Unconscious process is dangerous… because it denies the political content inherent in artistic process by treating it as neutral. The denial of political content in process acts to covertly censor and marginalize some forms of individual artistic expression.
Smith 108
For the last ten years I have been on a journey to become a theatrical designer. My formal education in design began, as it has for many of my mentors and contemporaries, as a grounded exploration of the ideals and process that were laid out by the great forefathers of theatrical design: Edward Gordon Craig, Adolph Appia, and Robert Edmund Jones. However, despite moderate success in the field, I never felt wholly comfortable and capable as a young designer nor capable of expressing certain design ideas and concepts in creative collaboration. It was not until I studied feminist theory and performance that I became aware of how disconnected I had felt from theatre and dramatic literature up to that point. I began to sense that my struggles with theatrical design went beyond the known gender-bias I experienced as a woman in the scene shop, but were connected to a sense of my design sensibilities and process being a round peg trying to operate in the square hole set forth by years of design process laid out by Craig, Jones, and Appia. Though the notion of feminist design in theatre is young and debatable, it is an apt way to explain the approach of women designers, like myself, who have not only struggled to make a place for themselves in this male-dominated industry, but also challenged the “unconscious process” that we have been taught to adopt.
Raynet Halvorsen Smith’s article “Deconstructing the Design Process” details in length the problems with the current methods of teaching design, least of which is the notion of the “unconscious process” that “covertly censor[s] and marginalize[s] some forms of individual artistic expression” (108). She asserts that the “design process has become frozen, steeped in tradition—tradition so pervasive that we have become blind to it” (107). This is similar to many feminist art scholars that counter claims that “overtly political representations have no place in art” with the argument that “‘conventional’ art is equally political, the politics having been cast in that ‘neutral’ or masculinist mode that appears invisible” (Hein 449). The nurturing and development of a feminist mode of design will not only counteract the “unconscious process” with a visual language created from self-awareness in the design process, but also give vocabulary to and create space for young, female designers’ voices to be heard in the male-dominated industry.
The first step taught in the traditional design process is to read the script and take notes. Arguably, the playscript is the logical place to begin a design because within the words of the play lie the story, emotions, and people that will populate the world of said design. An often used book for design history and process is The Stage is Set by Lee Simonson, in which he states, “In the modern theatre, as in every other, the beginning is in the word” (464). This tradition of privileging the script poses problems beyond design practice, explaining why feminist performance art and many feminist theatrical traditions that favored the visual over the textual arose outside of the walls of the theatre (Smith 110). Similarly, the visual avant-garde has often existed, or at least began, outside of the commercial, mainstream theatres because in other, smaller theatres and performance venues the designer might be able, even invited, to break from an extreme servitude to the script and create something that mines the wealth of subtext between the lines.
Nevertheless, the script is still the first port of entry into creating a theatrical design, but at this first step—reading the script and taking notes—feminist theory can and should be applied. Designer Delores Ringer sets forth a series of questions in her article “Re-visioning Scenography” that not only analyze the script in a feminist mode but also illuminate the ways in which artistic aesthetic plays a role in design:
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 relationship with other artists in the theatre and the creative and working process I use been constructed? (299)
One might argue that the first question is one that all designers are already asking, feminist or otherwise. Likely, they do at least note the explicit messages because those are what are most obvious on the page and would be the most universally perceived by the actors, director, and audience members. However, the implicit messages and how they can and should be visually depicted are what create a feminist approach to design.
(To be continued...)
Hein, Hilde. “The Role of Feminist Aesthetics in Feminist Theory.” Feminism and Tradition in Aesthetics. Ed. Peggy Zeglin Brand and Caroylyn Korsmeyer. University Park, PA, Pennsylvania State UP: 1995. 446-463. Print.
Ringer, Delores. “Re-Visioning Scenography: A Feminist’s Approach to Design for the Theatre.” Theatre and Feminist Aesthetics. Ed. Karen Laughlin and Catherine Schuler. Madison, Farleigh Dickinson UP: 1995. 299-315. Print.
Simonson, Lee. The Stage is Set. New York, Theatre Arts Books: 1963. Print.
Smith, Raynette Halvorsen. “Deconstructing the Design Process: Teachign Scene Design Process Through Feminist Performance Art.” Perspectives on Teaching Theatre. Ed. Raynet Halvorsen Smith, Bruce A. McConachie, and Rhonda Blair. New York, Peter Lang: 2001. 107-116. Print
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