Joanna Piestrzyńska

What I find the most fascinating in colour disposition in scenography is its resemblence with colours of the cosmos. When we watch all those spectacular photos of our Universe taken by Hubble telescope or the VLT we can easily find and recognize almost always the same colour structure – neverending black darkness of the void with an islands of colourfull light – rosa, blue and red, orange, yellow, foggy white.

The dialogue of light and darkness, of void and matter – this is for me the ultimate beauty, and this is my colour pattern in every design. The space of stage in theatre is always black – it is for me the perfect image of the void, which is waiting for fulfilling lights. So we reached the edge of creation, our scenic event horizon. Every colour of light in this void will from now on represent the matter – also remains of creation, remains of constructive force. In the Universe this force is for us unknown, in theatre the designing mind could be this force, and stage design – aweken to life by scenic lights – could be the matter, the seed of everything. It may be shameless to put oneself next to creative force of the Universe, but on the other hand theatre should provoke to reflection, and looking only around and never looking up would mean dissolution of our civilisation.

I think that seeing stage design in such a wide perspective is crucial, because in the end theatre brings us through scenography to something that was always the most important in our human experience – the feeling of belonging. We see, we think, we recognize, we try to understand things and give them names, and then we create – and we can reflect on the world using nothing more than a colour and a form. We can reflect on the world in the same way in which Universe reflects on itself – through the simple occurrence.

Susanna Schlosstheater Schönbrunn Wien

Susanna as a character in Händel's play represents for me spiritual parts of human existance, a potential yet to be discovered, asleep and suppressed eternal energy of a female, which slowly awakens and manifests itself, and leads to liberation. But it seems to me that Händel portrayed this particular female somehow unilateral. Just like in Shakespeare's plays, where women seem to lack a third dimension, Händel's Susanna acts exactly the way how the patriarchal and conservative society would expect of her, and how all the men of this world would want her to. Händel portrayed an IMAGE of a woman – gloryfied and ideal, but not the woman herself. A stereotypical figure, an example, a bearing awaited and desired by threatened masculinity.

But isn't the embracing of what is really female a trully key to liberation of a woman? Not fullfilling the expectations of patriarchal imaginations, but only understanding the femininity and making it the real source of one's eternal strenght could really liberate Susanna. Tellural goddes, Mother Earth, sacred feminine – throughout the history woman's sexual energy was cultivated as a foundation of all life in the Universe. Female sexuality does not refer only to it's practical consequences, but it is always connected to cosmogony, the birth of all Materia, and theogony. Female sexual potency empowers the cycle of life and death, it is eternal, it is the strongest force of the living Cosmos, and that is why it is also the source of an enormous power.

Should we look at Susanna through optic of matriarchal and tellural mythology? Does she represent the creative forces of the cosmos knowingly? Susanna is a happily married woman, in times long before sexism und misogyny unleashed by catholic church of middle ages had appeared. She is already a lover, but not yet a mother. Is she aware of her sexual power? Does she use it to control men? Does she enjoy being looked at? Is that the thing which she is really being judged for? It would be easy to just answer no to all this questions, but it would make Susanna very plain – and that is an attribute which we can rarely address to women. I don't think she would ever betray Joachim, or that she could even think of it, but I think she could intentionally expose her physical beauty, because it lays in a very nature of women to want to be observed and admired by men.

Do elders want to punish Susanna for being what they had wished they could understand and possess? The only power which men have over women comes from a physical strenght – is that the real source of their anger?

I guess that on a practical level of thinking about this play I would want to give Susanna this third dimension – awareness, aknowledged femininty, spiritual strenght that comes from sexual energy, self-consciousness achieved through connection with the real self, with true womanhood, which would also mean the acceptance of her own body and the influence that it has on men. This could be visualized by enriching the temple of Susnna's soul with tellural symbols, and by adding to its inside another layer.

As I mentioned before, the meaning of forms in the existent space depends on the space itself and reversed – they influence one another, and this relationship is unbreakable, as relativistic physics tells us. Although it sounds trivial, and it is a common knowledge, it is indeed rarely deeply acknowledged. We tend to understand our civilisation intuitively, because that is how the evolution tought us to perceive the world in general – we needed to depend on our instincts in order to survive. And that intuitive recognition concerns art and architecture especially, because eyesight is our primal sense, and both art and architecture are highly aesthetic branches or products of our evolution as the human kind. Everything that we see affects at first our aesthetical recognition, even on the field of scientific examination – in perception the form is always first, and the meaning just follows. The artist takes this process, and reverses it – he takes the meaning, and transforms it to a form.

Using the knowledge of geometry our ancestors built our civilisation, and they understood the dependencies and learned how to use them in order to communicate with others. And they also learned how to use this dependencies in oposite way – if followed, they were exploring the reality, but if obeyed or used in unusual constellation – they were becoming abstract.

Geometry is our remedy for overcoming nature – it defeats for us the entropy, or delays it at least, for the time needed. The cosmos orientates itself naturally towards chaos, because chaotic structures need less energy to preserve themselvs. We are condemned to fight this cosmic entropy, infinitely – sometimes it just means that we need to cut the grass in the garden every week, or shave bodyhair everyday, but in the bigger picture we fight for something much more important – we are winning time in this constant struggle with the fiorces of nature.

On the stage we can build anything – we can put a bed inside the kitchen, or an oven to the bedroom. But every decision, that breaks normal spatial dependencies, every intentionally abnormal conjunction of forms affects the understanding of the play, and produces an important conclusions. We use it as a form of dialoge with the audience. The cognitive science tells us, that viewers perception is limited, and while siting in theathre or watching a film we cannot literary observe and aknowledge at once everything what appears in front of our eyes. That is why it is extremely important to plan a spatial journey for viewers – put elemnts on the stage in an appropriate order and in suitable colours, to balance them properly, so they could become the couriers of the information, that we want to share with the audience, so they could become our messengers.

Every three dimensional shape holds the unique meanings on a many varied levels. The form owns the concrete set of geometrical patterns, the form dialogues with the surrounding, because they share together spatial dependencies – the form is the consequence of the surrounding space, and the shape and meaning of  space depend on the existence of forms. For instance – if we want to put a bed into a room, we need to consider the parameters of the room, its location and geometry, which in the end defines our choice. And reversed – if we put a bed into a room, the room becomes the bedroom, and it would be awkward to try to make there also for instance a kitchen.

The Form is also an aesthetic – it holds the neverending beauty, which comes from the geometrical harmony. This harmony discovers for us the ways in which our Universe works, it shows us the cosmic rules and explains the laws of physics. Both organic and inorganic worlds are build geometrically, every form and organism have three-dimensional structure, which we are able to recognize and explore. With this exploration comes wisdom and understanding – the aim of every aware being, and the aim of every artist especially.

The form is also the Sign. For instance: the shape of leafs is the sign of the plant, it tells us the story of the growth and needs of the plant, shapes of rocks are geographical signs – they tell us the story of the place – the geological processes, the natural disasters, the weather conditions, the inhabitants. The form is a set of given information – and we need to read it in order to live with awareness. Every spatial sign hold for us very important message – if we are able to uncover its meaning, we will be also able to use it as a tool for communication.

The duty of the scenographer is to make the viewers understand the symbolic of events in the play through secret meanings of the form, through form to speak, through form to explain symbols, through form to express an aesthetic. The shape and colour, the light, the atmosphere – these are the necessary ingrediens.

Scenography is a complex, artistic and scientific way of discovering the connection between Form and existance, and passing it to the viewers in  the process of sharing.

Stage design is for me a philosophy, written with form, colour and image. I was always fascinated with the idea, that spatial concepts represent the certain understanding of the world. Scenography defines the persona played by the actor, just like the space defines us as the people – geometry organizes the Universe and brings it for us out of the chaos, and leads us towards harmony and comprehension of being.

I started to work as a stage designer when I was still studying science of theatrical matters, and when I was especially interested in semiotics and cognitive aspect of the theatre theory. During stage design studies I rediscovered geometry, which is now for me the unfailing source of inspiration. Maybe that is why scenography stays for me always between art and science. I always try to combine those two factors in my work, and I try to remember, that in order to be able to communicate with the audience I need to know the language of the form, and operate it also on a deeper, subconscious level.