Robert Cohen - Theatre, Brief Version-McGraw-Hill Education (2016)

Theatre 89
The traditional elements—fire and water—can be major scenic pieces, as exemplified in this astonishing 2005
Icelandic production of George Büchner’s 1839 Woyzeck, staged by Reykyavik’s Vesturport Theatre with a water-filled,
stage-wide fish tank in which Woyzeck drowns his girlfriend, Marie, and eventually himself. The play is a German preexpressionist
classic about the impoverishment of working-class life in the nineteenth century. Woyzeck, modeled on a
real person, is an uneducated army private, tormented by officers and doctors, taunted by his girlfriend, and cuckolded
by his company’s drum major. His watery murder and subsequent suicide constitute the play’s grim climax. Ingvar E.
Sigurdsson is Woyzeck; Nina Dogg Filippusdottir, beneath him, is Marie. Gisli Orn Gardarsson directed. © Geraint Lewis
garments look like? What colors should they be? How
worn? Are they clean or dirty? well-fitted or too large?
or too small?
More questions: How old should the characters appear
to be? Should any have long hair? facial hair? fat bellies?
missing teeth? And what sounds might surround them:
birds? wind? passing cars or airplanes? sounds of war?
nothing? Should the characters’ voices sound natural? be
amplified? Should they reverberate?
And what else might be there besides the road, tree,
and moon?
Those sorts of initial questions are posed and
addressed by the production’s designers and the technicians
who execute their designs. But they also lead to
questions of a different order. What are the dominant
feelings the audience might be expected to experience
when they first see the stage? What feelings should be
evoked afterward? Should audience members find the
environment mundane? shocking? hopeful? depressing?
Is the environment human or otherworldly? ancient
or futuristic? archetypal or unpredictable? What world
should the audience enter when the curtain or lights
come up and the play begins?
There are certainly as many designs for Waiting for
Godot as there are designers to tackle this particular
script. The same is true of any play: no matter how
detailed the playwright’s directions may be, the design
team and their collaborators ordinarily shape the production’s
visual and audio elements as they see fit.
Scenery
Scenery is usually what we first see—either when the
curtain rises in a traditional proscenium production or
as we enter the theatre if there is no curtain—and the
scene designer is usually listed first among designers in