The Semiotics of Action Design

Action Design, a scenographic methodology with its formative roots in the former Czechoslovakia, is, in fact, an approach to all aspects of theatre production. Its theory encompasses not only the creation and utilization of sets, costumes, and lighting, but also the entire realization of the performance text. A highly metaphorical approach, it eschews decoration for its own sake. The term Action Design designates an approach to scenography that is physically and psychologically functional, and intimately interactive with the actor. ¹ Its principles and manifestations, however, have been both embraced and misunderstood. Some dismiss it as an impractical approach to theatre whose only validity lay in its now obsolete strategy of obfuscation in the face of Communist party censors—a fine vehicle in a closed society, but too obscure for practical use in a free world. On the contrary, we will argue that Action Design is a contemporary practice for forward-thinking artists, a practice that has moved beyond its structuralist roots and previous political contexts. Any consideration of Action Design must come to terms with it as a current, ongoing method of creating theatrical performances. Although rooted in the theatrical history of the Czech people, it is contemporary and relevant to theatrical artists throughout the world. ²

The Principles of Action Design

Action Design is an approach to scenography based upon four main principles. The first is function: everything placed onstage must be either physically or psychologically functional and vital. Mere decoration or interior design tends to dull and obscure direct and effective theatrical communication. Fanciful flights of abstraction, however, can have an equally deadening effect. Abstraction, if not well connected to the dramatic action and the actor’s physical and psychological movement through the dramatic action, is, after all, only another form of decoration.

A second principle of Action Design is its emphasis on collaboration. The scenic environment must be created after a rigorous examination of the text in close collaboration with the director. The focus on collaboration leads to a common misunderstanding about Action Design: that it happens magically, and only if the designer and director have known each other for a long time or they are somehow psychically joined at the hip. An effective collaboration in the United States between Jaroslav Malina and Ronald Willis has been fully documented in the article, “Jaroslav Malina Designs Antigone,” published in Theatre Design & Technology in 1988. Willis and Malina had known each other less than a month at the time of the collaboration. Other successful collaborations with Malina have occurred in Ohio with Joseph Brandesky and in California with M. Ursyas. The subject of the collaboration must be the moment-to-moment action of the dramatic text; for Action Designers, textual examination is key. The object of the collaboration is not to arrive at vague, general interpretations, but rather to allow each moment to speak specifically. The thorough nature of this examination and its aspirations are hinted at by Vladimír Jindra in his explication of the philosophical aspects of Frantisek Tröster’s scenography. He calls it an “analytical destruction,” undertaken in order to

create a new reality which would reflect the creator’s opinions, a reality which would be a topical interpretation of the subconscious of a generation and an expression of an epoch.

(qtd. in Jindra 67) ³

A third principle of Action Design is its pursuit of a complex, ever-shifting metaphorical structure. Jaroslav Malina, in particular, attempts to create what he calls a “big synthesis,” the collective action of all the languages of theatre to explicate a play’s many-faceted metaphorical systems. To Malina, such systems are not predetermined or prepackaged, but are dynamic, open, and fluid. Not only does “synthesis” imply an open-ended process rather than an outcome, synthesis implies the thesis and antithesis that lurk within it. Here we are concerned with the offspring of contradictory entities. The synthesis (the perceived “meaning” of a form or image) is but another “plus” or “minus” that will “morph” into some other “plus” or “minus” along the winding road of theatrical performance. This “big synthesis” is sometimes called “dynamism...