Welcome to the Performance: Visual Aspects of Performance Practice interdisciplinary research and publications project home page. Theatre is an inter-disciplinary form of art in itself, drawing ideas and symbolisms from the fields of humanities, making historical references and links, presenting social relations, putting forward great ideas and dilemmas of the mind, highlighting aspects of the human personality and employing all existing art-forms in order to create a performance as a whole. Performance practice can be examined from the artistic point of view, but also from a cultural, a sociological, a historical, a psychological, a semiological, an anthropological, as well as from an educational perspective. The term “performance practice” refers to the interface within which the work of the director, actor, movement director and choreographer, scenographer (set and costume designer), musical director, composer, lighting designer and sound designer meet. It also includes all aspects and issues involving the theatrical process, from the initial concept to the final realization.
The aim of this conference is to develop discussion with a focus on the visual aspects of performance brought up by visual and spatial artists and researchers in various performance disciplines and practices.
The project will assess and explore a number of core themes.
- Visual interpretation of text / of narrative
- Visual literacy and perception within performance
- The relationship between narrative, visuality and textuality
- The birth of a visual concept
- Design as theatrical action
- Visual resources and interpretation in performance
- Scenographic materials, form, texture, composition and light
- From design to realization – the process for the creation of a visual environment
- Collaboration and practice in the visual aspect of performance making
- Aesthetics and visual principles in performance
- Challenging of established aesthetics, the relationship of old and new traditions
- Visual expression and symbolism in theatre and performance
- The notion of the visual metaphor
- Scenographer: The author of space?
- Actor-character: Dressing the actor, dressing the body
- Body and space: The spatial dynamics of costume
- The performativity of costume / The narrative of dress in performance
- Costume sociology
- History of scenography
- Leading figures in the world tradition of scenography
- Media and new technology as performance visual elements
- The impact of new media on performance
- New approaches in performance design
- The gaze of the spectator / Aspects of spectatorship
- Cross-cultural appropriation, Inter-disciplinarity and Interactivity in performance
- Designing theatre for particular settings and audiences (e.g. children, elders, communities, people with disability)
- Performance and politics – visual approaches
- Teaching the visual aspects of performance practice
Related themes will also be identified for development and exploration. Out of our deliberations it is anticipated that a series of related cross context research projects will develop.
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