Scenic Design: A Transdisciplinary Approach

Scenic Design: A Transdisciplinary Approach

Apart from the dramatic text, space is the other fundamental component that allows the dramatic act to occur. As it has been exposed, this fundamental nature is given to the scenic space because it necessarily involves the reunion of the two essential actors in theater: the spectator and the performer. The presence of space in theater can even trascend the performance. There is also an important presence of the consciousness of space in the dramatic text itself, either in its formal components of the playscript or in the dramatic structure of the play.

Additionally space is important because through it, the relationship between theater and architecture can be stablished. Architecture and theater may share characteristics and conditions because their nature is linked to the fact they are both inhabited by the human being, becoming an essential element in both of them.

However, the simultaneous study of architecture and theater may face some difficulties. When disciplinary limits get blurry certain considerations and convetions become unclear. There are elements that fall in the middle of two different worlds and there is a need of a transdisciplinary study, analysis and definition. Individual disciplinary studies made separately fall flat to define characteristics

that usually belong to other fields of study. Multidisciplinary approaches also fail to define grey zones that neither discipline considers proper of their particular field of study. Instead, a transdisciplinary approach not only combines mutual concepts, tools and methods from different disciplines, but uses them for a particular purpose that is mutual, sometimes becoming an independent discipline on its own.

This is the case of Scenic or Set Design, that is on the one hand the presence of architectural elements during a dramatic performance designed specifcically for that purpuse, and on the other hand a discipline of its own that uses tools and concepts from both theater and architecture in order to solve a specific problem but goes beyond the sum of both disciplines.