Is There Such a Thing as Feminist Design?

Okay, the honest truth is that my weekend has been so full of preparing for SETC next week that taking a second to write this entry seems like a bad idea. But I do have something that has been jumping around my brain for a while because I'm writing a research paper about it. Is there such a thing as "feminist design?"

There is an article by a woman named Delores Ringer that discusses this very question. She posits that there is a way to approach design in a feminist mode: that by making obvious ways in which the patriarchy is represented in the play and breaking those down/highlighting them in design choices, a designer can further a feminist interpretation of the piece. She lists the following questions as a way to approach the script:

1. In the production I am currently working on, what are the explicit and implicit messages about power in gender relations?
2. How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages?
3. How do I as a woman and designer relate to the visual language and the world around me? How do I visually process information?
4. How have my relationships with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed? (299)

Let us set aside questions three and four as a part of the discussion of being a female designer overall. They are important, but I believe that the first two questions hold in them the seed from which the notion of feminist design may spring.

1. In the production I am currently working, what are the explicit and implicit messages about power in gender relations?

I would argue that a good designer, male or female, should be asking this question regardless of their social agendas. Granted, the question may not be framed in terms of gender-- for sure when we were approaching The Seagull we did not discuss the power dynamics specifically in terms of gender and thus delve into the nature of Arkadena's character, but power dynamics were discussed and were brought to play in our design choices (especially in costuming). As I write this, having read a short essay on the female roles in The Seagull, I wonder how things might have changed if we had more directly troubled the roles of Arkadena, Nina, Masha, and Paulina.

2. How does visual language contribute to these explicit and implicit messages?

This question is more difficult, I believe. (And perhaps is why questions three and four are an important part of her list). It is difficult because not everyone interprets visual language the same, depending on where they are coming from in their lives. For instance, Ringer discusses how one might use landscape paintings on the women's aprons in Marsha Norman's Getting Out to invoke the geographic past represented in their lives. I puzzled over this idea for some time as I read it, and have often questioned these types of approaches to displaying the underlying meaning/subtext/what-have-you in a play. It reminds me of Brecht's gestus and how things like that are likely lost on an audience without a program note or talk back after the show.

When we started to work on the designs for The Seagull I had originally proposed representing the lake in a reflective floor for the set. It appealed to me as a purely aesthetic idea, and I felt that it helped underline the personal choices that were being made within the script: that people were hiding their true selves; that they were adrift in the world; that the lake holds power (which is referred to in the play). The director rejected this idea because he didn't see the point if it needed a program note to explain. And while I thought that was a ridiculous reason to cast aside my idea, over the last few months I have come to realize that perhaps it is true that the more subtle visual cues may be a lost cause. How could anyone know that was why I had wanted a reflective floor, apart from it adding visual dimension (especially in the sparse set that was decided upon)? There is no way to know.

But by the same token, is it not important to challenge the audience to find meaning in the visual landscape before them? They might not understand the reflective floor in the way I intend, but it is likely they would have found some reason for it. A number of people asked me where the lake was in my set anyway; I'm sure it would have caught on. And no one was even remotely aware that the diagonal painting on stage that represented the floor boards were specifically done upstage left to downstage right to highlight Konstantin's work at his desk in Act IV. Did we need a program note for that?

I don't know that there is a right way or wrong way to approach design in terms of the above discussion of subtle visual choices. I also am not sure how much I agree that there is a strictly feminist design approach (though, after writing this, I feel more inclined to agree than not). Design work, as with most artistic endeavors, is so much about translating the concrete into the subjective, and I believe that there is a lot of room for interpretation both in terms of the final product and how one gets there. (Though The Seagull wasn't approached in a feminist design mode, I think one could interpret it as such in some ways-- does that make it any less of a feminist design?)

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Ringer, Delores. "Re-Visioning Scenography: A Feminist's Approach to Design for Theatre." Kare Laughlin and Chatherine Sculer, ed. Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. London: Associate UP, 1995. Print.