Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2005 - 55

WSD

CONCLUSION
he WSD was made possible partially because many theatre artists worldwide were able to utilize digital imaging technology and submit via the Internet. And digital technology certainly has made a huge contribution to the
practice of performance design, evident in the large-scale printouts and
thumbnail sketch collages often used in gallery displays. Yet it was fascinating to see how many of the winning scenic and costume designs depended
upon traditional rendering and modeling skills to communicate their ideas. If anyone is still
in doubt regarding the absolute necessity of a strong foundation in visual literacy and traditional rendering and modeling skills to the future of scenography, I think the work in this exposition would have come as a revelation.
PHOTO BY R. FINKELSTEIN

I suppose I should end with a sweeping
statement that brilliantly sums up the overall
gestalt of the 2005 World Stage Design exhibition. Maybe this is possible, but I'm afraid
someone else will have to do it. Yes, it's a cliché, but we really do live in a global era,
when anyone with access to technology can
instantly Google images from around the
globe. I wonder if it is still possible to speak
of nationalistic tendencies in the arts. If an
artist, trained in one country, lives in another, utilizes conceptual elements from a
tradition indigenous to a third in order to design a play written in a fourth for a producing
theatre situated in a fifth (and planning to
tour abroad), which nationality carries the
most significance? In the WSD gallery exhibition, one could examine designs for a
minimalist production of a Chikamatsu play
designed in Spain and drawing upon Japanese Noh staging conventions. Gold Medals
in part honored productions of King Lear,
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The Magic Flute and Das Rheingold produced
in Mexico; a Silver Medal went to a designer in
Hong Kong, partially for the costumes she designed for a dance based upon an Italian
children's book. Conventional wisdom would
hold that each individual interpreted these foreign works through his or her own biography-but to what degree should I presume
that nationality exerted the dominant influence
over their artistic choices? More than just an
academic question, the presumption that geography is significant greatly affects careers.
Artists, by nature, often wish to expand their
perspectives well beyond the borders of their
cultural traditions and geographic boundaries.
Is it not doing the artist a disservice if they are
presumed to be incapable of working conceptually beyond their own national identity, if they
wish to do so? When designers work internationally, they are often expected to bring their
own native cultural identity along with them,
not least because it helps the marketing of the

show and the obtaining of grants. In all fairness, I've actually benefited from this-at the
very end of the Soviet era, I was hired to design
a frankly commercial production in Russia,
and always wondered if my capitalist American
passport helped clinch the deal.
While one might draw conclusions based
upon the collective entries of a single nationality, many of the shared qualities we perceive in,
for instance, Japanese modeling techniques or
Czech costume renderings probably have as
much to do with training and regional professional expectations (including the degree artisans are expected or allowed to creatively
interpret renderings and models) as much as
actual aesthetic sensibilities.
While I don't want to read too much significance into this, I wonder if the nature of the
WSD exhibit does not reflect the increasingly
fluid nature of both our profession and the
world itself. Much has been written about the
rise of on-line communities that transcend
boundaries between people who share interests. This, of course, has always been the function of the Prague Quadrennial and organizations such as OISTAT; for many years, the only
glimpse we had of what was happening in the
theatre behind the Iron Curtain was through
the PQ. But I can't help wondering whether the
true revolution in contemporary performance
design comes from increased access to information for all. A multinational eclectic perspective may now be available to anyone, anywhere possessing curiosity and access to basic
on-line resources. I certainly feel that many
designers from the United States, historically
so reluctant to attempt the more dynamic, less
film-realism-bound metaphorical aspects of
many designs seen in past PQs, are coming
into their own, and taking real risks-there
was an awful lot to like at the WSD. As with
other aspects of globalization, it's disturbing to

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2005