992) 62
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6.9 Model making
The next step in my research process was the fabrication of the various
scenographic objects represented in the original panoramic drawn works. To
achieve this, I used both analogue and digital modelling practices and processes.
The following section identifies the model-making procedures used in creating the
Chippendale chair for The Chairs (2015).669
The Chippendale chair (designed by Thomas Chippendale, 1718–1779) is a major
recurring object in The Chairs (Figure 6.18). For the model, I needed approximately
fifty Chippendale chairs, scaled to 1:25. To achieve this, I used the Epiloglaser
cutter at NIDA. A scaled image of the chair parts was put into the digital program,
Adobe Illustrator, and then cut out of 1mm white screen board using the Epiloglaser
(Figure 6.19). The laser-cut pieces were then assembled using poly vinyl acetate
(PVA) glue (Figure 6.20). The final result was fifty-seven miniature Chippendale
chairs, spray-painted in black.
669 Why did I choose to draw multiple Chippendale chairs in the panoramic drawing The Chairs? Again, a childhood memory of that name ‘Chippendale’…did my grandparents or great-grandparents have a nineteenth century reproduction?
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Figure 6.18: Journal thinking process of modelling Chippendale chairs (Sue Field, 2017).
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Figure 6.19: Photograph of model of Chippendale chairs: the making process (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.20: Photograph of model of Chippendale chairs: the making process (Sue Field, 2017).
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6.10 The Chippendale chair in the model box
Figures 6.21-22 are photographs of the model Chippendale chair in the painted black model box. The scale model becomes a playground for experimenting with light and shade.
Figure 6.21: Photograph of model Chippendale chair in model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.22: Photograph of model Chippendale chairs in model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
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6.11 The set model of the hypothetical mise en scène within the black model
box
After completing all the set model pieces, I photographed multiple post-dramatic
scenes in the black model box that illustrated the final scenario represented in
(Figures 6.16-17). I employed an Isonic 800hd Portable Pico Projector to project
the digital video of the original panoramic drawings onto the black walls of the
model box (Figure 6.23).
Figure 6.23: Photograph of the use of the Isonic 800hd Portable Pico Projector to project the digital video of the original panoramic drawing No Exit onto the black walls of the model box.
Figures 6.24-25 are photographs of the spectator (represented by the painted black
figure) viewing the original panoramic drawing, The Chairs, exhibited on the wall
in a corridor before entering the post-dramatic space.
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Figure 6.24: Photograph of the corridor exhibiting the original panoramic drawing The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
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Figure 6.25: Photograph of the corridor exhibiting the original panoramic drawing The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figures 6.26-27 are photographs of the scenographic model in which the original panoramic drawn work, The Chairs, has expanded beyond the traditional definition of drawing. This is the scenario in which all the primary components of my research practice—the original panoramic drawing, the digital video, the non-diegetic soundscape, and the scenographic life-size props are mounted together in the black box theatre. Collectively, they produce a new hybrid genre that is both a drawing and, in conjunction with the image of the empty stage, a ‘theatre without actors’. In this different expanded drawn space, the actors are absent—the spectator is now the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs.
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Figure 6.26: Photograph of the spectator as the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.27: Photograph of the spectator as the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
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6.12 The model as an epistemic tool
It was at this point in my research that I found myself designing multiple spaces or
‘rooms’ employing the model as an epistemic tool. It was an exhilarating feeling to
experiment and explore conceptually in the miniature spaces of the model (Figures
6.28–29). The post-dramatic immersive experience of the expanded drawn space
had now extended into a potentially epic meta-theatrical encounter: where the
spectator could roam endlessly throughout multiple rooms of ‘Imagination’ and of
‘Memory’.670
Figure 6.28: Photograph of scenographic scale model of The Chairs within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
670 (Kobialka 1992) 62
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Figure 6.29: Photograph of scenographic scale model of The Chairs within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
6.13 The model as a performative object
As a final addition to the expanded drawn space, I have inserted the completed set
model of the hypothetical mise en scène into the black model box. The scale model
itself has become a performative object (Figures 6.30-31); it embodies another
world within a world. As Thea Brejzek suggests:
…there is also another dimension to the model, linked to invention and imagination more than the pragmatic needs of the scenographer and architect in that models are physical and conceptual instruments of the cosmopoietic (world-making) act - they are able to comprise entire worlds. 671
671 (Thea Brejzek 2017) 11
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Figure 6.30: Photograph of scenographic scale model within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 6.31: Photograph of scenographic scale model of No Exit within the black model box of The Space Theatre, NIDA (Sue Field, 2017).
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6.14 The scenographic set is the protagonist in the post-dramatic theatrical
space
The model enables the visualisation and testing of the new ideas that emerged from the completion of the panoramic drawing No Exit. While drawing remained the principal methodology, it became apparent that it had ‘expanded’ beyond the parameters of the page and the video, and even beyond the installation/exhibition proposed in Chapter Four (Figure 6.32).
Figure 6.32: Thinking drawing for The Chairs: black pen and collage on bond paper, 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2014).
The drawn space had expanded into the ‘real’ space of the black-box theatre, which contained the ‘real’ objects represented in the original panoramic drawings.
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Drawing in this expanded field enlarged the concept of post-dramatic theatre by
positing that the scenographic set, not the actor, becomes the major protagonist.
While post-dramatic theatre had already sublimated the literary text, subject, and
the character,672 my research was now proposing the removal of the actors from not
only the scenographic drawn space, but also the theatrical ‘real’ space. All that
remained would be the spectator, the film of the ‘absent drawing,’ and the ‘real’
objects that evoked an absent presence.
The final realisation in the model encapsulates all the post-dramatic scenographic
tropes gathered in the examination of the seven precedents in Chapter Three. The
two-dimensional, full-height video projections on the four interior walls of The
Space create an all-surround, immersive environment. The ‘real’ objects
represented in the original two-dimensional panoramic drawings, The Chairs and
No Exit, are randomly situated throughout the space— there is no linear or
chronological organisation in either the video or the placement of the objects. It was
at this stage in my investigation that I was ready to exhibit my research and studio
outcome in the form of a speculative scenographic mise en scène.
6.15 The Drawn Absence: A speculative scenographic mise en scène
The exhibition The Drawn Absence: A speculative scenographic mise en scène was
held at AD Space, UNSW Art & Design, 24 - 28th April 2018.673 My concept for
672 (Lehmann 2006) 25 673 UNSW Art & Design Space (AD Space) is a unique on-campus venue where students can showcase their work in art, design and digital media to peers, teaching staff and the wider general public. https://artdesign.unsw.edu.au/campus/student-galleries/art-design-space (Accessed 01.08. 2018).
334 the exhibition was a proposal for a much larger work. Each of the six components exhibited in the main gallery space are complete artistic entities or autonomous performative works that together coalesce as a hypothesis, which is potentially an epic work, involving multiple imagined narratives and spaces. Figure 6.33 is the plan of the dimensions and layout of the six components within the gallery of AD
Space.
Figure 6.33: Plan of the dimensions and layout of the six components within the gallery of AD Space, UNSW Art & Design (Sue Field, 2018).
1. Observational Drawings from life during a three-month studio art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (Sue Field, 2015). 2. Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017). 3. Scenographic set model, No Exit: 1:25, mixed media (Sue Field, 2018).
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4. Panoramic drawing, The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script, sheet music and watercolour paper, 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2015). 5. Scenographic set model, The Chairs: 1:25, mixed media (Sue Field, 2018). 6. Projection of the digital video, The Chairs (Sue Field, 2015). Video edit by Felix Kulakowski. 7. Projection of the digital video, No Exit (Sue Field, 2017). Video edit by Felix Kulakowski.
The exhibition is not the final artistic outcome of this practice-based research but
the proposition it presents. This proposition is manifest in the scenographic set
models (3) and (5) as scaled 1:25 representations of a new and different expanded
drawing, underpinned by scenographic tropes and associated with the immersive,
spectator-centric space of post-dramatic theatre. The role of the performative
model, as a site of ideation and experimentation, identified the potential of an
expanded drawn work as a constantly shifting and evolving mise en scène.
However, the two models contain only one scene of the multiple states explored in
this chapter, employing an Isonic 800hd Portable Pico Projector and miniature
model props. As Thea Brejzek suggests, ‘…the scale model constructs and projects
its reality while anticipating a reality beyond’.674 The two models in the exhibition
are autonomous performative objects but most importantly represent a theoretical
speculation and future reality. This future reality is the outcome realised from the
primary research question driving this enquiry, which is:
How can a drawing underpinned by post-dramatic scenographic strategies, produce a spectatorial encounter with an absent presence?
The six components in the main gallery space are the two panoramic drawings, The
Chairs (2015) and No Exit (2017), the digital videos of the two drawings,
accompanied by a non-diegetic soundscape and a scenographic set model (2018) of
each of the hypothetical expanded drawn spaces developed from the original
674 (Thea Brejzek 2017) 13
336 panoramic drawings. Prior to entering the main exhibition gallery, the spectator can first view in the foyer six observational drawings (1) completed during a three- month art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris France in 2015,
(Figure 6.34).
Figure 6.34: Observational drawings from life during a three-month art residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris (Sue Field, 2015).
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These sketches from life are separate from the main exhibition space because they
are process explorations rather than final products. These preparatory drawings
directly influenced the development of the panoramic drawing No Exit, (2)
exhibited on the right wall as the spectator enters the main gallery space, (Figure
6.35).
Figure 6.35: Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
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The spectators entering the central exhibition gallery are the starting point in which they devise their own meaning from the six elements exhibited. The spectator can wander at will from each of the works installed or alternatively can gain an overall view from the centre of the space. There is no chronological sequence to the works; the experience is osmotic rather than a linear narrative or didactic description. The spectators create their own journey and narrative from the multiple threads generated from each of the theatrical and performative objects displayed.
The two digital videos, No Exit (7) and The Chairs (6), are projected on the walls to the left of the space (Figure 6.36). These two works are played concurrently which generates a strange, disorientating effect, with the drawn images converging and disappearing simultaneously into the corner of the space. This reinforces the multi-perspectival view and cinematic performativity of the spatial composition inherent in the imagery of the original panoramic drawings (2) and (4).
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Figure 6.36: The two digital videos are projected on the walls to the left of the space, No Exit and The Chairs.
The scenographic set model, The Chairs (5), is displayed towards the far left corner, between the digital video (6) and the panoramic drawing, The Chairs (4), which is exhibited on the wall, opposite the entrance, (Figure 6.37-38). The model within the model is exhibited in the scenographic set model The Chairs, (Figure 6.39).
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Figure 6.37: Panoramic drawing, The Chairs: black pen and ink on printed script, sheet music and watercolour paper, 9000mm x 600mm (Sue Field, 2015).
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Figure 6.38: The scenographic set model The Chairs (Sue Field, 2018). The digital video is projected on the wall to the left of the model.
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Figure 6.39: The model within the model is exhibited in the scenographic set model The Chairs.
The scenographic set model, No Exit (3), is installed in front of the panoramic drawing,
No Exit (2) (Figure 6.40-41). The model within the model is exhibited in the scenographic set model No Exit, (Figure 6.42).
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Figure 6.40: Panoramic drawing, No Exit: mixed media on watercolour paper, 9180mm x 660mm (Sue Field, 2017).
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Figure 6.41: The scenographic set model No Exit (Sue Field, 2018).
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Figure 6.42: The model within the model is exhibited in the scenographic set model No Exit.
The exhibition is lit with minimal lighting; three spot lights on each of the walls (2) and
(4). The models are lit with miniature lights concealed within the scenographic set models, (3) and (5). The exhibition is primarily lit by the light from the projections (6) and (7). The darkly illuminated space intensifies the shadows, particularly those produced by the spectator, (Figure 6.43).
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Figure 6.43: The spectators cast shadows onto the two digital videos projected on the walls.
The soundscape from each of the projected digital videos resonates throughout the gallery – the intermittent shrill ring of a vintage telephone and doorbell disturbs the otherwise hypnotic sound of lapping waves, underscored by the dulcet and mellow tones of the French cabaret singer, Maurice Chevalier. Overall, the aim is to create a heightened theatricality that echoes the proposed promenade performance, shaped
347 by the hypothetical mise en scène represented in scenographic models, (3) and (5).
Again, the objective was to simulate a spectatorial experience in which the spectators move through the staged setting of the exhibition and become participants in the ‘play’ itself, (Figure 6.44). This exhibition is about displaying surprising and unexpected works that create for the spectator a theatrical, technological and sensory encounter.
Figure 6.44: The spectator becomes the performer.
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6.16 Drawing conclusions
The exhibition, The Drawn Absence, as a primary outcome of my research practice, established a speculative scenographic mise en scène: a theatre of scenographic images, where the spectators produced their own meaning from the encounter with an absent presence. The presence of the spectators viewing the performative
‘drawn’ works was the focus of the exhibition. However, the presence of the
‘absent’ drawer is revealed to the spectator because the original panoramic drawings are intrinsically autobiographical. They are a form of stream-of- consciousness whereby every object has a deep personal connection with the drawing artist. The spectators, as in post-dramatic theatre, are free to generate their own meaning or none at all from the performative works exhibited.
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CHAPTER SEVEN: Drawn Beyond the Fourth Wall
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7.1 An unending search for the key to the secret of creativity
When I sit alone in a theatre and gaze into the dark space of its empty stage, I’m frequently seized by fear that this time I won’t manage to penetrate it, and I always hope that this fear will never desert me. Without an unending search for the key to the secret of creativity, there is no creation. It’s necessary always to begin again. And that is beautiful.675
Czech scenographer Josef Svoboda’s (1920-2002) ‘unending search for the key to
the secret of creativity’ is embodied in the core of my research. The hypothesis-
driven or problem-solving model was replaced with a reflective model, which
encouraged my own unconscious practice to emerge organically through the
unstructured reflective process of performative writing. My research, which was
conducted primarily through collecting data on the research journey, passed through
the processes of freehand scenographic thinking drawing in imaging the ‘mind’s
eye’ and then through recording auto-biographical monologues as a form of ‘stream
of consciousness’676 in my journal677, employing Peggy Phelan’s ‘performative
writing’. I then engaged, as soon as possible after a period of experimentation, in
the analysis and evaluation of the results, such as the drawing of the work. This was
difficult for a creative practitioner who is fundamentally led by intuition and
nebulous ‘gut feelings’. To help me through the ‘disorderliness’678 of my practice,
I devised a theoretical model (Chapter Two), the transformative spiral of research,
using the concept of the double helix intrinsic within the architecture of the Sydney
Opera House car park. This allowed an ongoing exploration rather than a close-
675 (Carver 2009) Josef Svoboda is cited in Stagecraft Fundamentals: A Guide and Reference for Theatrical Production, 2009. 69 676 (James 1890) 233 ‘Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instant. It is nothing jointed: it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let is call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life.’ 677 I employ a journal to both sketch drawings, and write reflections, annotations, and observations. 678 (Trimingham 2002) 56
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ending process, and was further underpinned by a fusion of Stephen Scrivener’s
model of ‘cognitive surprise’ (2010), Donald A. Schön’s theory of action embodied
in ‘double-loop learning’ (1974) and the infinite spiral exemplified in Douglas R
Hofstadter’s concept of a ‘strange loop’ (1979). Together, these iterative, cyclical
methodologies enabled my research to repeatedly look back and reflect upon the
various stages in the investigation and practice. Multiple serendipitous moments,
which Scrivener identified as cognitive surprise,679 sparked a labyrinthine journey,
interweaving in and out, up and down, and through my scenographic and art
practice. ‘A motivational relationship between a surprise event and the generation
of creative thinking’ was established.680 At no point was my research locked in on
a trajectory that prevented a ‘ripple of change’.681 In the spirit of a theatre-going
spectator, this was a long and challenging quest in pursuit of adventure and
discovery, of wonder and astonishment.
7.2 The research question
Now at the end of my research journey, I return to the beginning—to the original
research question first proposed in Chapter One:
How can a drawing, underpinned by post-dramatic scenographic strategies, produce a spectatorial encounter with an absent presence?
This question spawned other peripheral questions throughout my research. What if
scenographic drawings, which are so specific to the field of contemporary theatre
design, were ‘expanded’ to become a primary outcome before a different type of
679 (Scrivener 2010) NPF 680 (Scrivener 2012) NPF 681 (Chris Argyris 1974) 19
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audience from that of conventional dramatic theatre? Hypothetically, could these
re-contexualised drawings become a new type of performative drawing different
from that, which is currently known and theorised682—a type, which demands the
viewer to engage and participate in the spectre of performance, embodied in the
drawing? Could the spectator ‘gaze with admiration or bewilderment, or …
contemplate’683 these drawings, as he or she would observe the unfolding of a
‘play’? Are there subliminal theatrical signs that compel the spectator to look at the
drawn representations as if they were part of an audience immersed in a post-
dramatic theatrical performance?
My response to these questions is grounded in a review of the precedents explored
in Chapter Three: historical and contemporary texts and visuals that addressed the
mobile embodied spectatorial gaze and presence in different ways.684 This review
facilitated an interrogation of my practice, and the subsequent identification of an
appropriate set of post-dramatic strategies to develop a new hybrid form. This
process was identified in Chapters Four and Five where I produced two studio
outcomes: two panoramic drawings, The Chairs (2015) and No Exit (2017). These
drawings subsequently generated many representations, both two-and three-
dimensional and analogue and digital, which together generated a new hybrid genre.
682 The most common definition of ‘performative drawing’ is the drawing as the act, action, or the physical process of drawing in real time before a live spectator, which employs J. L. Austin’s model of performative speech or utterance: that is, referring to ‘itself’ in the process of its own making. 683 (Caroline van Eck 2011) 12 Prior to the second century C.E, the Greek thea (derived from the verb theaomai, to gaze with admiration or bewilderment, or to contemplate) and its cognate theatron were used to identify the distinctive visual characteristics of the theatre. 684 For example: Villa dei Misteri (Pompeii, 60 C.E); the medieval English Mystery Play, Tapisseries de l’Apocalypse (France. 1382); the court Masques of Inigo Jones (1573-1652); the panoramas of Robert Barker (1793); Tadeusz Kantor’s Panoramic Sea Happening (1967); Diller & Scofidio’s Slow House (1991); Norman Bel Geddes’ Futurama (1939); William Kentridge.
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Figure 7.1 is a photograph of the scenographic model in which the original panoramic drawn work, The Chairs, has expanded beyond the traditional definition of drawing. This is the scenario examined in Chapter Six (Figures 6.16-17), in which all the primary components of my research practice—the original panoramic drawing, the digital video, the non-diegetic soundscape, and the scenographic life- size props are mounted together in the black box theatre. Exploration and experimentation in the model produced multiple scenographic states. In a future manifestation, the spectator could roam from room to room as part of a promenade performance. Collectively, this unique spatial encounter is a new hybrid genre that is both a drawing and, in conjunction with the image of the empty stage, a ‘theatre without actors’. In this different expanded drawn space the actors are absent—the spectator is now the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs.
Figure 7.1: Photograph of the spectator as the performer in the post-dramatic drama, The Chairs, situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
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7.3 The Drawn Absence
I refer to this new hybrid genre as the Drawn Absence. This is an apt term for several
reasons. The definition of drawn means both to ‘make marks’ but also to ‘extract,
to bring’.685 My research is both about making marks and bringing new knowledge
and understanding to the fields of scenography, post-dramatic theatre, and
expanded drawing as an art practice. The Drawn Absence is also a pertinent name
because the premise from the beginning of this enquiry was to create a drawn post-
dramatic mise en scène emptied of a human presence, other than the spectator. A
heightened theatricality further exaggerates an absent ‘ghostly’ trace, a ‘drawn’
performative space fraught with discursive meanings, enigmatic illusions, trompe-
l'œil effects, allegorical tropes of flight and fall and deliberate, self-conscious,
meta-theatrical conceits. The Drawn Absence developed out of the panoramic
drawn works, The Chairs and No Exit, which were prompted by French dramatic
texts exemplifying the philosophical foundation of this research: the concept of an
absent presence as the Other. These texts were Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist script,
Les Chaises, (1952), and Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist play, Huis Clos (1944).
The Drawn Absence is an ‘empty drawn stage’, which is actor-less. There is a sense
that the actors have ‘just’ left the space, but just how long ago? When will they
return? There is no fixed seating. The spectator/audience ‘walks’ through and
around the work. This is at odds with conventional Western dramatic theatre where
the body of the spectator is static: a voyeur passively gazing through the fourth wall
685 https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/draw (Accessed 12.12.2017).
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from a distant seat in an auditorium that is plunged into Wagnerian darkness.686
This expanded drawn work proposes a different spectatorial model, where the
spectator is physically and actively a witness within the post-dramatic scenographic
space of the ‘drawn’ representations (Figure 7.2).
Figure 7.2: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
7.4 Drawing as the primary research method
Drawing was the primary tool and method for my practice-based research: an
exploration of how scenographic drawings can take on an independent life of their
own and generate a form of post-dramatic theatrical performance in the absence of
the ‘actor’. Drawing was the means to test, experiment, and contextualise a drawing
art practice and, most significantly, create a new hybrid genre, which expanded
drawing beyond the conventional scenographic drawing. The model, which
686 The 19th century German opera composer Richard Wagner first demanded that the lights were turned off in the auditorium and that the spectators were to remain silent during the performance.
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appeared late in the investigation in Chapter Six, became the pivotal element in the
presentation of the final hypothesis: the creation of a post-dramatic mise en scène,
which I now refer to as the Drawn Absence (Figure 7.3).
Figure 7.3: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
This model revealed the potential of combining the isolated/absent panoramic
drawing687 with the digital video projection, the life-size scenographic objects, and
the non-diegetic soundscape within a black box theatre (Figure 7.4).
687 The original panoramic drawn work is isolated in the corridor from its representations (Figure 6.16).
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Figure 7.4: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model box (Sue Field, 2017).
Together, these diverse mediums expose a ‘mind’s eye view’ of an expanded drawn
space, where it is no longer possible to differentiate between the real and its
simulation.688
7.5 Jean Baudrillard and the Three Orders of Appearance
The French philosopher Jean Baudrillard proposed a phenomenon called the
Precession of Simulacra, which included the Three Orders of Appearance.689 He
classified classical dramatic theatre, the double, the mirror, and games of mask and
appearance in the First Order of Simulacra, where a basic reality or presence is
masked or perverted as a counterfeit of the original.690 However, in the Third Order
688 (Baudrillard 1983) 98 689 (Baudrillard 1983) 83 690 (Baudrillard 1983) 98
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of Simulacra, it was no longer possible to differentiate between the real and its
simulation.691 As Baudrillard suggests:
The whole world newsreel of “the present” gives the sinister impression of kitsch, retro and porno all at the same time…The reality of simulation is unendurable – more cruel than Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, which was still an attempt at a dramaturgy of life, the last flickering of an ideal of the body…For us the trick has been played. All dramaturgy…has disappeared. Simulation is master…692
7.6 The Drawn Absence in the Third Order of Simulacra
I argue that the hybrid genre, the Drawn Absence, can be classified in the Third
Order of Simulacra, where there is no relation to any reality whatever; simulation
is master693—it is its own pure simulacrum.694 The Drawn Absence is an
‘autonomous’ scenographic drawing which has expanded beyond scenography into
an untracked, unknown space. The original panoramic drawings, The Chairs and
No Exit, which from the beginning existed outside the traditional theatre production
process, have metamorphosed into multiple representations as a ghosting695 of the
original dramatic text and scenographic thinking drawings. Signs are replaced with
multiple signs, stretching the notion of reality, truth, and meaning. The drawing
becomes, as Baudrillard maintains, a simulacrum where the original truth (the text)
has been rendered meaningless and irrelevant—a spectre of the real, which he refers
to as a hyperreality. These particular drawings cannot be interrogated with
conventional techniques of scenographic drawing and therefore:
691 (Baudrillard 1983) 98 692 (Baudrillard 1994) 72 693 (Baudrillard 1994) 72 694 (Baudrillard 1983) 11 695 (Rayner 2006) (intro p.xiii)
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At this level the question of signs, of their rational destination, their real or imaginary, their repression, their deviation, the illusion they create or that which they conceal, or their parallel meanings – all of that is erased.696 In Baudrillard’s later text The Vital Illusion (2000), he describes the murder or
extermination of the real,697 where there is no corpse; there only remain simulations
or a ‘spectral’ presence, an absence of the real.698
In a similar vein, my research further argues that, if the early scenographic thinking
drawing is the mental embryo—the birthing of the original concept from the
original truth (the text)—it follows that the drawn performative space of the Drawn
Absence is the death of the original concept, and the death of the original truth. This
leaves only a ‘spectre of the real’—a hyperreality. The single masked reality699 of
the one-point perspective common to the scenographic thinking drawing (the
spectator’s view) (Figure 7.5) is replaced by a perspectival labyrinth (mind’s eye
view) of a totally disorientating but immersive hyperreality (Figure 7.6).
696 (Baudrillard 1983) 104 697 (Baudrillard 2000) 61 698 (Baudrillard 2000) 61 699 (Baudrillard 1983) 98
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Figure 7.5: Thinking drawing for No Exit: 148 x 210mm (Sue Field, Journal, 2016).
Figure 7.6: Photograph of the Drawn Absence situated within the scale model (Sue Field, 2017).
Within the different post-dramatic space of the Drawn Absence, the notion of ‘real’ space is distorted to encompass a vast space, teeming with the spectres from the
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artist/researcher’s past; a space drawn from the intimate realms of the mind’s-eye.
Within this ‘other’ space, it is no longer necessary for the ‘real’ and original to be
present, such as the ‘original’ panoramic drawn work; only a representation or
multiple simulations of the drawing inhabit the space.
The hypothetical space of the model examined in Chapter Six revealed the
complexity of thinking, through the cinematic layering of imagery. Here, the
‘Prince’s eye’700 was irrelevant. Instead, there was an accumulation of episodes and
multiple views all staged simultaneously, combining to generate the Drawn
Absence. Multiple perspectives embraced a performative space in constant flux: the
site of infinite mutable meta-theatrical signs.
The model of the Drawn Absence is a model of a simulation, of a hyperreal and of
a third-order simulacrum701 which, as Baudrillard further argues, ‘is the generation
by models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal’.702 The model of the
Drawn Absence proposes a spatial simulation where the spectators, as the
performers, now find themselves entering beyond the fourth wall into an unknown
space; a drawn post-dramatic space that is now the ‘play’.
700 The best seat in the house—the centre, 7th row from stage—the oeil du prince, or prince’s eye, to use the term made famous by Nicola Sabbatini (1475-554). 92 701 (Baudrillard 1983) 98 702 (Baudrillard 1983) 3
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7.7 The performative scale model, within the scale model, within the scale
model
My research has reached the ‘end’; or has it? The transformative spiral of research
is an infinite spiral with no end: ‘an unending search for the key to the secret of
creativity’.703 In light of this, I complete this enquiry by beginning with a new
theoretical challenge that enables a door to be left open for future scholarly
investigations. In this way, the ‘final’ chapter can be read as the prologue for the
examination of another performative space.
Chapter Six concludes with the idea of inserting a miniature black model box
containing the hypothetical mise en scène of the Drawn Absence at the scale of 1:25
within the larger black model box (Figure 7.7). What if this simulation within a
simulation keeps recurring for infinity? A scenographic model, within a
scenographic model, within a scenographic model... (Figure 7.8). The Drawn
Absence becomes a fractal phenomenon.
703 (Carver 2009) 69
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Figure 7.7: Scenographic scale model, within a scale model (Sue Field, 2017).
Figure 7.8: Scenographic scale model, within a scale model, within a scale model... an infinite recurring space (Sue Field, 2017).
7.8 The monad
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze proposed that the theatre is a monad: a black
room without doors and windows;704 a maze of corridors and adjacent ‘in-between’
704 (Deleuze 1993) 27
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spaces which together form a labyrinthine space of folds.705 My research extends
Deleuze’s argument to that of the scenographic scale model within a black model
box as a recurring simulation. The monad begins and ends at the same point: a
metaphysical journey of undulating, twisting, spiralling folds, ‘…folding and
unfolding, wrapping and unwrapping’.706 There is no visible exit or beginning and
ending; it is an infinite whirling spiral. The black model box, a recurring simulation
of the theatre as a monad, is ‘a fixed point that infinite partition never attains, and
that closes infinitely divided space’;707 a labyrinth of unfoldings, ’where all activity
takes place on the inside’.708 These dark enclosed spaces become, as Deleuze
suggested, a metaphor for human consciousness and perception:
…a labyrinth dividing endlessly, [where] the parts of matter form little vortices in a maelstrom, and in these are found even more vortices, even smaller, and even more are spinning in the concave intervals of the whirls that touch one another.709
7.9 The scenographic scale model as Deleuze’s monad
The scenographic scale model within a black model box is Deleuze’s metaphysical
monad, a self-referential, self-similar fractal of the original panoramic drawing. It
is within this different, unrecognized space—an infinite recurring space—that
multiple avenues for future research could be spawned. The model, within a
model... within the Drawn Absence becomes both a performative object and an
epistemic tool. It would be this different, autonomous, staged, and performative
space that could potentially lead to an even more heightened spectatorial
705 The Fold (1993), by Gilles Deleuze, examines the contribution made by the 17th century philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz to metaphysics: his theory of monads. 706 (Deleuze 1993) 123 707 (Deleuze 1993) 28 708 (Deleuze 1993) 28 709 (Deleuze 1993) 5
365 engagement and understanding within the fields of post-dramatic theatre and expanded drawing.
7.10 Drawing conclusions
This chapter identifies the culmination of my research, which set out on a journey to discover a hybrid genre that is both a drawing and a ‘theatre without actors’. The outcome of this research is the development and exploration of the new hybrid genre, the Drawn Absence, constructed in conjunction with digital video projection, an accompanying non-diegetic soundscape, set model, and the image of the ‘empty stage’. The exhibition, The Drawn Absence: a speculative scenographic mise en scène (April, 2018), was a proposal of how this new hybrid genre could be ‘staged’ in the future; multiple spaces which the spectator experiences as an immersive promenade. Within this new space, the scenographic set and its representations become the ‘play’, and the spectator becomes the performer. By contrast, I, the artist, become an absent presence— not only as the scenographer, but also as the director and playwright. The original drawing is no longer essential within the expanded drawn space of the Drawn Absence. It too becomes an absent presence— an absence, however, that remains palpably present. The spectator’s encounter with this absent presence within the meta-theatrical space becomes a form of post- dramatic theatre. This research has recognised a different spectatorial encounter as a new form of spectatorial engagement and experience within a drawn post- dramatic space.
The transformative spiral, devised as a model for the methodology of this research, has expanded the space defined by the applied art of scenography into a different
366
space that intersects and interrelates scenographic drawing, post-dramatic theatre,
and expanded drawing as an art practice. In the twenty-first century, scenography
has embraced its inherent theatricality. No longer a derogatory term, ‘the study of
theatricality –imaginary, visionary, and invisible – as a socio-political creative
force’710 has discovered its potential to enrich and enliven other creative disciplines.
My research has revealed this potential through the practice of scenographic
drawing and the scenographic set model. Both these design tools have transcended
their traditional pragmatic function into a new expanded space—a post-dramatic
space, where they have transformed into autonomous, performative objects. This
long journey, ‘an unending search for the key to the secret of creativity’,711 has
generated a greater knowledge and understanding of the point of intersection
between the fields of scenography, post-dramatic theatre, and expanded drawing as
an art practice.
710 Artistic director, Prague Quadrennial (2015), Sodja Lotker. http://www.abtt.org.uk/the-prague-quadrennial-2015-is-approaching/ (Accessed 20/9/2017). 711 (Carver 2009) 69
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