Painting Performance: Scenography in Theatre

A Project Proposal

Marc Faith R. Ababon

Background

Theatrical productions in the Philippines, are mostly of dramatic theatre, where the text is

regarded the central element in creating a play. Be it from notable companies like

Repertory Philippines and PETA Theatre, university based companies like Dulaang UP,

to smaller community theatre groups around the country, the text is what dictates and

supplements the elements that are to comprise the performance.

The process of creating and molding a theatrical performance into reality requires

collaboration among a group of people whose work, in each specific field, will come

together to make the play. A director, especially in dramatic theatre, is arguably the central

figure whose vision and understanding of a text influence the other aspects in a production.

The artistic team that works with a director for a certain production, heeds their opinion

and approval regarding design elements that will ultimately bring the play to life.

One aspect of theatrical design that has particularly caught my attention is scene

or set design. It is the environment of a performance, created by a scene designer, that

ultimately situates and frames a production. A set or scene designer is sometimes

referred to as a scenographer. Scenography however has been defined as more than just

designing a set for theatrical performance. Pamela Howard’s What is Scenography?

(2002) describes it as a synthesis of various key elements in theatre that create an original

work. Howard implies by this definition that it is through scenography that we are able to
produce new work and that a scenographer’s work not only influences the spatial

orientation of a play but also the direction that it will take.

This project aims to create a performance which differs from the usual dramatic

approach taken by Philippine theatre practitioners by shifting focus from the director’s

supremacy over textual and artistic interpretation towards a specific aspect of design that

goes into theatre-making—scenography. With this decentralization, the project hopes to

bring emphasis on how scenic design and the spatial environment of a play ultimately

influences both its execution and its reception.

Significance

The theatrical scene in the Philippines has long kept itself rooted on dramatic tradition.

While there is nothing wrong with this fact, the usual plot or narrative centric theatrical

production follows a formula that renders a lot of the plays around us to seem similar in

more aspects than one. Although the proposed project does not necessarily break the

rule of narrative centricity, it aims to bring commentary by decentralizing a director’s more

abstract and holistic understanding of a text in lieu of a scenographer or scene designer’s

more tangible and visual interpretation, allowing a director to stage their vision into the

space, as opposed to onto a space they’ve premeditated and influenced themselves. It

also aims to emphasize the fact that to a theatrical text, there is not one single definitive

scenic design. The project will utilize Derrida’s theories on deconstruction as theoretical

framework.
Literature about the Project (RRL)

While the subjectivity in the interpretation of dramatic text into theatrical productions is

not exactly a problem, the goal of shedding light onto the presence of these multiple

interpretations is what drives the project forward. Derrida questions the binaries in

language and hold them open to deconstruction (Belsey, 2002). This project questions

the binary that is present in how a specific scene design serves as signifier to a signified

dramatic text in a specific theatrical performance. If we take this same signified dramatic

text however, with the goal of molding another performance that is unique and new on its

own, we may simply take another scenic signifier that would also frame the narrative

perfectly. Designers in general, hold the text to high importance as it is in the play script

that they get their primary source of answers to questions raised by the production (Holt,

1994). Elinor Fuchs’s essay EF’s Visit to a Small Planet: Some Questions to Ask a Play,

instructs theatre readers to envision the dramatic text and all its scenic conventions and

realities as a small planet of its own. This emphasis on how different individuals, in the

process of reading and interpreting dramatic text, may create varying versions that signify

the same piece of material is the thought that drives the project.

Another similar approach to scenography in theatre was made by Robert Wilson

and his work concerning landscape. Wilson’s work uses landscape as center of his

postdramatic work, allowing the changes it undergoes during the performance to dictate

or serve as narrative of the play, with the absence of actual text. His work situates the

human body as non-separable to the landscape (Lehmann, 2006). The project aims to

also situate the body of actors in a play as non-separable to his/her spatial environment,

thus the action is fully embraced into the world created for it.
Theoretical and Conceptual Notes of the Project

The performance being framed as deconstruction in a way that it allows for the signified

dramatic text of a play to be interpreted and given meaning by various signifiers, will use

a straight play approach albeit with some alterations to the usual conception of a stage

play. The project will use one dramatic text as its base as a performance that utilizes

numerous set designs for that one play are constructed to be used simultaneously in the

production. This play shall be a one act play, with a one to two characters. Although there

is no final count of the number of scenic designs for the project, it would be better if 3-5

interpretations could be used. This entails the gathering of numerous scene/set designers

to work separately in designing the world of the play according to each of their unique

understandings. The director, only after the sets are fully constructed, will direct sets of

actors using the same text but situating each in the different stages made. The

performance of the play will be simultaneous allowing the audience to see how each

different space influences the play and shapes it in a different way.

Methodology and Work Plan

For the project, three to five scene designers shall be taken into the production. Each

designer then is given the liberty and time to construct a set for the one act play supplied

to them to create a variety of unique scenes for the play to be staged in. Once design and

construction is complete, a director is then fully given authority on how they utilize each

of the constructed sets. Given the need for set construction to be finished before the

actual directing begins, the project may be set for a three-month production period.
Bibliography

(1) Howard, Pamela. 2002. What is Scenography? London: Routledge.

(2) Belsey, Caterine. 2002. Post-structuralism: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford:

Oxford University Press.

(3) Holt, Michael. 1994. Stage Design and Properties. Phaidon Press

(4) Lehmann, Hans-Thies. 2006. Postdramatic Theatre Translation with an

Introduction by Karen Jürs-Munby. London & N.Y.: Routledge.