In my title, I have used the words “scenographic” and “performative”. Both terms have a particular meaning for the purposes of my investigation. In setting them in opposition to each other, I am making a distinction that can be found in many other contexts and discourses: between the static (and synoptic) and the dynamic. In the linguistics of Western and other languages we separate things (nouns) from actions (verbs)^[9], while in the organisation of human memory, according to Hirsch, “we use at least two radically different types of schemata, one analogous to static pictures and another to scripts and procedures”^[10]. In the philosophical tradition with which we are most familiar, Plato defines another such pair in Timaeus: two of the Original Natures are the eternal forms (which can be described as ‘being’) and the created copies of these (‘becoming’).

However, setting the static and the dynamic in opposition does not provide sufficient bases for a definition of the performative and the scenographic as I am using the terms. Theatre, as intensified action, requires more than just motion: in his theory of dramatism, Kenneth Burke^[11] defines an act as motion with purpose. For motion to become an act(ion) requires that it is performed by an agent with a purpose. For a component of the performance event to be performative, then, it must be an agency (that is, an agent's instrument) of purposeful action. My definition of performative parallels that used by J. L. Austin^[12], who in the fields of linguistics and philosophy identified utterance-as-act (which he called “a performative”) as opposed to utterance-as-statement^[13].

Burke's analysis is a familiar one in dramatic theory (from where he drew it): according to Aristotle “Tragedy [drama] is the imitation of an action; and an action implies personal agents...” and “...without action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be without character.”^[14] However, I am applying the analysis to the theatre artists (actors, choreographers, lighting designers^[15]) who create the performance, rather than the characters within it. These agents will have a range of purposes that motivate their actions, such as earning money and getting good press notices, so the definition of purposeful must be refined to allow only purposes that directly contribute to and develop the drama. For example, stage hands changing the scenery may be required to allow the performance to happen at a technical level, but this action does not in itself develop the drama. However, if the stage hands are choreographed and costumed so as to be expressive of the drama, then their action will be “dramatically purposeful”.

Gestalt theory uses the idea of “figure-ground” relationships to examine how art works are perceived^[16]. Typically, and in the context of the genre of drama, the actors will be a performative “figure” against a background (literal and metaphorical) of scenographic elements (the stage design, lighting, and so on). However, it is possible for the figure-ground relationship to be reversed, so it is not enough to say that “performative” is synonymous with “figure” and “scenographic” with “ground”, and I shall argue that lighting can be used to control such relationships. Theatre relies almost exclusively^[17] on two of the five sensory modalities: vision and hearing. Humans have a single locus of attention^[18], so an important function of the creators of the performance event is to guide the audience's attention through the matrix of visual and aural stimuli presented to them, and the thoughts and emotions that those stimuli evoke. Lighting can control the figure-ground relationships not only in the visual domain (for example, by making an actor stand out visually from the scenic background) but also in the conceptual and emotional domains (for example, by momentarily emphasising a characters emotional state against the “ground” of the overall emotional tenor of the dramatic world).

In order to mediate between the user (the lighting designer) and the lighting system, the system's interface must present a conceptual model of the lighting system that is meaningful to the user. Donald Norman describes three components: the “design model”^[19] is the interface designer's conceptual model of the system; the “user's model” is how the user understands the system; and the “system image” is the sum of all the system's presented components, which includes controls, information displays, labels, manuals, and so on. “[T]he designer”, he adds, “doesn't talk directly with the user - all communication takes place through the system image. If the system image does not make the design model clear and consistent, then the user will end up with the wrong mental model.”^[20] The underlying technology of the system is not relevant; only through the system image can the designer influence the user's model. Therefore, new conceptual models of lighting design must be expressed as, and can be promoted by, new system images.

Donald Norman coined the term cognitive artefacts to describe “those artificial devices that maintain, display or operate on information in order to serve a representational function and that affect human cognitive performance.”^[21]; cognitive artefacts “make us smarter”, and I shall argue that to be successful a lighting interface must be such an artefact. New technologies do not only allow old tasks to be done more easily or efficiently; they can allow (or even require) tasks to be reinvented. Discussing Norman's cognitive artefacts, Brenda Laurel states that “since it is true that the interfaces to existing [computer] applications reflect not only the interface design but also the conception of the application itself, it is difficult to improve the interface without reconceptualizing the whole action. In fact, that is what needs to be done in most cases”^[22]. She goes on to assert that “...it is also true that new understandings of tasks can (or should) affect changes in the design of cognitive artefacts. A new vision of the task changes what the artefact needs to be”. My project proposes both to use new interfaces to reconceptualise the task of controlling light on stage, and to use a performative vision of lighting to inform the design of those interfaces.

A characteristic of the performative elements of a production is that they are in continuous flux for the duration of the event, which they in part mark out as such, since it is the dynamics (the changing relationship between component parts over time) that provide the prime means of expression in theatre as intensified action. However, current practices in theatre lighting design, and the technologies that support them, do not allow such continuous change to be easily created or performed because of the dominance of what I shall term the “State/Cue” model.

Using this model, the lighting is created as a series of static “states” which are later replayed, fading from one to the next on predetermined “cues” during the performance. Continuously changing lighting requires a large number of cues to be planned, plotted, and recorded, and fine-tuning of the lighting during rehearsals becomes very difficult as this can only be done when the lighting is static. For lighting to become performative, the State/Cue model must be abandoned. To achieve this performance-performative function, the research project aims to create cognitive artefacts with new system images, allowing and encouraging the lighting designer to reconceptualise her or his task, in order to reposition lighting as a major performative element of the production.