Pasteboard Temples and Liminal Spaces
“Pasteboard Temples and Liminal Spaces: Using new projection technologies to illuminate modernist and postmodernist theory in vocational undergraduate and postgraduate teaching”
Abstract of a paper given at the Second International Conference for Digital Technologies and Performance Arts, University Centre, Doncaster College, June 26th - 28th 2006.
Students studying on vocational courses, such as the BA (Hons) Lighting Design and MA Theatre Practices programmes at Rose Bruford College, often focus on “doing”, and bring with them a perceived need to develop practical skills that will prepare them for professional practice. Engaging such students with the wider cultural, historical, aesthetic and theoretical context within which their practice exists can be difficult, not least because the academic “ways of thinking” that such knowledges have traditionally demanded seem to be at odds with the “ways of doing” of vocationally-oriented students.The paper describes two practical projects undertaken by Rose Bruford undergraduate and postgraduate students, through which they have successfully engaged with theories of modernism and postmodernism, and with the implications of those theories for scenographic design. Both projects began with the same observation: that certain uses of projection (exemplified by Bill Dudley’s digital scenery for The Woman in White, but also seen in the work of many experimental theatre artists) can be seen as a return to 18th and 19th Century scenic approaches in which live performers act “in front of” a painted/projected scenic environment. If Adolphe Appia’s rejection of such “pasteboard temple[s]” marks a modernist desire to integrate and unify all the elements of performance and place them at the service of the originating artist, then recent uses of digital media can be read as a (sometimes unconscious) postmodern embracing of fragmentation and dislocation.
Starting from this observation, both projects attempted to bridge the divide between projected scenery and live performer. The first did so by making both projection and performer equally responsible for expressing characterisation. The second used various staging, lighting and digital projection techniques to create an environment that the performer was “in”, not “in front of”. In the case of both projects, students used perspectives on modernism and postmodernism both to understand the project’s issues and to “read” their own work, as well as to stimulate new approaches and ideas.
The paper includes short video excerpts from the two performances.
[More information about the two performances, and some images, here]