Donger, Simon (2013) To Set and Not to Set: Destablizing Abstraction in Scenography. Performance Research, 18 (3). pp. 154-160. ISSN 1352-8165

Abstract

Through exposing details of the dramaturgy of Elfriede Jelinek's Sports Play and of the process of scenographic development for its English language premiere, the text proposes a critical approach to and use of abstraction in stage design. In particular, it emphasizes the expediency of abstraction's suggestive and multiple semiotic potential in achieving ambivalent structures of understanding of sports, media, body cultures and family life. Precisely established across the stage design, the performer's physical relation to it and the text, these structures' ambivalence reflects and accentuates the contradictory and conflictual two-foldness of both Jelinek's and the audience's involvement and responsibility in the previously mentioned domains of life.