#2 New book: Scenography Chapter in Women experimenting in theatre
So proud my chapter "Frying Bacon and Eggs: Scenographic Approaches to Alda Terracciano's Activist and Experimental Performances" (p 329-336) has been published in Women experimenting in theatre: early modern to contemporary, edited by Kate Aughterson and Deborah Philips (Palgrave Macmillan 2024).
The book
- Brings together scholars across a wide range of historical and contemporary expertise
- Suggests a tradition of women dramatists and performers which is explicitly experimental and innovative
- Enables the reader to engage with debates about women and theatrical experience
In my chapter I apply scenography as a theoretical lens for analysing the experimental, feminist, and decolonial work of UK-based theatre scholar, activist, and artist Alda Terracciano. (...). My exploration will address Terracciano's provocative Bacon and Eggs intervention from the 2015 conference Challenge the Past—Diversify the Future, in which she employed the scenographic, multisensory tools of smell (frying bacon and eggs), video, and bodily action to target urgent colonial issues. I will also explore her project Mapping Memory Routes of Moroccan Communities (2016–2017) including the performative event and cross-genre installation Zelige Door on Golborne Road launched at Rich Mix in London in 2017, and then touring internationally. Overall, this chapter foregrounds scenography theory as a way of bringing out and making accessible the performative powers of current experimental, activist, and feminist art and theatre. In doing so, it offers an argument for how scenographic approaches can seed the evocative interplay between art and society in a world in need of hope, care, and constructive change.
More here
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-63689-9
From the book's foreword:
"In an inventive fusion of the critical and creative voice, scenographer Astrid von Rosen's 'Frying Bacon and Eggs: Scenographic Approaches to Alda Terracciano's Activist and Experimental Performances' (Chap. ) discusses the explicit ways in which the discipline and practice of scenography illuminates the radical collaborative nature of theatre itself; a project that denies the trope of the 'male genius' as producer of creative and artistic work. This encompasses not only models of co-authoring performance with stage and costume designers but also explicitly designer-led production processes and experimentations with design in decolonial, ecological and political practices. Drawing on these new and critically productive 16understandings, von Rosen uses scenography as a theoretical lens through which to analyse the experimental, feminist and decolonial work of UK-based theatre scholar, activist and artist Alda Terracciano. 'Experimental' in this chapter refers to Terracciano's way of employing unorthodox and multi-sensory methods in normative settings.
Additionally, von Rosen's experimental self-reflection grapples with scenographic powers and lures. Terracciano's aim 'to construct a feminine paradigm of sensory art and challenge stereotypical representations of 'others' (https://aldaterra.com/ ) included their provocative Bacon and Eggs intervention at the conference Challenge the Past – Diversify the Future (2015), in which they employed the scenographic, multisensory tools of smell (frying bacon and eggs), video and bodily action to target urgent colonial issues. Von Rosen also explores her project 'Mapping Memory Routes of Moroccan Communities' (2016–2017) including the performative event and cross-genre installation Zelige Door on Golborne Road launched at Rich Mix in London in 2017. Scenography theory and practice evoke and make accessible the performative powers of current experimental, activist and feminist art and theatre. In doing so, it offers an argument for how scenographic approaches can seed the evocative interplay between art and society in a world in need of hope, care and constructive change, and themselves embody the very experimental and improvised nature of theatrical practice itself."
Astrid von Rosen