This research project, housed at INET-md‘s Dance Studies Group, intents to look at the way drawing is used during the creative process of scenography within the performance arts, and generate a public digital database which can be used as a source for discussion and reflection by practitioners and academics alike.
It is our intention to structure and reflect upon the artistic and pragmatic relationship scenographers have with drawing as a device for the creation of space and time of performance and as mediator between the bodies of actors or dancers on stage and the drawer’s page. The study of these relationships informs the creative process of scenography and poses the hypothesis of an particular relationship between the gestuality of the drawer-scenographer and that of the performer generating space. It is our view that understanding the way this dialogue happens will further develop contemporary definitions of scenography.
With this in mind we will post our findings in the form of short papers or articles, as well as interviews with scenographers, their digitised drawings and notebooks and photographs of their performances.
In parallel, this material will be added to the existing database at INET-md’s Dance Studies Group, TerPsiCore. Please see here for the Dance Research Group’s website.
Any questions should be directed at the project’s manager, Filipa Malva.
This project is funded through a postdoctoral fellowship from FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology.
The act of drawing becomes action and mediation more than representation. Drawing is therefore and always a performance of the body and/or its parts. — Daniel Tércio.
Photo by Carlos Gomes and drawing by Filipa Malva.
Drawing and Performance: Creating Scenography 