abstract

Drawing on the model of situated communicative practice (Goodwin, 2000, 2003), this dissertation studies the construction of one type of professional/institutional discourse, the mise-en-scene conversation in which the scenic designer and director discuss and negotiate the stage design for a theater production. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “mise-en-scene” as an arrangement of “the staging of a play,”
“the scenery and properties of a stage production” or “the stage setting.” Our analyses focus on mise-en-scene talk as professional discourse in theater production meetings in Taiwan- on how professionals work with various visual representations and how they draw on language and bodily conduct to communicate their imagination of props and theatrical phenomena that do not yet exist. Specifically, this study focuses on two types of visual representations frequently employed in mise-en-scene conversations, including the diagrammatic drawing of stage scenery or the scenography and the three dimensional object such as a model. In this proposal, we analyze that the scenography must be embodied and three key organizing practices show how participants frequently turn to bodily conduct as a source of insight into formulating specific mise-en-scene objects and problems. The bodies perform the props, supplement the perceptions and dimensioning of the props, and create figuration moment wherein the actor’s or actress’s physical contact with props and theatrical space can be envisioned. All these practices show that participants manage to find aspects of creativity in solving particular mise-en-scene problems in the work environment and such solutions are tied with how people frame and formulate these problems through sensory modalities. In future analyses, we examine how participants interact with material objects and organize the “seeing as handling” practice in the moment-to-moment activity. We also look at when various visual representations co-exist, adult participants learn how to build props and embodied making can occur more readily at the level of drawing or model, under the immediate control of the set designer.