HowlRound: It is often useful to use the chair as an example because it perfectly encapsulates many of the concepts and ideas we struggle with in theatre. This article is not alone in this usage as it is often used as an entry into theatrical thinking. For the purpose of this piece, the chair will remain the central figure. It is easy to say that a chair is necessary, and it could be argued that this is as far as one’s thinking needs to go. However, let us take a moment and consider what it means to put a chair into a charged space such as the theatre. In this circumstance, nothing is simply what it is.
6 comments:
This article felt devastatingly similar to the box projects' semiotic components. I wish I had read this before trying to make these statements and ask these "chair" questions with my projects. One component we focused on in the box projects was narrowing down necessary elements- "How does this chair add to the environment of the project? Is its contribution necessary?". I think this project and exercises like this elaborate single chair article are important for designers because often editing can be the most difficult part of the design process. It would be a daunting but very helpful class to go through a whole set and think "Is this element necessary? What does it add to this scene? What does it add to the show overall?" Also, someone shared an interesting quote at the bottom of the page, I wanted to copy it in case anyone missed it: "I am I said/ To no one there/ And no one heard at all/ Not even the chair?"
In high school, I was always kind of proclaimed as the student "scenic designer" but a lot of my experience came from being trained as a carpenter by our technical director. Because of this, I became a very logical thinker and now, especially in design classes, I find that I'm struggling discovering specific elements of design as discussed in this article. Before reading this article, I never considered just how symbolic a chair really can be. If I were to be the one building this chair, I would just think about it's physical appearance and wouldn't think too much about how it's placed; I look at a chair and I see a chair. I think it's interesting how the article talks about the actions taken with the chair and what they could come to mean. This goes to show how two different chairs could have a similar meaning depending on what the actor chooses to do with it. Taking it even further, the article talks about just how the chair is placed which can create meaning without anyone even beginning to interact with it. I hope to consider these things in my future college career and to create stronger semiotic meanings in my work.
Along with Mark and Katherine, this article is more prevalent than ever to use having just finishing our box projects and presentations on semiotics for Susan's design class. I find myself running into the same issues that Mark has mentioned, where being more factually minded and rooted in the constructs of reality have a tendency to inhibit the truer thought behind the designs in these projects. Having come from a background in only costume design, where the thought of every design is so closed off to the world of just only clothing, having to look at objects now and see the symbols behind things like, in the case of the article, chairs, I find it hard to look past it's obvious function instead of finding the "itness" of the thing. This article posed many good points that help me conceptualize and bring me past the facts through thought.
I immediately thought of Susan’s words about semiotics when I saw the title of this article: “Consider the ‘itness’ of the thing”. The perfect example of a chair being used as not just a chair but a symbol of character and plot was the throne in Edward II. I thought the use of the chair to establish a power dynamic, parallels to the struggles of the king, and as a character in the tableaus made the audience think about what it meant to disrespect and throw around a chair that is associated so much with leadership and superiority. Everything you put on a stage is going to mean something in the context of the world, something in the context of the given society is performed about/in, something personal to the theatergoer. I know there are scenic designers out there who put stuff in with little thought or study of what it can means, but still that reflects some sort of semiotic message.
Like my fellow commenters I also found a connection with this article and the recent box projects that we have done. I also agree with the article about as designers were need to expand are thinking and see beyond object in front of us and look more closely at all perspectives. I, however, do get a little annoyed whenever a person uses a chair as an example of an object that can have multiple meanings and like “oh, look at a simple item, like a chair! Yep, even a chair could have many meanings and be interpreted many different ways!”, because it is used so much and I feel like a chair is an obvious one. For one chairs have history, as long as people have wanted to sit on something, chairs have been around. 2nd chairs are limited to specific kinds of people. Practically everyone person has sat in a chair at least once in their lives. We has humans had years to assign different meanings to different kind of chairs, etc. So to think of a chair to be more of a thing you sit on isn’t too hard to see once someone has pointed it out to you. And then it becomes a like “Oh cool” moment. I’m not saying that people should stop using a chair as an example, because of the reason that it is obvious and you could come up with multiple questions to ponder. I just think maybe something a little harder to read will be more helpful, because I feel like whenever I go do my own object that I’m always stuck on finding deeper meanings because my object isn’t as easy to read as a chair!
This article is quite literally what Dick tries to explain to us in our Intro to Scenic Design class. If you put a chair onstage, what is the expectation? What does it mean? Who is going to sit in it? Are we in an indoors space? What if it’s center stage, facing the audience? What if it’s slightly tilted towards the side? What if it’s a Design II swivel chair? What if it's an armchair, a lawn chair? What if it’s a throne? What if the first thing an actor does when they walk onstage is sit in the chair? How do they sit in it? What if the first thing an actor does when they walk onstage is tip the chair over? I feel like I’m starting to learn what he’s talking about while we have started doing scenic renderings and ground plans in that everything that is put onstage (or isn’t) is a conscious decision, and means something in terms of the story and the relationships between the characters. During our ground plan assignment for The Little Foxes, we talked about how the arrangement of sofas and chairs and tables substantiated the relationship between the characters in terms of love and power dynamics. In short, no, a chair is never just a chair!
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