Scenography facts for kids
Scenography is all about creating the look and feel of a performance, like a play, concert, or dance show. It's not just about building a set; it's about designing everything you see, hear, and even feel on stage. This includes the scenery, lights, sounds, and costumes. Think of it as making a whole new world for the audience to experience!
History of Scenography
The idea of scenography has been around for a long time. In 1862, an Italian writer named Antonio Caimi talked about artists who designed for the stage. He mentioned Ferdinando Galli-Bibiena, a famous painter who was great at making things look real. He could paint amazing architectural scenes that tricked your eye into thinking they were real buildings.
Caimi called this "Arte scenografica." He noted that it took clever engineering to create moving sets or make places look real on stage. The Galli da Bibiena family was a very famous group of artists who designed for the stage. They started in Bologna, Italy, in the late 1600s and their work spread across Europe. Another well-known family for theatre design was the Quaglio family.
Many other artists in Italy also worked on stage design in the 1700s and 1800s. They helped create the amazing visual worlds for plays and operas of their time.
What Scenography Does
Scenography is more than just designing individual parts of a show, like the lights or costumes. It's a way of thinking about how all these parts work together. It creates the overall visual, sensory, and spatial experience for the audience.
Famous designers like Adolphe Appia and Edward Gordon Craig helped develop this idea. They believed that design should be just as important as the script or the actors' performances. All these elements work together to create the meaning of the show.
So, scenography is a complete way to think about how a performance is put together. It can be used for plays, concerts, or even other events outside a traditional theatre. As designer Pamela Howard says:
- "Scenography is the seamless synthesis of space, text, research, art, actors, directors and spectators that contributes to an original creation."
This means scenography smoothly blends everything together. It connects the space, the story, the research, the art, the actors, the director, and the audience. It all comes together to make something new and special.
Joslin McKinney and Philip Butterworth add that:
- "Scenography is not simply concerned with creating and presenting images to an audience; it is concerned with audience reception and engagement. It is a sensory as well as an intellectual experience, emotional as well as rational."
This means scenography isn't just about what the audience sees. It's about how they feel and react to the performance. It's an experience that touches their senses, their minds, and their emotions.
Understanding Scenography
There are different ways to think about scenography. Rachel Hann, a theatre expert, talks about "scenography" and "scenographics." She says "scenography" is the crafting or making of a stage environment. "Scenographics" are the orientating traits that help us understand a place.
These "scenographics" are like clues that help us understand where we are. They are often clear in theatre, but you can also find them in other places, like a beautiful garden or a store display. These clues help us notice how different parts of a "world" fit together. This could be how textures feel, how close or far things seem, or even ideas about a country or identity.
Hann explains that when we "stage" something, we are using scenographics to create a specific feeling of a place. Scenographics are actions that help us understand or change how we see a place.
This way of thinking sees scenography as "crafting how a place feels." It's a strategy for making theatre, just like writing the script (dramaturgy) or planning the movements (choreography). Scenography looks at both the physical and emotional ways we experience a place.
For example, directed sound can make you feel alone. A bright, focused light can change how big a space seems. The smell of an old desk can bring back memories. Costumes can change how actors relate to the stage. Hann says that scenography happens when all these different methods—costume, scenery, light, sound—work together. Scenography is not just about what you see or the space itself.
Finally, Hann suggests that "there are no stages without scenographics." This means that every stage, even an empty one, has something that helps us understand it as a place. The stage itself becomes real through the clues that scenographics provide. This means all theatre is scenographic, even if there are no objects or a clear "setting." This is because all theatre happens on a stage, which is a "scene." The ancient Greek word skene meant a tent or hut, which eventually led to our idea of "the stage."
See also
In Spanish: Escenografía para niños
- Scenic Design
- Set construction
- Theatrical scenery
- Costume
- Video Design
- Lighting Design
- Sound Design
- Dramaturgy
- Choreography
