Guest Editors’ Introduction: Scenographies of Absence, Scenes of Disappearance

This special double issue of Theatre and Performance Design: Scenographies of Absence, Scenes of Disappearance, seeks to locate scenography as generative force in contemporary theatre and performance-making that calls into question the normative expectation that theatre operates as a site for the appearance of the figure of the human, given embodied form in the material presence of the actors representing them. It examines how scenographic practices have eschewed this dramatic (and even post-dramatic) ür-convention to create a scene in which the protagonist is displaced, dispersed, disappeared or in the process of disappearing. Our leading investigative premise has been to question whether this theatre of non-appearance occurs precisely because the scene presented is one of political disappearance. In this context, we examine how the scenographic apparatus itself performs, creating the sonic and visual score of the performance text. This special double issue explores how scenographic means are deployed to claim, contest, and re-mediate the meaning of the actor’s absence whether considered as an intentional political action or a forced disappearance. In presenting the scene of disappearance as a site of performative construction, it investigates how an actor-less mise en scène enables the scenographic apparatus itself to appear as the lead actor in a political ‘aesthetics of absence’.