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Research Proposal
Working title:
The theatre of images on contemporary maladies of the soul.
‘The images we create on stage are inevitably codified reflections of the world around us and thus informed by contemporary sensibilities.’ (Aronson, 2005 p.29)
Considering the difficulty contemporary individuals face in communicating and creating healthy relationships to be a proliferous problem which can cause severe maladies of the soul, I intend to guide my research towards exploring the contemporary theatre approaches in that subject area. More specifically, I will examine how the scenographic approach in theatre making is employed to comment on distressed states like e.g. severe depression and psychosis as the result of frustration in the attempts for human connections. I wish to investigate the work of theatre makers that rely on powerful images rather than written text to speak about abnormal expectations and misinterpreted needs impeding human communications and leading to such psychological dead-ends.
As mentioned by Arnold Aronson in Looking into the Abyss, published in 2005, early 20th century artists like Edward Gordon Craig, Adolphe Appia, Pina Bausch, Gertrude Stein and others perceived the stage as a poetic world of images. On this world every element (set, costume, light, text, movement, etc.) was considered an aspect of one entity and one harmonious whole. Already at that time, scenography was trying to create a visual vocabulary to reflect the psychological approaches to the inner mind works and produce images primarily related to emotion and time, while narrative and linearity were starting to evaporate from stage (Aronson, 2005).
Influenced by these theories, contemporary post-dramatic theatre designers/directors like Robert Wilson, Richard Foreman, Lauwer, Giorgio Corsetti and Erich Wonder project the notion of theatre of scenic poem where the stage is equally ‘written’ by all components of performance, integrating at times even the performer’s body as an image, a still emblem or a figure of movement (Lehmann, 2006). Hans-Thies Lehmann in his Postdramatic Theatre (2006), where he presents new forms of theatre that don’t rely on dramatic text, speaks of the visual dramaturgy that emerged from a de-hierarchization of theatric means. He writes about a ‘theatre of images’ (p.93) where notion and meaning are not conveyed by text and dramatic logos rather they are regulated by optical elements, the development of a ‘theatre of scenography’ (p. 93).
This theatre of images is the broader field within which my research will be directed to examine the ways this art has addressed and continues to address the psychocentric subject of communication failure causing human breakdown.
Lehmann (2006), speaks about Robert Wilson as an example of theatricians whose visual dramaturgy is characteristic of the de-hierarchization of theatre means, while Arthur Holmberg wrote for his work: ‘Wilson’s theatre stares into a psychic abyss’ (Holmberg, 1996 p.194). According to Holmberg (1996), the images Wilson creates are metaphors of psychological secrets and dramas that manifest the pain and terror of human relationships. Translating visually madness, anxiety, alienation and other existential preoccupations and non-rational emotions, Wilson speaks of what is difficult to be spoken with words, externalizes the internal and transforms the stage into a soul landscape (Holmberg, 1996).
Garner in Bodied Spaces (1994) studies the re-articulation of performance field in visual field as that occurs in Beckett’s plays, where ‘light, darkness, movement and position are given status equal to linguistic text’ (p. 54) and ‘even the actor’s body becomes (in Beckett’s hands) a kind of artistic material’ (p. 54). For Garner, these plays reflect a conception that is mainly scenographic and this idea is further enhanced by the way their characters are presented as aesthetic elements, irregular figures, fragmented bodies, etc. (Garner, 1994).
Samuel Beckett, a metteur-en-scene as described above, has produced inimitable images depicting the devastating results of the inability of people to communicate. In one of his late plays, ‘Rockaby’, a woman is literally rocking herself to death in an old rocking chair, in a striking image of resignation from life after a long unsuccessful search for another soul like her own. Beckett, in this play, presents a case of melancholia and death drive as the result of a narcissistic approach to relationships which distorts all attempts for relationships rendering communication impossible. The visual tableaux that Beckett created to comment on this condition of the disappointed human soul waiting for death, is so powerful that remains engraved in the mind of the viewer, not because of its beautiful aesthetics or its frightening nature but because of its reality and truth, as Raymond Federman noted in his lecture The imagery museum of Samuel Beckett, given in February 2000, at the Kunsthalle in Vienna.
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Lefteris Vogiatzis, an eminent director in Greece, is well known for the way he presents the stage as an inner place, employing physical structures and scenic compositions to act as elements of a strong staging ‘language’ that grabs the viewer’s eye and perception. Vogiatzis, works a lot with plays that protest the absurdity in futile relationships and the scenic worlds he creates are often inhabited by souls distressed by them. In 2003, he directed the play ‘Crave’, by Sarah Kane whose unconventional, pared-down texts deal with themes of baneful love, depression and psychological pain. In this work, Vogiatzis worked together with stage designer Magiou Trikerioti in creating an environment of a destroyed field, flooded by dark dirty waters with four small pieces of land that provided each of the four actors a small space, always isolated and unconnected to the others. The whole scene, including the very specific movements of the actors that shaped the rhythm of the performance, interrelated with Kane’s text and its rhythm providing what could be called a scenic poem. As the director mentioned in an interview for newspaper Kathimerini (30 November 2003), the scene was perceived as a landscape of the inner-self, a place where he could aptly present those relationships that may leave you crippled. (interview available from
I would like to mention here the work of Ingmar Bergman who, as a director of both film and stage, was a master in creating powerful images that defied speech and explored widely the subject of ill-communication in human relationships. A characteristic example of that would be his film Persona, where through his ‘motion pictures’ he studies the relation between the narcissist Elizabeth Volgar and her nurse Alma. In this case, as analyzed by Daniel Shaw in his article Woman as vampire, Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966), Elizabeth withdraws from the world sinking into silence – not being loved satisfactorily being the actual reason - while Alma is suggested to be crushed, even likely to commit suicide, by her rejection. (article available from
According to Holmberg (1996), Bergman suggested that the mind processes while experiencing theatre, film and music where different from those when reading literature :
The written word is read and assimilated by a conscious act of the will in alliance with the intellect; little by little it affects the imagination and the emotions. The process is different with a motion picture. When we experience a film, we consciously prime ourselves for illusion. Putting aside will and intellect, we make way for it in our imagination. The sequence of pictures plays directly on our feeling. (Holmberg, 1996, p.76)
To sum up and conclude, the intended research will be directed through the notion of theatre of images and the artists exploring/exploiting its possibilities as a medium to speak about and warn of the devastating psychological effects of the lack of communication in human relationships.
Annotated Bibliography
Aronson, Arnold (2005) Looking into the abyss, Essays on Scenography, THEATER: THEORY/TEXT/PERFORMANCE series editied by Brater, E. USA: The University of Michigan Press.
-Aronson presents scenography as an art encompassing all physical aspects of performance into a united seamless entity, traces the background of scenographic approaches to theatre making of inner landscapes and questions stage/society relation through current practitioners that employ the scenographic style.
Bogiatzis, Lefteris (Greek theatre director) (2003) interviewed by Aggelikopoulos Vasilis for Newspaper Kathimerini, 30 November 2003. Interview available from
-The director comments on the scenic creations in his staging of Sarah Kane’s ‘Crave’ as reflections of the inner states of the characters.
Easthope, Antony(1999) THE UNCOSCIOUS, The New Critical Idiom series. London: Routledge.
-For the presentation of Freud’s and Lacan’s theories on forms of identification, narcissism, ego reflecting in its ‘objects’ and sources of human unhappiness.
Federman, Raymond (2000) THE IMAGERY MUSEUM OF SAMUEL BECKETT, lecture (edited for presentation on website), available from
-Federman presents Beckett as a powerful tableaux creator, an artist that wrote plays who were meant to be experienced visually.
Garner, Stanton B. Jr. (1994) BODIED SPACES, Phenomenology and Performance in Contemporary Drama. New York: Cornell University Press.
-Garner analyzes the increasing focus on play as image and the ways the actor’s body is employed in it in the late Beckett work, analyzing its transformations, the absent presence and its ‘dialectic’ with the aesthetic form.
Holmberg, Arthur, edited by Innes, Christopher (1996) The theatre of Robert Wilson, Directors in Perspective series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
-Holmberg studies the work of Robert Wilson, argues on its psychological importance, analyzes his characteristic emblematic figures and visual constructions and offers detailed examples on works that show Wilson’s strategies for staging the traumas of the inner world.
Innes, Christofer (1998) EDWARD GORDON CRAIG - A VISION OF THEATRE, Contemporary theatre studies; v. 28, 2nd ed. OPA N.V. published by license under the Harwood Academic Publishers imprint.
-For Craig’s pioneering theories regarding scenery as a unified whole, a reflection of mindscapes, and the connections of some of his principles to contemporary theatre artists like Beckett and Wilson.
Lehmann, Hans-Thies, translated by Jurs-Munby Karen (2006) Postdramatic Theatre. London: Routledge.
-Lehmann, in his study of theatre after the displacement of the dramatic text, elaborates on the role of theatrical elements in the new theatre forms, speaks of the development of a theatre of scenography and illustrates Wilson’s methods to study the effects of the image.
McAfee Noëlle (2004) Julia Kristeva, Routledge Critical Thinkers series. London: Routledge.
-For Kristeva’s ideas and description of melancholia, the narcissistic structure and the reaching for ‘realm of signs’ by the depressed artist.
Shaw, Daniel (2002) HORROR Woman as vampire, Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) Kinoeye: New Perspectives on European film, [internet] 7 October 2002, issue 15, available from
-Shaw offers a psychoanalytic approach to the film, applying Freud’s theories and notions like narcissism and obsessional neurosis, to study Elizabeth and Alma’s relationship.
Intended Bibliography.
Kristeva, Julia (1989) Black Sun: Depression and Melancholia, trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University press.
Artaud, A. (1958) The Theatre and its Double, trans. By M.C. Richards, New York: Grove Press.
Kantor, T. (1993) A journey through Other Spaces: Essays and Manifestos, 1944-1990, ed. and trans. By M. Kobialka with a critical study of Tadeusz Kantor’s theatre by M. Kobialka, Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press.
Foreman, Richard (1992) Unbalancing Act: Foundations for a theatre. New York: Pantheon.
Gaston, Bachelard (1994) The poetics of space, trans. Maria Jolas, Boston: Beacon Press.
Kalb, J. (1998) The Theatre of Heiner Műller. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Braert, Enoch (1987) Beyond Minimalism: Beckett’s Late Style in the theatre. New York: Oxford University Press.
Esslin, Martin (1987) Beckett Translating/Translating Beckett University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Fairbrother, Trevor,ed. (1991) Robert Wilson’s Vision Boston.
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