ABSTRACT

In a general understanding, scenery locates the dramatic action on the stage in time and space and provides a physical and symbolic framing of events, thus operating as the driving visual force of the overall performance. Scenery may attempt to replicate reality through landscape elements, architectural structures, and interiors, or it can be comprised entirely of abstract configurations or immaterial elements such as projections. The scenographic trend toward a politicized domestic cannot be grasped by the typical categories of describing scenery's relationship to reality, namely imitative (mimetic), symbolic, or abstract. Diverse approaches based on semiotic and/or phenomenological analysis have helped to "read" scenery while recent theoretical positions that acknowledge the action potential of the object shift the focus from spectator to object. As an active agent, the object (and scenery) is not "read" but rather "speaks" beyond its singular existence on the stage of social, cultural and political realities.