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| On Stage Design Anita Vanaga Stage design, alongside the theatre, is born of the spirit and experience of a sacred rite. Its primary task was to lead the participant through a sacred space until finally the hidden meaning of the ritual is revealed. As the theatre became more profane, stage design was limited to showing the way to the place of action. The 20th century returned stage design to the big system where, through the use of the broadened discourse of conceptualism, literature came across architecture, art, music... As soon as a new model of the structure of the world, style of art, material or technology appears, stage design hurries to adapt it for its own use. It can use brilliant discoveries, stereotypes and clichés, as well as other products of sub-culture. Nothing is wasted. By nature a kind of omnivore. Does stage design create anything new? Stage design creates its own space. In the Babel of forms it finds possibilities for synchronous translation and changes in language. It can be seen from at least two points of view - from inside and outside the production. In the end stage design can comment about itself. This gives the third point of view, the "third eye". Many stage designers, like migrating birds, seek their fortunes outside the theatre taking with them the thinking of a director. Ilmārs Blumbergs, Izolde Cēsniece, Gints Gabrāns, Monika Pormale, Vilnis Vējš, Mārtiņš Vilkārsis... There are stage designers who, having been tempted into the theatre from the other arts, bring with them their individuality as we can see in the work of Aigars Bikše and Ieva Jurjāne. The absolute stage designer is a rarity. Andris Freibergs is a rarity. Stage design creates universal coherences in a situation of heightened tension from fragments and scraps of life, from individual words and angles. Thus Isis revived Osiris by gathering up his divided body or, as another variation of the myth has it, by conceiving from her dead husband. Stage design renews the creative force. The theory of relativity makes us ask - stage design creates something new in relation to what? In relation to the spectator. Art scholar Vitaly Paciukov wrote: "Previously in a linear perspective, the spectator found himself outside the boundaries of observable reality. But from today's point of view, he is forever crossing the border of experimental reality that separates the spectator from the participant." At the beginning of the 20th century, British stage designer and theorist Gordon Craig regarded the actor as an element of stage design. This was considered most revolutionary, contemporary stage design had already managed to integrate the viewer - literally. The spectator had become a component of the stage design. Here lies the answer to Izolde Cēsniece's question about "my stage design". Integrating stage design contains within it both the concept of the performance as well as its self-reflection that creates a new layer, as it should in the age of total commentary. |
| Cheeses, Noodles and Various Gifts Andris Dzenītis Life is short, Art long, Occasion fleeting, Experience treacherous, Judgment difficult. Hippocrates (from Nic Gotham's composition "Fruits of the Earth") |
