Scenographic materiality: Agency and Intra-Action in stage designs by Katrin Brack

Katrin Brack’s atmospherically charged designs are fluid, responsive constructions that foreground the agentic role of materials such as confetti, fog, balloons, snow, tinsel and foam in theatre performance and theatre reception. In doing so, they challenge traditional views of theatre scholarship that assume human actants are the sole agents. In this chapter I examine the ways in which materials can be seen as co-creative and co-operative components of theatre by drawing on theories of new materialism. In particular, I consider; the agency that scenographic materials might have independently from designers or performers, the reciprocal relationship between materials and bodies of different kinds in scenography and the ways that material is discursive and can define what is meaningful without necessarily defaulting to language. The chapter uses examples of Brack’s designs to develop the idea of scenographic materiality and to reflect on creative agency in the process of scenography.