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ABOUT ME

Scenographer

 Hello! I'm Diana, your scenographer and the actress who plays Mariana in the project ''What happens in quaratine stays in''.

Here are some more details about me.

​

My name is Diana Ene, I am 21 years old and I am studying Performing Arts. Through this project, I am going to show and explain all my work and my process through the research question based on my role: ''How can I as a scenographer use space and scenography in immersive theatre to perform the theme of isolation? '' and you will find how I engaged with different theories, methodologies and practitioners regard to this project.

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Diana Ene: About Me

My Work

Inspirations

Diana Ene: Video Player

Es Devlin is an artist and designer. She is known for creating large-scale sculptures and environments that fuse music,language and light in and outside the theatre. Her achievement goes beyond a particular visual style. O'Hagan Andrew claimed in The New Yorker 2016 that Lyndsey Turner told him: “Es doesn’t design plays,or, at least, she doesn’t design the locations in which they’re set. Instead, she designs the ideas, the thought structures, the systems in which the characters operate. Her brain is both forensic and associative: she’s able to X-ray a play and then she begins to dream.”(O’Hagan, 2016). Thus, one of my first inspirations for my role came from here, because it made me think and realise the psychology of the scene and how to shape a prepared digital performance, claiming that the episodes of the performance take place in a box. We are all in a box, and the audience on the outside, watching and making decisions and commenting on us, exactly what is happening on most social media today

I kept thinking and sketching how to improve the idea, imagining that big box was filled with smaller ones, each representing one of our characters. An idea that automatically made me think of A Doll's House by Henrick Ibsen, the version staged at Young Vic in 2013, where they had a rotating stage representing ironically and magnificently the name of the play, showing each room from the play, but also a metaphor suggesting a world that it revolves around the characters and which can collapse any time. A similar thing that can be seen in our performance, each square on Skype representing the box of each character with details and a glitching effect that appears suddenly towards the end of the play, suggesting the fall of the relations between the characters and the end in a conflict.

Robert Wilson is an experimental theatre stage director and playwright who has been described by the media as foremost vanguard theatre artist. He inspired me to use the language different, because is part of one of the most important elements in theatre, working with silence and noises rather than words. He claims that ''A good actor can command an audience by moving one finger''(Holmberg, 1996). That's why in some of the videos, our characters just stare, laugh or smile, playing the assigned roles just with the eyes, specifically in the group videos. Another key element linked to language is the movement, Wilson explaining that the goal is to have the rhythm of the text differ from that of the movement so his audience can see them as two completely different pieces, seeing each as what it is. ''It's more interesting if the mind and the body are in two different places, occupying different zones of reality.''(Holmberg, 1996) That's why I was thinking to use more natural movement during the calls, rather than to answer calls as if we expected, to use actions from everyday life when we answer and also during conversations, depending on the traits of each character. For example, the role of Carolina, who portrays a drunk and a party girl, is almost always on the move, using various props around her house during the calls.

The process

Colours

''Can an you imagine a world without colour? Colour create mood and atmosphere, convey emotion, emphasise form and highlight structure. Historically, it was also used symbolically, although that is less true today when there is no longer a common understanding of what colours represent'' (Genders, 2009, p.23)

One of the roles included as a set designer/scenographer was also to take care of the colours and the ambience on staged during the performance. In my research I discovered that the most important and underrated element in creating art is "play", which basically refers to the journey to discover new things and the chance to explore ideas, which together form the creative process. But there is the biggest mistake of the beginner which is thinking at the final result, mistake that I also did, focusing on the whole project at once, rather than one video once. Genders says in his book about the colour that ''..the final piece must work, but creativity is much more fickle than that. Concentrating on success so often cramps the imagination and results in a rather static and lifeless creation. It is easy to overlook elements that might be worth exploring and might ultimately lead to more exciting work.'' (Genders, 2009, p.43)

Thus, each character was assigned a colour to describe them in more details, the process of creativity being much easier and clearer. In each video you can see a background, a piece of clothing or an object that represents the character in the assigned colour, for an aesthetic and ambient effect. Moreover, although the entire performance can be seen to take place during the day, most plot twists and conflicts take place at night, although they are not exposed to the audience, being highlighted in the dialogue in the script, suggesting that nothing is as it seems no matter how tight and perfect the connections between them seem in the begging and that the characters wear fake masks, an important element in the theme of isolation that we have approached.

The colour chosen for Mariana, the character I played was pink, a complex colour that has many meanings and psychologies. According to Cherry, the colour pink is childish which fits perfectly with the role of Mariana, being a character who likes to create drama, to lie and to get others in trouble without thinking about the consequences or the reputation created.(Cherry, 2019). Being a complex colour, it also can suggest both innocence and youth as well as sexiness and boldness. The role I portrayed had as main features pampering, boldness and falsity, pink stereotypical representing all of the above in most teen movies, especially for the problematic characters, such as Mariana. And because the psychology of a colour can emanate different moods and behaviours, pink also suggests femininity, joy and euphoria, a feeling that makes you think you have the world at your feet and that you can do anything you want, once again a feature present in the description of the character I interpreted.

Performance

Performance was another challenge I personally faced, because at first it made no sense how I would do it and how. All that was on my mind was that digital theatre is no longer theatre because it turns into a movie or video due to the lack of live performance in front of an audience. In the meantime, I researched and noticed that it's not much different, so I followed the performance process that Schechner talks about in his book, a term that means "a time-space sequence composed of proto-performance, performance, and aftermath."(Schechner, R 2013) Also, everything became even clearer in my vision, realising that a performance never takes place on its own, there will always be a need for more participants, even outsiders.

''Performing onstage, performing in special social situations (public ceremonies, for example), and performing in everyday life are a continuum'’. (Schechner, 2002, P. 143) 

''Performativity is everywhere – in daily behaviour, in the professions, on the internet and media, in the arts and in the language'’. (Schechner, 2002, P. 110)

For example, without an audience, the term performance no longer makes sense. This theory is still part of the performing process that Schechner again talks about in his book Performance Studies saying that this process can be studied as interactions among more types of players like sources (authors, playwrights), producers (directors, technicians, designers) and performers part-takers (audience, fans, jury).(Schechner, R 2013).
Finally, after a more detailed look at the situation, I realised that performing in front of a screen it was like a performance for a countless audience, taking into account the fact that it took place on a social media platform, on the internet which is called by the majority, an infinite place.

The research

&

the reflection

Practice- as- research genealogies in the UK can be traced back to at least the 1960s. This was part of a broader international trend to develop methods of creative enquiry that would be recognised as cognate to established scholarly research procedures and techniques. PAR research engages specific aspects of theatre and performance as innovative process; but even so a tighter focus of analysis is required to make useful comparisons between different projects. (Kershaw, 2011)

''In PaR as elsewhere in the state called knowing: the more you know, the less you think you know''(Kershaw, 2011)

In PAR it s important to have a structure and any structure starts with starting points. Our starting point was a complex one, with a totally different idea, with a totally different space and audience, and a different approach. In the meantime, due to the situation, we gave up all the work we had, and started from scratch, with a new idea and a new question to be answered. Moreover, we realised that the new idea of exploring the theme of isolation (inspired of the true life situation) came to us in a relatively short time compared to the first one, realising that the more we overthink, the more we got lost.

''The internet belongs to everyone, and no one''

- Bruce Sterling

The Internet provides a capability so powerful and general that it can be used for almost any purpose that depends on information, and it is accessible by every individual who connects to one of its constituent networks. It supports human communication via social media, electronic mail, chat rooms, newsgroups, audio and video transmission and allows people to work collaboratively at many different locations. 


But what happens when theatre meets the internet?

In theatre and performance studies, the use of new technologies has not only significantly transformed traditional research methods and methodologies, but it has also led to an extension or evolution of theatre practice itself. The term ‘digital performance’ according to Kershaw means ''theatre/performance events where computer technologies play a key role in content, techniques, aesthetics or forms of delivery''(Kershaw, 2011)

''The computer screen has become a new type of theatre proscenium, in and through which to create new modes and interactive genres of theatrical (as well as social) performance''. (Kershaw, 2011)
 

It's a relatively new area of practice and it offers both significant opportunities and daunting challenges to the researcher. These relate to three main aspects of digital creative research more generally. Firstly, to the search for new theories, and its development and testing of new methodologies. Secondly, to its multidisciplinary nature, as it draws upon and interrelates practices, perspectives and knowledge from established disciplines. Thirdly, to its techno-logical basis, which necessitates considerable skills acquisition and development

In the field of digital performance there are clear opportunities to develop truly original methodologies, hypotheses, arguments and creative outputs. For example the performance company Blast Theory has created new genres of interactive performance by combining gaming and theatrical paradigms with high technologies such as Virtual Reality (Desert Rain, 1999)

Thus, the idea of using the Instagram platform as our online stage came from the complexity it has and the ease with which it can be used. We were able to interact with the audience through the live videos where we answered questions, as well as in the stories posted on the platform, building the characters involved in this performance day by day, but also through comments or private chats in which the viewers could take part in the performance.

''I m saying nothing and

I m saying it''

John Cage

When it comes to transmission to the audience, the whole process has taken on a new form. Certainly, we cannot speak of the same transmission by using touches, smells or particular sounds face to face, so we tried to change all this and at the same time to transmit the whole range of feelings to the audience. John Cage's quote says exactly how you shouldn't exaggerate or do too much to show something, so we used what was strictly necessary for our performance.

Scenography

As a set designer/scenographer, I tried to think outside the box, to be inspired by the mentioned practitioners and to model mentally and physically how the performance should be and what elements it will need. I did research on colours and colour palettes, to induce the ambience, mood and weather present in each video, I tried to use small props for each character and how to make everything look natural with the help of backgrounds and clothing.

‘'Scenography is a process of thinking which oscillates between the visual, the haptic and the cognitive'’

(McKinney 2008: 34)

Using a variety of technologies and techniques, including projecting film onto multiple surfaces in conjunction with live action, Svoboda, one of the most important practitioners for this field, intended to bring about ‘a confrontation between the spectator’s experience at the moment of performance. The audience is encouraged to engage imaginatively and subjectively with the performance through the medium of the visual- spatial construct of the stage. Research methods in scenography demonstrate particular affinities with visualisation, projection and improvisation. It is fitting that these distinctive methods have their roots in theatre design techniques such as drawing, story-boarding and modelling.

Bibliography
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