Scenic appropriation of representation systems from the past, and its ideological dimension

Abstract

[Excerpt] In 2013, when mala voadora – the theatre company I belong to – reached its 10th year of existence, I published a catalogue with a few sets and gave it the title ways of doing nothing. I’m more fond of manipulating things that already exist than designing new things from scratch. As an example, in 2012 I used the external image of a theatre to create the set for a play taking place inside that same theatre. In 2014, for Hamlet, I designed a set based on the image of the stage's proscenium, reproduced over and over in a progressively smaller scale, in the same way baroque scenographers used to do. I was accused of plagiarism because of this set. It happened immediately after the play was presented at the Theatre de la Cité Internationale in Paris. I was accused of copying the set designed by Michael Levine in 2011 for a staging of the opera Don Giovanni at La Scala, in Milan. Since the accusation was anonymous, I made it public myself through social media, taking the opportunity to explain (as I had before, at the time of the play's premiere) that my design for Hamlet was indeed a copy, but of Český Krumlov castle’s baroque theatre, in Czech Republic, from 1765/66. [...]