World Stage Design

Farley was invited by the Director of World Stage Design 2013 and OISTAT (International Organisation for Scenographers, Theatre Architects and Technicians) to select and curate the ‘World Stage Design’ (WSD) Exhibition 2013. The output was co-authored with Reija Hirvikoski, Chair of OISTAT Performance Design and a member of OISTAT Governing Board and Aby Cohen, Founder-member of CenografiaBrasil and Vice President of OISTAT. 100 exhibitors were chosen from over 600 submissions from 57 countries. For the first time in the UK, WSD 2013 was an international exhibition of performance design, incorporating theatre, opera and dance. It consisted of a ten-day academic and professional practice event comprising talks, workshops and performances centred on the WSD Exhibition and was open to the public. The aim of World Stage Design 2013 was to offer an international platform to celebrate the multi-disciplinary nature of current performance practice and to examine the interface of performance design with new technologies, media, architecture, sustainability and fine art. International professional practitioners from all creative sectors worked alongside students and teachers to share knowledge and understanding of current practice on a global scale. This exhibition is a continuation of Farley’s research into how Theatre Design practice can be exhibited, documented, archived and disseminated to theatre specialists, students and the general public. ‘WSD’ enabled Farley to extend this research, which sets out to reveal the working practices and conceptual processes of designers, to a global context. The educational events associated with World Stage Design drew on and interrogated the Design for Performance practice demonstrated in the exhibition. Farley’s reflections, and those of the co-curators of WSD are published in the catalogue that accompanied the exhibition.