Encounters in landscapes: Scenography, landscape and memory in Estonian open-air performances

Abstract

Landscape and human memory are in a reciprocal relationship - landscape sustains a certain kind of remembering while memories keep it from changing too much. Living in and looking at a landscape can be regarded as acts of remembrance, where the landscape is not scenery, but a stage of action. Theatrical performances given in landscape present a special case, since they use the existing landscape for a fictional one. Regardless of the scope of scenographic intervention, landscape is experienced as an immediately present multisensory totality that the audience and actors share. This transdisciplinary study shows that theatre employs landscape memory on multiple levels (actual site of events, connotations of the landscape, the relationship between fictional history and visible markers). Scenography has the capability to reflect, express and change the relationship between landscape and memory. Productions staged in Estonian landscapes in 2000-2006 exemplify the extent that theatrical representation rests on (and benefits from) landscape memory.