Bioscenography

Parjad Sharifi

Abstract
Visual design in performance, known as scenography or stage design, is the art
of articulating time and space.1 To approach scenography using Deleuze and
Guattari’s critical theory from A Thousand Plateaus, there are two forms of
audience knowledge acquisition: the ‘tree’ or ‘familial’ form and the ‘rhizome’
form.2 Scenography in ‘familial’ form is the common design practice in which
scenographers design dramatic location, time, visual composition and mood of a
performance as sub branches and leaves of theatrical information tree. In this
design practice, human actors and humanoid puppets are the trunk of ‘tree’ and
main narrative agents.
In this article, using Deleuzian and Guttarian ‘schizoanalysis’, we argue that
scenography can expand its territories if scenographers form the narrative agency
in performance as rhizome, in which the whole elements of performance narrative
are on an equal level of significance.3 By proposing Bioscenography as a method
for scenography, we ‘deterritorialize’ the discourse of theatrical agency from
human actors and humanoid puppets to anthropomorphic non-representational
characters. We argue that Bioscenography produces inter-subjective assemblage
between spectator and performance by juxtaposing mediated tools of scenography
such as light, video, material and sound. Inspired from Artuad’s ‘Body Without
Organ’4 and Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘rhizome’, this article analyses
Bioscenography in the two performances: Chronos of A Dead Machine which was
premiered in London as part of DRHA 2010 and Collaborative Practices of
Interdisciplinary5 and Rasa Dance staged at SFU’s School of Contemporary arts in
2009.6

Keywords: Bioscenography, tree, rhizome, Bioscenographic character,

assemblage, character without organ, prosthetic agent, Ideolage, character
component, hybrid puppet.

*****

1. An Ontological Concern
What are the elements of theatre? How they exist and relate to each other in
order to transfer information to spectators? Is theatre an entity with different
departments and institutions that are rigidly structured and interact with each other
in an organized manner? Or there are schizophrenic and obscure interactions
between the different components.
Departments of theatre in ‘tree’ form are rigidly structured and there are
parent/child or master/slave relationships among them. In this form, scenography
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as a department is subordinate on transforming information to audience and acting
is the dominant driver of theatre. In the ‘tree’ form, the hierarchical relationship
among the different departments forms the theatre of representation.
For theatre to be sensational and affective for audience, it needs to be liberated
from oppressive form of representation. Theatre departments and their
relationships should be deconstructed ontologically and epistemologically.
To rethink about the ontology of theatre is to discover the nature of the
departments of theatre in contrast with the theatre of representation. For instance,
in the ‘tree’ form of representational theatre, narrative agency is given to human or
humanoid actors. However in an alternative rhizome mode, perpetual variations of
agency can be constructed by scenography. Thus rethinking the nature of the
departments leads us to reconfigure the relationships among them and transform
the ‘tree’ form to rhizome.

2. An Epistemological Problem
Epistemology for analyzing knowledge acquisition certainly has a longer
history in philosophy than in drama. Epistemology is a branch of philosophy that
questions the nature of knowledge and acquisition of it.7 Theatre theorists have not
brought up the significance of spectatorship knowledge acquisition till the
contemporary era. Brecht introduced Verfremdung translated as ‘alienation effect’
or ‘estrangement’ as a concept that has epistemological concerns. Verfremdung,
which is rooted in Hegel’s Entfremdung (estrangement) in Phenomenology of
Spirit and Marx’s ‘dialectic materialism’, offers a theatrical world that encounters
audience to dispel the signification of the oppressive world. This concept is an
epistemological tool to unleash the truth hidden behind the signified world. To
make Verfremdung effective and create social awareness for audience, theatre must
be estranged in order to distance itself from signification. This knowledge
transformation process is similar to dialectic materialism in which the minds of
audience become conscious and enact against oppression.8
Despite Brecht’s contribution to spectatorship and theatre epistemology, his
Verfremdung believes in offering solution to spectators and doesn’t liberate itself
from mimesis. Brecht believes in formation of knowledge from bourgeois
representation to epic pole of representation. The problem with this method is that
representation imposes itself to audience and doesn’t practically dispel audience
from signification because representation in essence is stratified and signified
phenomena.9
Within the same path as Brecht’s, theatre should be a political tool to unleash
the reality to spectators, but how to keep the same epistemological concern and
political mandate and also resist on representational theatre? Representation
ontologically imposes identity and unity prior to difference acted as negating
others. In the other words, the system of classification and identification is prior to
objects themselves. Thus, representation establishes hierarchy which itself is a
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political tool for oppression.10 In contrary to the theatre of representation and
negation for obtaining identity, ‘differential presence’ and ‘multiplicities’ can be
the foundation for establishing theatre epistemology. According to Deleuze for
creative mind to be in the state of ‘theatre without organ’, it needs to ‘think truly’
which is ‘thought without image’. Deleuze calls it a ‘fundamental encounter’ in
contrast to ‘objects of recognition’, which provides thought with ‘image in itself’.
The object of encounter, then presents itself to affect or sensation alone, rather than
to conscious thought or recognition.11 In short, destratification of theatre, which
becomes ‘theatre without organ’ is the result of perpetual/material variation and
differential presence and that leads towards performance of sensation.

3. Towards Deterritorialisation of Theatre

Deleuze and Guttari in A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophenia
used the analogy of ‘rhizome’ to explain a philosophical way of thinking.12
Rhizome unlike tree that grows vertically and has branches and sub branches,
spreads horizontally and does not have hierarchical structure. The examples of
rhizome in nature are asparagus, ginger and potato. Developing a similar analogy
and applying it to theatre epistemology, spectators can receive information in two
forms: the ‘tree’ or ‘familial’ form and the ‘rhizome’ form.
‘Tree’ forms the theatre of representation and ‘rhizome’ forms the theatre of
affect and non-representation. Representational theatre has consisted of several
departments such as text, acting, scenography and dramaturgy where these
departments have ‘familial’ power relations depending on the type of information
that they transfer to audience.
Scenography as the art of sculpting time and space has significant differences
in function and knowledge transformation in the two epistemological structures. In
the ‘tree’ structure, scenography is a tool for creating visibility, mood, metaphor
and location. For example, the variations on intensity and colour of lighting can
impact on the variations of moods and visibility of actors. In this structure, human
actors and/or humanoid puppets are the dominant agents of dramatic narrative.
Therefore, scenography in relationship to acting department is positioned as
subordinate, being a slave to its master that is the human actor and/or humanoid
puppet. Scenography as an entity in this system can only express itself in a limited
boundary. However, scenography has the potential to be a more effective tool than
what the representational theatre offers to spectators.
In order to go beyond the representation, the relationship among departments of
theatre must be deterritorialised. ‘Deteritorialisation’ and ‘reterritorialisation’ are
the behaviours of interaction between entities in rhizome. Sutton and Martine-
Jones explains the nature of these concepts:

Deleuze and Guttari use the examples of mutation between orchid and wasp
when the orchid deterritorialises itself by forming an image which is the trace of
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the wasp. Also wasp becomes a piece in the orchid’s reproductive apparatus by
reterritorialising and transporting orchid’s pollen. The concept of
deterritorialisation is the force to change and transformation to a new state and
reterritorialisation is the force to keep the former state or the new state into order
and to reduce the chaos.13

By applying Deleuzian and Guttarian world view into the ontology and
epistemology of theatre, scenography and other departments of theatre can
‘deterritorialise’ and ‘reterritorialise’ themselves to go beyond representation.
Rhizomatic mutation of theatrical entities such as acting and scenography,
obscures the boundary between these entities and leads to a novel theatre design
method to be born. In this theatre actors are the lights, and lights are the actors. In
other words, the notion of agency in this theatre can no longer belong to the
organization of acting. Scenography can ‘deterritorialise’ itself to take partnership
with acting in the creation of character agency. This methodology of design can be
earned through Bioscenography, which we introduce and explain in the next
section of this article.
Appia and Craig were the pioneers of ‘detteritorialisation’ of modern
scenography. Craig’s concept of ‘uber-marionets’ and ‘movable screens’ is the
evidence of his struggle towards democratization of agency in storytelling. There
are in fact numerous interpretations of his concepts, but there is no doubt about his
attempt for dispelling the centrality of human actors.14 Around the same time Appia
proposes ‘Word-Tone-Drama’, which suggests mutual subordination of music,
language, acting and lighting. Appia’s ‘Work Tone Drama’ was to shift the focus
of drama spectacle from human actors to the whole experience of theatre. Appia
not only ‘deterritorialises’ scenography but also proclaims liberation of the
audience from passive viewing and a call for their active observation of theatre.15
The ‘deterritorialisation’ of scenography can be earned through
Bioscenography. We introduce the characteristic of Bioscenography as a design
method in the following sections, and give close examples from two productions of
Rasa Dance and Chronos of A Dead Machine. Rasa Dance was a production at the
School of Contemporary Arts at SFU, 2009, created by Steven Hill and Rob
Kitsos, scenographed by Parjad Sharifi, inspired by a research paper on ‘Rasa
aesthetics’.16 This project is the exploration of emotion expression in ‘Rasa boxes’,
which were constructed, with nine equal squares of lights distributed evenly on the
stage. Each square was identified by a colour presenting an emotional state.
Chronos of A Dead Machine was a performance piece created by Parjad Sharifi
and performed in DRHA 2010, Sensual Technologies, and Collaborative Practices
of Interdisciplinary in London on September 2010. Chronos of A Dead Machine
shows the moments of hanging of a political prisoner. The short moments of
hanging are expanded into twenty minutes to give audience different possible
experience of moments before death. The set is consists of a head mannequin
 Parjad Sharifi 5
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acting as a human head strangled by a hanging rope and a huge projection surface
positioned in behind of the head. The show includes video and lighting pieces
mapped onto dummy’s head forming a hybrid puppet.

4.What is Bioscenography?
Bioscenography consists of bio meaning life and scenography being the art of
sculpting time and space. We call it Bioscenography because this method can give
life to characters created by scenographic tools. In Bioscenography scenographic
tools such as lights, set pieces, sounds, video footages are composed, either with
human body or without it, to form Bioscenographic characters. Human actors in
this case, instead of being the main derivers of narrative, operate objects or donate
their bodies to be part of ‘hybrid characters’. The hybrid of human body and
scenographic tools constructs a ‘prosthetic agent’.
Bioscenographic characters are complex entities made out of parts called
‘character components’. In the first scene of Chronos of A Dead Machine, before
the head mannequin starts talking, there is a rectangular form projected on the
screen synchronized with a breathing sound expanding and closing similar to a
lung. The abstract form of the square and the sound of breathing are each a
‘character component’ and they form a ‘character assemblage’ when they are
synchronized. The character components shape a temporal relationship in order to
constitute an assemblage. Another form of assemblage for constructing character is
spatial relationships. In Rasa Dance, the mutation between lights acting as
emotions and human actors form an assemblage of a Bioscenographic character.
The human actor by her/himself is not a character; neither is the light, but these
two ‘character components’ combined, initiate Bioscenographic characters.
Bioscenographic character of Chronos of A Dead Machine is the assemblage
of one interactive mouth and few video images of face features that are precisely
mapped on to a head mannequin in addition to projected videos on the screen. The
assemblage of videos and juxtapositions of eyes, hands, gloves and head
mannequin creates the character of condemned man. Audience experiences the
character by the collision of video images and without sensing the character as one
single body as experienced in human centred drama. Bioscenographic character is
a ‘body without oragan’(BWO). It is a term in The Logic of Sense created by
Deleuze borrowed from Antonin Artuad in the radio play, To Be Done With The
Judgment of God.17 The concept of BWO appears in following one of the
dialogues:

When you will have made him a body without organs, then you will have delivered
him from all his automatic reactions and restored him to his true freedom.18
6 Bioscenography
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5. Bioscenography as the Method of Designing Ideolage
Bioscenography in ‘rhizome’ form creates ‘character without organ’. Some
might assume that a digital representation of a human image as in films can be
related to Bioscenography. In contrast to human or humanoid representation of
characters, Bioscenography uses cinematic techniques to construct ‘character
without organ’ which is the realization of an idea of a character without sensing the
‘actual body’ of it in unity. The realization of the idea of Bioscenographic
character can be comparable to Deleuze’s notion of ‘virtual’ versus ‘real’. The
‘virtual’ never constitutes a body, and it continuously is in the state of becoming.
According to Deleuze, there are no single entities or bodies in the world.
Mountains, rocks, plants, animals and matter are in constant flux, transformation
and disposition from one to another. Therefore, the human reception for realizing
any phenomena as a single entity or body (being) is wrong because any actual
entity or body has a ‘virtual’ dimension to connect to other entities.19 Virtuality of
the body is the potentials and conditions of becoming another. The ‘virtual’ is not
representational but it is an idea.20 Consequently, Bioscenography is the apparatus
of ‘virtual character’. The ‘virtual character’ is neither representational nor an
image. Stage must be subtracted from constituting a complete mimesis of human
body as the deriver of characters. ‘Virtual character’ is the connection between
performance machine and audience brain screen. This connection creates Ideolage,
which is the synthesis of materiality between performance and audience’s brain
screen. Rasa Dance characters are virtual; they are bodies who can express
themselves by their ‘prosthetic light agents’ in which emotions are expressed in
continues variations and intensities. The assemblage throughout the play is in
constant reconfiguration. In Chronos the condemned character is composed of a
projected eye on the screen, a small eye mapped onto a head mannequin and holy
scriptures from Quran, Old and New Testament and a sound of a person mumbling
the scriptures. The character as an assemblage is not fixed by one configuration
and it transforms in each fragment. The assemblage in the second fragment is a
hand acting as a human head and a mouth projected on the head mannequin.
Juxtaposition of ‘character components’ in an assemblage can be compared to
ancient ideograms that Eisenstein mentions in his Film Theory.21 The collision of
abstract ideograms in a temporal juxtaposition can construct meaning. Eisenstein
claims that any individual shot can be juxtaposed so that the dialectic between the
shots forms an idea for audience. ‘Character components’ being videos, lights,
sounds and physical artefacts are comparable with Eisenstein’s dialectical
montage, so they can be juxtaposed temporal or spatial to form Ideolge. The use of
light for constructing meaning in Samuel Beckett’s plays that was inspired by
Eisenstein’s montage theory is evidence that scenographic tools can construct
ideas.22
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6. Summary
To unleash theatre from oppressive representational theatre, it needs to breath
in a different epistemological and ontological form to establish an affective
connection with audience. Theatre is not only a performance; it is a machine, a
performance/spectator assemblage that needs to be reconfigured in rhizome form.
To reach theatre of rhizome, it must be amputated and abjectified which is possible
with the subtraction of subject from representation and dispelling the hierarchy and
power of human acting as the dominant narrative agent. With Deleuzian and
Guttarian ‘schizoanalysis’ and Artaud’s ‘body without organ’, Bioscenography can
assist scenographers to apply techniques for creation of characters that are non-
representational and it introduces ways for creation of affective performance.
Bioscenography explores ways to create performance of sensation or genuine
thought and move beyond the performance of representation.

Notes
1
Pamela Howard, ‘World View’, In What is Scenography?, (2nd Ed. Washington,
DC: Taylor & Francis, 2009), XV-XX.
2
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, ‘Introduction:Rhizome.’ In A thousand
plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 1987), 3-29.
3
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia,
(1st ed. Univ Of Minnesota Press, 1983).
4
Antonin, Artuad,‘To Have Done with the Judgement of God’,
(Test Page for Apache Installation), Viewed April 20, 2011,
<http://ndirty.cute.fi/~karttu/tekstit/artaud.htm>.
5
Chronos of A Dead Machine, directed by Parjad Sharifi. (DRHA 2010 and
Collaborative Practices of Interdisciplinary, Brunel University, 2010).
6
Rasa Dance, directed by Steven Hill and Rob Kitsos, ( SFU School For The
Contemporary Arts, 2009).
7
K. DeRose, ‘What is epistemology’, A brief introduction to the topic 20
, Retrieved September 20 (2003): 2003.
8
P.Brask and H.H. Loewen, ‘Playing With Distances: A Probing into Brecht’s (Re)
Presentations’ In Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 2, no. 2 (1988), 69–80.
9
M. Kowsar, ‘Deleuze on Theatre: A Case Study of Carmelo Bene’s‘ Richard III’,
In Theatre Journal 38, no.1 (1986), 19–33.
10
SimonTormey,‘Not in my Name’: Deleuze, Zapatismo and the Critique of
Representation’, Parliamentary Affairs 59, no. 1 (January 2006), 138 -154.
11
L. Cull,‘How Do You Make Yourself a Theatre without Organs? Deleuze,
Artaud and the Concept of Differential Presence’ In Theatre Research
International 34, no.3 (2009), 243–255.
8 Bioscenography
__________________________________________________________________
12
Damian Sutton and David Martin-Jones, ‘What is a rhizome?’ In Deleuze
reframed: A guide for the arts student, (New York: I. B. Tauris, 2008), 3-11.
13
Sutton and Martin-Jones, Deleuze reframed: A guide for the arts student,
Chap.1.
14
E. G. Craig,& Chamberlain, F., ‘The actor and the uber-marionette’, In On the
art of the theatre, (New York: Routledge, 2008), 27-49.
15
C. M. Rogers, ‘Appia’s Theory of Acting: Eurhythmics for the Stage’ In
Educational Theatre Journal 19, no. 4 (1967), 467–472.
16
R. Schechner, ‘Rasaesthetics’ In TDR/The Drama Review 45, no. 3 (2001),
27–50.
17
Gilles Deleuze, The logic of sense, (Columbia: Columbia University Press,
1990).
18
Artaud, To Have Done with the Judgement of God.
19
Deleuze and Guattari, A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia,
Chap.3.
20
Adrian Parr, The Deleuze dictionary, (Columbia: Columbia University Press,
2005).
21
Sergei Eisenstein and Jay Leyda, ‘The cinematographic principle and the
ideogram’ In Film form; essays in film theory, (1st ed. New York: Harcourt, Brace,
1949), 28-45.
22
J.M.B. Antoine-Dunne, ‘BECKETT AND EISENSTEIN ON LIGHT AND
CONTRAPUNTAL MONTAGE’ In Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui 11, no.1
(2002), 315-323.

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(Re) Presentations’ In Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 2, no.2.1988.

Craig, E. G., and F. Chamberlain. ‘The actor and the uber-marionette’, In On the
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Cull, L. ‘How Do You Make Yourself a Theatre without Organs? Deleuze, Artaud
and the Concept of Differential Presence’ In Theatre Research International 34,
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Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. ‘Introduction:Rhizome.’ In A thousand

plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia, 3-29. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1987.

---. Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. 1st ed. Univ Of Minnesota

Press, 1983.
 Parjad Sharifi 9
__________________________________________________________________

DeRose, K, ‘What is epistemology’, A brief introduction to the topic 20

, Retrieved September 20 (2003): 2003.

Deleuze, Gilles. The logic of sense. Columbia: Columbia University Press, 1990.

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Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis, 2009.

Kowsar, M. ‘Deleuze on Theatre: A Case Study of Carmelo Bene’s‘ Richard III’,

In Theatre Journal 38, 19–33. no.1,1986.

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CONTRAPUNTAL MONTAGE’ In Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd’hui, 315-323.
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Representation’, Parliamentary Affairs 59. 138 -154. no. 1, January 2006.