ABSTRACT
Given the designation of theatre as "the seeing place" and the strongly visual nature of scenography, people might wonder at how little consideration has been given so far to the act of looking, whether in scenographic studies or in theatre scholarship more generally. In this chapter the author challenges dominant interpretations of the act of seeing in theatre by arguing for the explanatory power of a dynamic, embodied conceptualization of scenographic spectatorship centered on co-construction. Maaike Bleeker considers how contemporary theatre positions the spectator, and includes some consideration of the "spectator as body perceiving" as part of her analysis of the subjectivity of vision. The chapter builds on Bleeker's idea of "the body seeing" by focusing specifically on scenography and considers how the idea of a perceiving body modifies notions of the spectator rendered compliant and passive by the spectacle.
