Focused on the contemporary Anglophone adoption from the 1960s onwards, Beyond Scenography explores the porous state of contemporary theatre-making to argue a critical distinction between scenography (as a crafting of place orientation) and scenographics (that which orientate acts of worlding, of staging).
With sections on installation art and gardening as well as marketing and placemaking, this book is an argument for what scenography does: how assemblages of scenographic traits orientate, situate, and shape staged events. Established stage orthodoxies are revisited - including the symbiosis of stage and scene and the aesthetic ideology of 'the scenic' - to propose how scenographics are formative to all staged events. Consequently, one of the conclusions of this book is that there is no theatre practice without scenography, no stages without scenographics.
Beyond Scenography offers a manifesto for a renewed theory of scenographic practice for the student and professional theatrical designer.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Scenography as theatre-making
Theatre after cinema
Scenography after performance
Chapter outline
Chapter 1: Place Orientation, Scenic Politics and Scenographics
Scenes and Scenic Politics
Scenographics
Othering Tactics
Chapter 2: Scenography and the Anglophone theatres
The first adoption of scenography
Continental differences pre-1960
The second adoption of scenography
Sound and costume as scenography
Chapter 3: Scenography beyond scenographers
Mise en scène and scenography
Whose scenography?
Beyond dramaturgy and choreography
Expanded scene design?
Chapter 4: Scenography Happens
The time of scenography
Scenography is not set
Gecko’s MISSING set
Chapter 5: Scenographic Worlding
Stage Geographies
Stage Ideologies
Scenography beyond stages?
Stage-Scenes beyond vision
Chapter 6: Scenographic Cultures
Installation Art and Scenographic Scale
Interior Design and Scenographic Behaviours
Marketing and Scenographic Seduction
Gardening and Scenographic Curation
Protest and Scenographic Activism
Chapter 7: Scenographic Architecture
Fast Architecture
Trompe l'oeil and Scenographic Propaganda
Potemkin Villages and Scenographic Placemaking
Conclusion
Biography
Dr. Rachel Hann is Lecturer in Scenography, University of Surrey, UK.
"[Beyond Scenography] remains a thought-provoking and much-needed theoretical contribution to the sprawling domain of scenography studies and related performance disciplines. The book’s hugely relevant and historically underpinned theoretical take on such diverse topics as installation art, interior design, gardening and marketing renders it essential reading for a much broader academic audience. […] I recommend Beyond Scenography as necessary reading for scholars, students and practitioners engaged in cross-disciplinary studies of art and performing arts history and practice, architecture, urban sociology and beyond."
Astrid von Rosen, University of Gothenburg, Theatre and Performance Design, 7:3-4, 240-241, DOI: 10.1080/23322551.2021.2003155