Baugh's "Scenography as a Machine for Performance" Analysis

 

–        All theatre artists have had to (and still do) contend with the complicated inter-relationship between the real-time existence of the living performers and the physical actuality of their surroundings- their place of performance.

 

–        The metaphor of the scene as a machine- as a physical construct that theatrically locates and enables the public act of performance (creates the setting and a location for the story to work with)

 

–        Neher distinguishes between the designer of a stage picture, which cannot in any sense be real, because it imitates an earlier reality, and the construction of a place on the stage that has its only significant reality at the moment of performance, and therefore has a true theatrical reality.

 

–        [Gordon] Craig was concerned to emphasize the mechanical reality of the stage construction that he proposed- For the foremost characteristic of this scene is that it is… a solid three-dimensional unit which adapts itself to the actor’s movements a group of screens which stand up by themselves.

 

–        Instead of reproductions in theater (which can be impossible to do), representations can be used instead to get the point across.

 

Design aesthetic is not determined by style but by the purpose and functionality of an object