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Q&A with the Editors of Theatre & Performance Design

Oct 22, 2014


Theatre & Performance Design 
is an international peer-reviewed journal publishing innovative artistic practice alongside theoretical research; the journal will critically evaluate the effect of scenography on the aesthetics and politics of performance and facilitate dialogue amongst practitioners, scholars, and audience.

The editors, Arnold Aronson and Jane Collins, and Routledge are pleased to announce the launch of a new journal devoted to the study of scenography.

Can you introduce the journal to us?

AA: Theatre and Performance Design (TPD) is a new journal that is focused on all aspects of theatre and performance design, as well as theatre architecture. It is intended as a place to examine the visual and spatial elements of theatre.

JC: The journal is re-looking at performance through the lens of scenography.

What will TPD strive to achieve?

JC: There has been a lack of attention paid over the last 50 years to what we would call the material aspects of performance including the process of production itself. Most attention is focused on the actor, the performer or the text. At this point in time because of a number of factors including developments in technology there is a growing interest in looking at performance from a different perspective. Scenography considers the organisation of space, light, sound and the interplay of materials, including costume, as integral to the performance event. All of these elements in relationship to each other and the audience effect how performance is read. The journal is concerned with how these formal characteristics inflect meaning.

AA: If I could add another dimension to that, a lot of scholarly writing about theatre and performance tends to be aimed at other scholars and academics, and meanwhile the theatre practitioners, the people who are actually creating the very art that is being written about, are sometimes left out of the conversation. What we are hoping to do with this journal is to create a site in which practitioners and scholars and perhaps even a broader audience can talk to each other and learn from each other, and we would hope that in the process of doing this it will, on the one hand, enhance the understanding and analysis of the art, and on the other hand maybe expand the creation of the art.  

For detailed interview, please go to Taylor and Francis Online
For paper submission, please see Call for Papers here.