The Mise-en(online)-Scene

Wayfinding: Spotlights > User Interface > The Mise-en(online)-Scene

Whether physical or digital, the mise-en-scene is an integral part of the dramaturgy of the work; in a digital space, the mise-en-scene might include factors within the software or online platform that are beyond the control of the theatre makers, including location of the live chat function, interruption from banner ads, playback speeds or latency issues, the location of play and pause buttons, and whether the platform offers subtitles or language interpretation.

User interaction with software has influenced the perception of engagement before – software use with theatre performance:

The orchestration of probability and causality is the stuff of which dramaturgy is made. By manipulating probability, the playwright shapes the dramatic world, the plot, and (indirectly) the audience’s involvement with it. Similarly, probability can be deployed by designers of human-computer interaction to shape what people do and feel in the context of a particular virtual world.

In our post-pandemic, postdigital culture, users engagement with software is defined in specific ways which can impact theatre performances using specific platforms. : ‘The properties of individual technologies orient and shape the spectators’ individual and collective experience by issuing powerful … cognitive and affective prompts which orient spectators towards responding to the performance in ways that cannot be disentangled from the ideologies which fed into the design'.

This may feed into some technophobia or dystopian fears, but it is just as true to consider the theatre building itself a user interface designed by ideologies: an infamous example is the Total Theatre, from the Bauhaus design movement in Weimar Germany, led by Oskar Schlemmer starting in 1921. : ‘Not the least of its functions is to serve the metaphysical needs of man by constructing a world of illusion and by creating the transcendental on the basis of the rational’. The philosophical architecture of the Weimar theatre space lent itself to a specific type of stage production, triggering a specific dramaturgical interpretation of works staged there and : ‘theatre buildings themselves are technologies of performance whose affordances have a determining impact on how plays may be staged and viewed within them’. Encountering the constraints of online video streaming platforms, second wave theatre makers incorporated some of these, or turned them off to force a specific type of audience attention.