Output details

'Directors and Designers'

Edited Book with 3 chapters from the author

Additional Chapters

'Back and Forth to Russia: Scenography as an Academic Study from Moscow 1994-St Petersburg 2004', p.9 -18.

'Methodological Practices for Directing & Designing', 135-148

'The Seductive Scene in Directors & Designers', 165-178.

The chapters interrogate a view of spectacle which is linked to modes of production design. It looks at the nature of conceptual design in this context and references new readings of texts for visual representation which take the lead from a previous practice of stagings, which provided contextual explanations rather than visual representations of such concepts. These chapters develop from White’s critical understanding of the changes in both the relationships of the creative partnerships for film and theatre, representing a discussion of all manner of viewable and designed spaces both live and screens, which enable audiences to receive and make judgements about the work before them in very different contexts.

'Directors and Designers' explores twentieth century design for film and theatre. It references visual languages of communication, aesthetics of space, and the cognitive reception of design by audiences. The collaborations and creative relationships discussed in the chapters by invited contributors illuminate this creative relationship for the reader. The overarching research question and context for the research was: How do the collaborations of Directors & Designers in a variety of contexts, in live performance and film, communicate their visual ideas, as they work through the developing structures of production processes.

White explores the readings and mis-readings of the nature of creative collaborations and delivers three chapters of her own, which set the work of directors and designers in the twentieth century into context. The research and her own chapters builds on her investigations with international research groups into the theory and practice of design, a history of painterly style and influence of fine arts and the economic drivers of production. She has developed an extensive international network of scholars to contribute to the book and built on relationships built over the last 10 years of conferences and symposiums alongside her editorial work with the online journal,‘Scenography International’, 1999-2010. There is no other publication that looks at the creative relationships and practices that ensue in this way across film and theatre production. The explorations selected in the work and consider the political and aesthetic landscapes,how they effect/affect the ways in which designers have worked.

'Considering designers from the infamous (Jo Mielziner, Mac Gorelik) to Jean Cocteau (and his contributions to "design as action"),… The volume reveals how designer and director influence each others artistic vision and application and looks at the intersection through the viewpoint of scenographers, both historical and contemporary. [...] Highly recommended.' – J Artman, Chapman University