The aims of this working group

• To provide an ongoing forum via email discussion and access to information and resources via web pages.
• To foster collaborative projects between individual members of the working group: encouraging the formation of a research community. 
• To present at the annual TaPRA conference, using modes suited to the scope of the group. To disseminate these both to the working group and to the conference as a whole.
• To consider useful collaborations and interactions with other TaPRA working groups. 
• To provide an ongoing supportive environment, maintaining an awareness of the particular needs of postgraduate students and those new to the field.
• To seek collaboration with innovative practitioners outside academia. To working alongside interested groups and individuals, and encouraging such practitioners to attend and contribute to the annual conference.

Call for Papers for 2010

The Scenography working group is looking for contributions that will broaden and deepen our mutual understanding of scenographic practices and processes, and the nature of contemporary scenography. We are looking for provocations, panel discussions and practical workshops, and we are open to innovative collaborations and stimulations.

  
While we understand the wish / need of some contributors to present formal papers, the group has found that our best sessions focus on informed discussion and practical exploration. We therefore ask that all proposed papers are able to be circulated, at least in draft  form, 4 weeks prior to the conference.

Here are some themes that we hope to cluster contributions around:

• The construction of performed identity through costume and through objects (puppets), the animation of the inanimate object in performance.
• Costume as the embodiment of scenographic ideas, as performed object or as clothes for a character? How does the researcher's view compare to the practitioner's or the performer's for that matter?
• Drawing – The communication and development of ideas – going beyond the limits of written and spoken language. A democratic tool in an otherwise technocratic world? What is the role of drawing in the language of scenographer and scenography?
• The relationship between the lived presence and the scenographic image, with reference to site and the performance of everyday life.
• The manipulation of performance space through light & sound, the transient and ephemeral and its impact on the concrete
• The scenographer's creative journey – what is it? The nature and use of the scenographer's personal archive. What trace does the process of making scenographic work leave behind
• What is the function of the archive in researching scenographic practice and in creating new Scenography?

Submissions and enquiries to the co-conveners. The agreed deadline for submissions for all Working Groups is 30th April 2010.

Co-convenors

The scope of this working group:

Taking the scenographic as a particular perspective from which to research theatre and performance, the group:

• Addresses the visual, sonic, and musical, languages of theatre and performance.
• Explores the dynamic relationships between these elements in terms of the sensory experience of audiences.
• Considers ways of scoring, documenting, archiving, and analysing, scenographic practice.

• Scenography and technology
• The performing object
• The performance of light
• Computer modelling and the scenographic proces
• The aesthetic dimension of contemporary drama
• Languages of discourse for sound in performance
• The limits of representation
• Scenography and spectatorship
• Scenography and identity
• Live art
• Architecture and performance
• Site-specific practice
• Documenting the processes of scenography
• Devising from a scenographic perspective
• Archiving scenography
• Histories of scenography