Abby Palmer

DRM398H1

Antje Budde and Sebastian Samur

August 8 2017

Four Case Studies in Stage Design through the Lens of Postdramatic Theatre, Performance

Analysis, and Dramaturgy

Stage design has drastically shifted in function as theatrical theory and aesthetic have

shifted away from dramatic to postdramatic (Jürs-Munby 2). No longer is locating the play

firmly in time and space the objective (Jürs-Munby 1), nor is reflecting a particular aesthetic

perspective. Theatricality has shifted with our globalized society to reflect the multitude of

opinions and viewpoints we are exposed to everyday by utilizing transformative tools that allow

for fluidity (Ferris 72). Sets achieve this by making themselves mobile and utilizing media both

directly through technological integration and through integration of mediatized thinking (Jürs

Munby 10). Sets mediate the perspective of the audiences, and can thrive when designers utilize

the set as a framing device, as well as using it to subvert expectations (Jürs-Munby 11).

Theatrical sets build a specific perspective by utilizing enclosing structures and placing highly

researched-dramaturgical signs. An effective use of space is to create a fluid set and place the

show in political, social, and cultural time and space by using images, symbols, and digital

surfaces that a wider audience can analyze in our visually marked world. In order for a show to

remain relevant to a wide audience, stage design should be based on use and performative text

rather than solely on the aesthetics of the dramatic text. The shows at the Avignon Festival each

did that, especially The Great Tamer, La Fiesta, Die Kabale, and Ibsen Huis, which will be

discussed through a postdramatic framework that focuses on performance analysis.

Defining the postdramatic is a multilayered, complex issue that ultimately relies on a

transcendence from a traditionally “dramatic” show (Jürs-Munby 1). Karen Jürs-Munby in her

introduction to Lehmann’s novel states that postdramatic theatre serves performance and

audience relations over dramatic text (4), marking it as specifically different. The more

interesting stage designers who work at large theatres in Europe or the Festival d’Avignon have

incorporated these relatively new demands into their portfolios. Some designers still teeter in

between the dramatic and postdramatic, and most still read the text before generating ideas.

Jocelyn Herbert’s central belief is that set design is meant to serve both the actors and the text

(Courtney 27)—a more traditional view of set design, generally unnuanced, but distinctly

separate from a view of the set as a two-dimensional space to set the scene. Similarly, lighting

design moved away a century ago from footlights meant to highlight the actors face to differently

toned lights that create particular atmospheres (Innes 255). Shows such as Ibsen Huis which

utilize natural lighting as a base, and additional lighting to highlight the cool or warm moments

of the play, utilized this method especially well. Another marker of Postdramatic theatre follows

the postmodern tendency toward inter and intratextuality (Jürs-Munby 8); a show can be self-

referential beyond breaking the fourth wall, rather, admitting in its every function that it has no

wall because it is a part of time and space as a living piece of culture. Shows break away from

one text to utilize texts and works of arts as their own way to improvise; such is the case for

Castorf, Stone, and Papaioannou, who utilize texts to talk about specific stories and issues they

wish to communicate that are especially relevant now, despite their source influences being

scattered across time. Postdramatic theatre also defines media tech as being inevitable as media

is integrated into the lives and mindsets of everybody; we are mediated by media, and therefore,

whether or not we utilize tech in the form of screens, it is helpful to utilize time fluidity, visuals,

and alternative methods of organization to embrace our mediatized way of understanding (Jürs-

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Munby 10). Each of the shows later discussed utilized this fluid mindset set by our globalized

way of thinking.

Set designers are reacting to this method of performance by developing alternative ways

of working and thinking, as well as rethinking the relations between different systems of theatre

so that one system does not dominate another (Pavis 211). Richard M. Isackes, professor and

tenured set designer, proposes the shift from visual attractiveness to performative affect (Isackes

44), which Clachan, renowned set-designer of Ibsen Huis who regularly works with Katie

Mitchell, lists as a necessary shift that has not caught up to award-giving committees, who often

only give awards to aesthetically beautiful sets (Clachan). Lizzie Clachan, who has a space

development mindset, outlines a fairly typical work process for set designs in her podcast

interview with Mathew: www.theatrevoice.com/audio/designer-lizzie-clachan-uncorks-the-

national-theatres-port/. Both Clachan and Isackes look at designers as facilitators for story telling

(Isackes 45), which emphasizes the idea of the set as a mediator for the audience’s perspective

on a story, as well as setting expectations that can later be subverted (Jürs-Munby 11). He asks

for “performative functionality and transformative reception over visual arts” (Isackes 49). Art

and structure can work as a facilitator for performance that can utilize symbols to accentuate

themes. Each set designer has a distinctive style that appears at different angles for each show,

with different types of structures for each, showing the importance of specificity of space

creation and adaption over matching a cultural or period aesthetic.

The Great Tamer’s stage design, by Tina Tzoka, created a space within a black,

warehouse like space that, at first, appealed to both the Dramatic and the tired, amateur

Postdramatic experiments of a black-box theatre (see example: www.youtube.com/watch?

v=nnWh8tKfMbk) with an uneven set, constructed with black painted boards, and a man

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standing upon it in a suit. The program informed the audience it would be non-verbal and

inspired in exploration (“The Great Tamer Program (English)”). As the play went on, the set

transformed to be used as a tool for discovery, movement, and a portal to other worlds as boards

were lifted to reveal wells of water, multiple people, and a skeleton. The set “allude[d] to these

expectations of familiar dramatic structures” (Jürs-Munby 11) by appearing simple, much like

productions such as Love and Information and Bestie. This theatrical set is more suited to

“alternative” experimental theatre we have outgrown, but also doesn’t fit heightened, linear

dramatic theatre (Jürs-Munby 3). These are the theatrical conventions that were set out, and The

Great Tamer successfully confounded them (Jürs-Munby 11). Jürs-Munby subsequently states

that this postdramatic approach can “allow us to articulate their larger philosophical

implications” (Jürs-Munby 11), which it does in The Great Tamer by using the set and these

expectations to awaken the explorative nature of people, show the detriments and the beauty that

comes from the earth, and that humans create by pulling out of the earth and putting back in. The

image below perfectly shows the subversion of the stripped back black box set to exemplify the

multifaceted use of space and the multiplicity of symbols. The man uses the earth as a place to

hide, as wheat is planted over him, weaponized as arrows. The paradoxes proposed by the

humans trying to balance on the world and the competition and dismembering of people in a

fantastical atmosphere are amplified by the rough use of the theatre space as a dynamic tool.

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(Mommert)

The separation of bodies, often achieved through forms of dismemberment utilizing

digital technology, is utilized through tricks of sight in The Great Tamer. Jürs-Munby explains

the phenomena, including methods such as sound effects and splitting up of people’s bodies that

more directly relates to Papaioannou’s methods, as “infract[ing] the dramatic text” (Jürs-Munby

10) by showing beyond the direct narrative of what is happening onstage to extend to a

metaphorical breaking apart. Mirroring the boy who ends up in a cast’s body with one that is

dismembered, and then carrying him to an operating table and taking him apart to allude to “The

Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” visually displays the type of tearing apart for the sake of

art that we do to other people, that was ultimately done to the boy who was bullied to the point of

death that inspired the piece (“The Great Tamer Program (English)”), and that we as humans do

to the Earth in the name of discovery. The set, by allowing for these illusions through its dark

colours, its passages, and its hiding places, works to facilitate this type of uprooting, as well as

embodying it itself by being beautiful in its own destruction. The body being taken apart and

analyzed speaks to a society that constantly mediates, without forcing physical digital and

technological methods (Jürs-Munby 10) but alluding to them and the way they are integrated into

our very understanding of people and symbols. In a show that relies on the symbolic, this

division of body parts (Kaye 130) through the recreation of art visually points out the very way

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of society that can allow for a boy and the environment to be torn apart for beauty or

experimentation.

La Fiesta was set in the “Cour d’honnour du Palais du Papes”, which was built to house

nine popes when the Avignon was the center of the Catholic world. The play focused on

celebration, a perversion of mourning rituals, and a blatant voyeurism toward those who

performed the rituals (“La Fiesta Program (English)”). Bodies were uncovered from beneath the

set, as unexpected as they were from The Great Tamer. This play utilized music, rhythm, dance,

and sound as a focal point, and they used the percussion of the looming space and the walls of

the space as an instrument. This enhanced the ritual element of celebration because it took place

in a spot of immense ritual—a massive monument to the catholic church. By utilizing the history

of the space in their rhythm production and ritualistic, voyeuristic form of celebration, they drew

parallels to organized religion. This, and perhaps other cultural codes that I was not aware of,

provoked people to stomp loudly, to boo, and to leave the theatre, especially when a man was

spread on the table with his arms spread like a crucifix as he began to disappear into the Palais

des Papes itself. Others clapped. It was a pure form of Holy celebration directly inspired and

amplified by its space, thus adding to the feeling that already anciently lived in the space.

Castorf utilized our current tendencies toward mediation (Jürs-Munby 10) to his

advantage by placing a billboard-esque screen and live-streaming different shots of the actors

onto it. This dictated our focus as often the actors were hidden from us as they roamed the

cavernous space. The cameramen, however, only focused on a few people at a time, and further,

only one or two camera views were displayed for us, showing another step of mediation—the

live editors. One utilization of media space (Kaye 128) in theatre that Jürs-Munby sites is its use

in remediating “to probe their status and impact on us in a self-conscious manner –including

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their history of remediating theatre” (Jürs-Munby 13). This tradition of remediating theatre

spans through time to the origin of theatre at the Festival of Dionysus, which was run through the

government and censored by them. Further into history, as guilds competed theatrically in

Medieval Ages, the content was still heavily censored through the lens of Catholicism (Noam).

Castorf explores this through Moliere, who was greatly privileged by being a writer heard by the

king, and thus his content was censored implicitly. Making mediation such a big part of this story

though Castorf’s use of media spaces (Kaye 128) accentuated this theme and implicitly posed the

question of who is mediating us now. This becomes even more relevant in the context that

Castorf’s company is leaving the Volksbühne because the German government wants to use the

space to show more popular types of performance, rather than highly political theatre. Moliere

may be the focal author, but the addition of a “literal ‘authorial projection’” (Ferris and Frank

79) reminds us that there is always a puppeteer for the author. The technicians were not

malicious, just as our own ads and specialized content on Facebook do not appear to be, but can

shape the way we are, and could lead to oppression or violence.

These ideas of power structures were integrated into the set beautifully. The immense

amount of dramaturgical work that went into the set design emphasized the storyline and critique

of capitalist society that the story rotated upon. The framework of production dramaturgy, a

theory of which was written in Turner and Berndt’s article, argues that the set should be a “direct

result of conceptual framework” (Turner 149) rather than an aesthetic supplement or place

marker. It is both located periodically by conforming to structures of the times and place of pre-

revolutionary Russia and 17th century France and integrates modern capitalist symbols such as

Versace and Louis Viton, and integrated symbols of fraudulence within these structures. Castorf

and Dunic considered the historical dramaturgy of the pieces it originated from (Turner 151), and

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acknowledged the company’s place in the history of theatre mediation and violence against

artists and its current place in a curated festival.

The piece naturally flowed in and out of its collage of tents that, while appearing disparate, truly

served its major themes and main location.

(Raynaud de Lage)

The yellow wagon derives clearly from French travelling theatre tradition, and doubles as

Moliere’s home. Its back is made of ornate doors that seem to belong in a palace, and its general

style is that of a royal ship or caravan; generally, it is much more ornate than a travelling theatre

wagon could be. The doors can be symbolic of a backdoor influence from the ornate, and its

style points toward the privilege Moliere had from being doted upon by the king. Even more so,

it points to the king’s support in his life and the money he receives as integral for his living as it

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makes up the very structure of the home that sustains him – without it, he would have nothing,

just as without the support of the king, he is killed.

The red tent works on a greater visual level and with great depth of production

dramaturgy as it evokes historical Russian architecture, partially by utilizing the red and gold

colours of communism that so define Russia to this day. Most importantly, the structure of the

tent evokes the structures used at royal coronations and proclamations across Europe, but most

closely resembles those of the State Dumas between 1907 and 1917 in pre-revolutionary Russia

(Gilbert), as seen below:

(Cherqui) (Polyakov)

The king spent the play within the tent with the Priest, often basking in gluttony, and acting

somewhat ridiculously—thus, the connection between these royal structures and the royalty

within sets up the tent as capable of corruption in power. Additionally, the five “onion” structure

of the top of the red tent structure alludes subtly to Muscovite Churches, which connects to the

performance text as the priest too frequented the tent and benefited from the very corruption that

is implicit in power structures.

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(“St. Bastille’s Cathedral”)

The priest engaged sexually with the King, showing the type of codependency and perverse

connection between Church and State that was prevalent in pre-revolutionary Russia in Rasputin

discourse (“Rasputin is Murdererd”). Additionally, as shown above, the play frequented

Catholic imagery; notably with the hooded figures. The curtains also alluded to the very

structure of the play, and the privileged position royalty has always held in the theatre as they sit

in their boxes. Particularly, as this tent was especially connected to Russian imagery, Russian

Theatre. The following drawing is that of the curtains of the Mariiasky Theatre in Moscow:

(“Mariinski Theatre”). (Cherqui).

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The detailing of the curtains and the bed featured the symbol of Louis Viton, relating to

capitalism directly through the fashion and artistic industry of France. Louis Viton is also

associated with mass production of culture, fraudulent copies, commercialization, and

globalization, which Die Kabale Der Scheinheiligen dealt with. Additionally, the tent’s top coin

is not only a golden coin, the simplest symbol for money, but also bears the symbol of Versace.

(Zega)

The blue tent, on the other hand, evokes the garden tents that littered French folly gardens

(Zega). The widely spread belief was that they originated from Turkey and other Eastern

countries, but this was not true except that the dome structure originated Chinese tents (Zega).

They are inherently theatrical in their spectacular, and were used frequently as a resting space for

guards (Zega). Once again, the idea of false or constructed power structures that benefit the

comfort of the theatre artists is reflected into the set.

This intense manipulation of aesthetic elements shows an intense dramaturgical interest

in both historical elements of the dramatic text (Turner 148) and “develop[s] a conceptual

framework for the production” (Turner 149). Die Kabale der Scheinheiligen is a perfect example

of intense dramaturgy that works with the notion that sets should work as a system with the

performance (Pavis 211) rather than just off what the original text calls for. Additionally, sets

work as a framework for the rest of the performance, as it houses the performers and the

audience hasn’t much of a choice besides to look at it. It only makes sense to utilize production

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dramaturgy to create the most cohesive world for the audience that can provoke serious thought

and speculation beyond the written text. If the set is dramaturgically interesting and relevant, it

can allow the audience to trust every action and stage design element as a conscious choice they

analyze and understand the performance accordingly.

Ibsen Huis focuses on theatrical themes that involve transformation and fluidity (Ferris

and Frank 72). The set reflected these ideas beautifully with its turntable and its screen which

displayed times and spaces, going back and forth between them as the house turned, shifting and

taking the characters off-“stage” with it. As the characters evolved, especially the character of

Caroline, the house did as well. This play focuses especially on empathy and time, following an

empathetic rather than analytical approach by taking the characters actions as the methods that

restricted or liberated them rather than being primarily influenced by a pre-determined or divine

structure (Wilderson 182-183). Reflecting character and relationship development through the

set is integral to the structure and content of Ibsen Huis. After intermission, the house strips to its

barebones as the family is exposed with its problems of sexual violence and the father, the uncle,

and the mother turn to more violent oppressive actions. Caroline tries to remodel and sell the

house, but just as she cannot erase the abuse from her or her daughter’s past, she rebuilds the

same house that her uncle built. Due to the setting sun and cool lighting, however, the black

walls appear much darker than they did at the beginning. In the end, the house is burnt down and

shouts to the audience that burning it down, mirroring the family’s death, seems to be the only

way to escape their own hostile cycle and escape the consequences.

The set itself handled “the virtuality and fluidity of space and time” (Ferris and Frank 72)

by spinning us away from the characters lives mid-fight, as well as trapping us in the time with

them when perhaps we would rather look away. A patriarchal mediation was achieved because

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Caroline’s actions and depression were framed by Stone as determined by the patriarch’s abusive

actions. The house reflected this by giving us one specific view point – it selected who we could

hear and see, and whose perspective we saw the show through. The house acted less as a prison,

as the program suggests (“Ibsen House Program (English)”), and more of a watcher of them all,

and a rotating mediator that guided our understanding. An analysis of the family structure via

the shifting image of the house allowed for the audience to follow the complex psychological

effects of the family’s incestuous, violent actions and produce meaning (Pavis 211-212). They

were all stuck in and determined by the abusive structure the patriarchs literally built up—

symbolized through the house. Thus, the house was both a reflection, a critique, and a trap for

the family. One could suggest that masculine ideals such as the ability to keep a stable job, finish

a project, and assert domination are the very notions that built the house and ignored Caroline’s

need for help. If the house is a metaphor for oppressive structures, the worldly extension is that

these sorts of patriarchal values in our world allow for discrimination that allows for gay men to

die from AIDS and women to be raped. All this was reflected through the characters, and

emphasized by the structure, specifically built, but fluidly located.

The Great Tamer, La Fiesta, Die Kabale der Scheinheiligen, and Ibsen Huis each utilized

production dramaturgy to “develop the conceptual framework for the production” and accentuate

their main themes (Turner 149). A close performance analysis of each of these productions

shows that sets intelligently informed by dramaturgy can build a cohesive framework (Turner

149), guide understanding, incorporate the postmodern world we live in in order to surpass old

narratives of the dramatic (Jürs-Munby 2), and ultimately produce better theatre. The quality of

work at the Festival d’Avignon emphasized the importance of detailed dramaturgy in production

and design. One area that was not explored in Avignon was the way a director and set designer

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could subvert and guide an audience’s framework by shifting the audience arrangement from a

proscenium, past thrust and black box stages, and to more creative arrangements. This I look

forward to seeing in future festivals and in my own trajectory as a theatre creator.

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