What role does illumination and darkness play in constructing scenographic experiences and performance potentialities in the nocturnal urban environment?
What role does illumination and darkness play in constructing scenographic experiences and performance potentialities in the nocturnal urban environment?
At dusk when the sun sets, we begin our primordial plunge into darkness. In a sense this
gradual gloom, can be likened to the houselights dimming in a theatre. The audience are
taking their seats and preparing for their performance. Twilight uses the natural light and
guides us slowly into darkness. Over the process of a few hours the world should be
immersed in a blanket of darkness, but in the city this darkness never really comes. In most of
the cities around the world sunset prompts the illumination of streetlights and inhibits us from
experiencing the dark.
Similar to the stage manager orchestrating the first lighting cue to a
performance, the cityscape becomes more stage like under the glare of artificial light. Street
lighting apart from having a purely utilitarian purpose can also have a uniquely scenographic
quality. In their 2020 book, Scenography Expanded, Joslin McKinny and Scott Palmer sketch out the concept of “expanded scenography,” which proposes three key dimensions to every
scenographically relevant instance:
materiality as the agency of things, affectivity as it relates
to sensorial experience, and relationality in terms of encounter.
In this thesis, I will explore,
through a scenographic perspective, the role illumination and darkness play in constructing
scenographic experiences and performance potentialities in the nocturnal urban environment.
My knowledge of the scenographic elements that makeup space (light, dark, texture,
structure, space, volume, distance, perspective, temperature, smell, visibility, scale, pattern,
rhythm, colour, narrative etc.) will be used as a method of observation.