Dear Simon,

When asked to provide you with practical tips for scenographers for in a book I did
not hesitate. Now actually preparing to write you I did not know which ones to chose.
This makes perfect sense because my practice first of all is teaching scenography. I
have been training young scenographers in the Netherlands for 27 years, and you
could see that practice as a chain of tips. It all started in the nineties with the need for
a dramaturgical eye in the practice of the scenographer, during the process of
designing. Dramaturgy radically changed the training of scenographers. An aesthetic,
fine art/design related practice started to relate itself to narrative, meaning, semiotics,
concepts. What am I adding to the dramatic narrative? What am I writing in space?
became core questions.
This dramaturgical eye contributed to the emancipation of the discipline, it uplifted
scenography and the scenographer. It has also provided the scenographer with a
whole new toolbox. Downside of which was an overconcern with analytical approach,
rational motivation, meaning and readability, leading to symbolism and
intellectualism and questions such as: why is it this, why did he/she do that? In other
words, scenographic design became something to be motivated on a rational
conceptual level. An art of the head.
The past 10 years I found myself, undoubtedly under the influence of larger
movements and ‘zeitgeist’, resetting my frame and looking differently at scenographic
practice, and my role as a teacher.

Now from the moment we started seeing the scenographer as a theatre artist she/he
had to relate to the art as an expression, showing a personal artistic signature, while at
the same time being involved in a very complex creative process. Instead of the ‘why
questions’, one sees oneself dealing with ‘what questions’ and ‘how questions’. What
do you want to make? What is your signature? What makes you stand out? What is
your art about? What inspires you, what do you want to tell, what do you want to
express? These in my opinion are questions of the heart. What makes your (he)art
tick? The answers might be seen as important for audiences, critiques etc., but maybe
even more so they are important for the position of the scenographer within a group of
artists working on a theatre piece. The way these artists work influences the work
itself and hence also your specific artistic contribution, and vice versa, what and how
you contribute as an artist influences the way you work together. So of equal
importance are questions concerning this process of (co-) creation: how do I work
best, how do I want to work, how does this group work, how do I influence this
process? These ‘how questions’ for the scenographer necessarily translate into
practical questions such as: when will I attend working sessions, how often? in what
kind of environment do I want to work: what does my studio look like? where is my
studio? But also: what kind of materials do I want to work with, what kind of
techniques? What do I need around me? Gradually the art of scenography returned
back into the realm of the hand.
It stands to reason that this has become a focus in my approach to the education of
scenographers. This is supported by the fact that within arts and within academics
artistic research as well as the nature of creative processes became focus points. This
all circles around a growing awareness that art and especially live art and design can
have a large impact on and meaning for social design, science and innovation. This
transdisciplinary potential also makes artists themselves look closely into their own
creative processes. And into the specific crafts and skills belonging to their art.
This all has led me to new thoughts and new ways of approaching the design process.
As we tend to do things the way we are used to do things, I saw a great challenge and
gain in a process of deconditioning, both for myself and my students/young
scenographers. What if we assume the position of ‘not knowing’. Not knowing what
to do, how to do it, what we want the result to be, etc. Can we then through practice
find out what the true nature of our creative process is, and can we re-design it? Can
we re-configure ourselves, in order to prevent us from working from assumptions,
from answers we already have and from a design process, which just creates
variations on one theme. Can we find a way to acknowledge that there are more ways
of looking at something?

Looking at things or should I say the act of observing is most important for theatre
artists and especially scenographers. It is actually the start for every student that wants
to become a designer for theatre or performance. If you are making art that relies on
the presence of spectators, first of all we should train ourselves to be one. And given
my point of view above, this is and should not be about one way of looking at things.
And training this spectatorship should not be done solely in an educational setting.
Maybe the eye for the scenographer is what the body is for the dancer. And it might
be that the eye and the mind become lazy, or should one say economic. So this should
be maintained properly, to prevent from starting to see what you are used to see or
think to see.

This leads me to the following tips:

Try the savage eye – look for the unfamiliar. This is a very important view, and I
must say at the same time almost impossible, since we seem to understand the world
on the basis of duality. We can understand the unfamiliar as that which is not familiar.
Hence it is always set against the familiar through associations, interpretations,
stories, aesthetics that you know. Something makes you think of …. . But the looking
for it creates an awareness of what happens meanwhile. You might try to stop giving
meaning to it, and just note and observe.
Train the objective eye – This is a helpful way and it gives you another reality then
the one you make in your head: look at reality as a series of facts. Now of course the
interesting part is that it opens up questions about what facts are, how many sorts of
facts exist and where they stop to be facts. You will get a series of different lives of
the world as objects: historical, biographical, material, social, and can even describe
the sensory or emotional as facts, it is largely in the way you put it.
Feed the tactile eye - Try and focus on one layer of reality, for instance look in
everything for sensations: tactility, temperature, mass, form, weight, anything that
evokes a physical reaction. This actually is almost unnecessary to say to a
scenographer. If you ask students to ‘experience’ space then acting students will start
moving around, scenography students will start touching the floor, walls and
furniture. But purposely I say ‘feed the tactile eye’ with an emphasis on eye. Do not
forget that visuality is mainly what we are dealing with in theatre and scenography, so
the question is not what does something feel like, but what does something look like
that evokes a certain physical sensation.

And then, all of these ways of looking zoom into realities that exist alongside each
other. It would be a mistake to design realities only from one point of view. You can
find more of different ways of looking yourself. They give you as a scenographer the
opportunity to look at things as if you see them for the first time. And open
possibilities for designing a world that can do exactly the same or if you want the
opposite. Because it is vital to understand it provides you with ideas and material for
design. Then finally, I am fully aware that these tips are not brilliant eye-openers and
that they actually seem extremely obvious. But it is my conviction that as soon as
something enters the realm of the obvious we will not use it anymore, because we feel
we have to create new stuff. And we close our eyes to many discoveries and hidden
worlds.
Therefore you have to:
Maintain a scenographic eye – look at the world as a design.
My collegue Liesbeth Groot Nibbelink uses this term and recently asked me if it
makes sense. I still have to answer her while I am writing this, but it made me think of
the ‘tips’ Elinor Fuchs wrote in her essay ‘EF's Visit to a Small Planet: Some
Questions to Ask a Play’, written in the nineties, but still used at large in dramaturgy
lessons, not only by me. She advises: “To see this entire world (...): Mold the play
into a medium-sized ball, set it before you in the middle distance, and squint your
eyes. Make the ball small enough that you can see the entire planet, not so small that
you lose detail, and not so large that detail overwhelms the whole.”

We could title my contribution: ‘Why, what, how: from head, to heart, to hand’, or
‘the eye of the beholder’.
Dear Simon, did I mention ‘zeitgeist’ already, the spirit of the age, l’esprit du siècle?
Of course I am highly influenced by some people.
People who inspire me are: Rancière, Nirav Christophe, the Wachowskis, Deleuze,
Trudi Maan, Shakespeare, Elinor Fuchs.
Thanks for the opportunity. Love Henny.

Biography and image will follow