Drawn to the light: the freehand drawing from the dramatic text as an illumination of the theatre designer#146;s eye of the mind

摘要

This practice-based research is drawn from the broader field of the Dramatic Arts andlies within the specific discipline of theatre design. The principle aim is to investigateand analyse the methodology of freehand drawing as the unique means of imaging thedramatic text for theatre and to contextualise my own practice within a theoreticalframework. It is driven by the argument that the ‘thinking’ drawings, more so than thefinished, built design, exist as the primary ‘site of revelation’ for the Australian theatredesigner.This research is underpinned by the formal methodologies of Stephen Scrivener,Donald Schön and Douglas Hofstadter; my unconscious practice emerges organicallythrough the unstructured reflective process of Peggy Phelan’s ‘performative writing’.The hypothesis driven model has been replaced with the equally rigorous model ofreflective practice, by which the ‘unending’ transformative spiral of research hasspawned multiple avenues for future research examining drawing from the dramatictext. One such avenue is the discovery of the unrecognised secret ‘autonomous’drawing (a drawing that exists outside the original theatre production process). It is thisdrawing, in particular, that is potentially a ‘door’ or portal, deep in the consciousness ofthe theatre designer. The ghosts inhabiting the dark space of the empty stage areilluminated in the designer’s eye of the mind where the spectral presence embedded inthe palimpsest of the autonomous drawing becomes the seminal source of revelation, oforiginality and innovation.Integral to this practice-based research was an exhibition, held at the COFA Space, of apersonal body of dramatic drawings that accompanied the text. The explorationsdocumented in the text were tested for their potential to become a primary outcome,such as an exhibition of works before a different type of audience in a different style ofvenue from that of a theatrical production. This exhibition complemented the writtendissertation with a critical and reflective focus on the creative or practicecomponent. The principle focus of this exhibition was an interrogation of the process ofcreating new spaces in the dramatic drawing - the transformation of the dramatic textinto the performative ‘scenographic script’ and ‘in so doing open up new possibilitiesand artistic and design potential.’In the Twenty-First Century the drawings of the contemporary Australian theatredesigner are an exclusive personal insight into the intricate nuances of the imaging ofthe dramatic text and are exceptional in their ability to illuminate a space in constantflux, a site of infinite mutable signs, which excite ‘cognitive surprise’, wonder andastonishment. Importantly, they are also the only ‘door’ into the theatre designer’suncensored private thoughts in an innately collaborative art form.