Kathryn's "Scenography as a Machine" Notes Part Deux

Here's the second half of my notes on the article.

Page 5:

*Different types of theatre able to “become” anywhere necessary for the performance.

*Craig wanted the act of living performance in the imagination of the audience to achieve this transformation of space, rather than the actual set construction.
-Art and scenography must combine to create performance space.

*Adolphe Appia: (paraphrase) Once the paint dries upon a surface it is static, whereas dramatic action and human emotion changes and grows…Therefore abolish painted scenery.
-Appia enacted his scenographic reform on Wagner’s work.

Page 6:

*Appia’s view of the scene as machine may therefore be understood as of a machine that controls dramatic action.

*Craig’s scenic designs represented lighting technology that only became possible at the end of the twentieth century.
-Not images of the stage, but representations of the qualities that the stage might create.

*Appia’s drawings have a hazy quality that indicates the qualities of light he sought.

Page 7:

*Appia worked with Emile Jacques Dalcroze.
*Dalcroze not theatre-affiliated, yet believe in the educative and social powers of performance.

*Dalcroze worked with training the body to move to music in order to liberate the conscious mind and be a force in the development of society and community. –Eurhythmics

*Appia’s contribution to this art form differed from his norm of designing scenes for performances meant to be viewed by an audience, which Eurhythmics was not.


Page 8:

*Much of Craig’s writings stir the imagination of the architect rather than offering achievable architectural solutions.

*Appia, through his work with Dalcroze, the first practical vision of the experimental theatre space, the atelier.

*Appia’s vision is an architectural shell, a scenic tabula rasa within which scenographers may articulate a space of performance suitable for a specific project.

*The audience is no longer placed in a dark room and asked to observe a brightly lit spectacle placed beyond a segregating archway.

*Appia’s design for Helbrau could make the entire interior structure of the hall a machine that could reflect the atmospheric qualities of the performance and physically embrace all participants.

*Both Appia and Craig understood that the physical scenography would be given form, color, texture, and dimension by the use of light.
*Both appreciate the quality of performative ‘tension’ in the liminality of the empty stage space.
*Both saw the stage as a place that could achieve its ultimate artistic life through the act of live performance.