In your dense yet marvelously delightful book, What is Scenography? you hinted at many channels of resistance towards “scenographers.” Simply, why do you think the notion as well as practice of “scenography” is still so little understood or much misunderstood? Any cultural or artistic bias?

In Eastern and Western Europe, the word “scenography” has always been used and easily understood, both by the practitioners and the public. However, the invasive influence of American theatre interpreted it to be a European way of describing “set design,” and inevitably that influenced other English speaking countries. From the Greek — skeno-grafika — the writing of the stage space… it doesn’t seem so extraordinary to me. So I am always surprised when people get rather uptight about it. I have been told by theatres that “there is not enough space on the programme for such a long word.” Others (as in a very recent experience) pronounced it “fancy.”

So, I do think there is a cultural misunderstanding that stems from the American separation via the different unions of set design and costume design which is the antithesis of scenography: the total and holistic creation of visual staging. (The section in my book entitled “World View” contains numerous other opinions worldwide.) Artistically, in this time of spatial exploration and economic stringency, it makes both artistic and economic sense to begin by regrading the performers in the space, and responding to the architecture. Do you remember at Barnard in 2001 when we staged the workshop just in the studio yet we made the sea and the land so simply? And the doorways and everything…^[1] I thought it was magic.

Given its composite nature and organic process, will scenography be able to replace directing?

I rather like to think of it as “creation” and not replicating the conventional directing — which I am sure can coexist. There are so many visual artists who are “artists taking the Lead” and making their own work. From the great Heiner Goebbels to Punchdrunk Theatre’s Felix Barratt, and the young visual artist Becs Andrews… many artists in Spain and beyond who work in an interdisciplinary way. I observe that visual artists are never nervous or afraid of directing taking over scenography, but directors are too often and unecessarily afraid of scenographers taking over directing. There are exceptions. Like the work of the director Katie Mitchell (see her recent work at Salzburg ) and Deborah Warner in her site-specific work, two unafraid women directors… so is it also a gender fear? I am sorry to say it seems also to be so.