ABSTRACT
No aspect of theatre history is more likely to be constructed within a narrative of evolution than that of scenography. It is hard, for example, to resist describing Renaissance scenic perspective as the beginning of a coherent trajectory leading towards late nineteenth-century stage realism. It is similarly tempting to portray artists such as Richard Wagner, Georg Fuchs, Adolphe Appia, and Edward Gordon Craig as knights in shining armor, blazing onto the theatrical battlefield and mercilessly slaughtering existing practices with their visionary insights. Arguments about empathy and abstraction that concerned modernist artists early in the twentieth century may be traced back to the early nineteenth century when absorption and involvement began to condition scenographic thinking. It is an oversimplification to present the arguments of modernist theatre artists as a straightforward consignment of realism to the past.
