Description

S:PAM lecture #48: Networks, Influence & the Politics of Scenographic Discourses: Using Digital Tools to Map Artistic “Signatures”

What? Artistic influence can take many forms and in the case of contemporary theatre directors it is underpinned by a complex set of intersecting ideas, people, institutions and practices, national and international. In this seminar, Prof. Dr. Margaret Hamilton explores the question of how to account for artistic “signatures” attributed to stage directors that emerge from a dynamic network of artists interacting to create a work, and interconnected through professional relational ties to other artists and theatre work. She will demonstrate the use of digital tools to map the collaborations intrinsic to the creation of scenographic discourses, and as a method of measuring the transfer and transformation of design languages key to theatre production, a field of practice that is fundamentally interdependent and relational. 

In doing so, the seminar will consider the formation of a “repertoire” of tendencies in design and question the political logic intrinsic to aesthetic styles that manifest in productions with radically different performance agendas in the theatre medium. It will touch on festival platforms and the developments specific to work produced by independent artists indebted to collective practices. In addition to considering stage directors such as Simon Stone, the seminar will touch on festival platforms and the developments specific to work produced by independent artists indebted to collective practices in Australia, including The Second Woman by Anna Breckon and Nat Randall, most recently presented by the Wiener Festwochen (2025).

In the second part, participants will get the opportunity to share their own artistic or theoretical practices with Hamilton and other participants, fostering a collective discussion on the mapping of artistic connections and the (political) forces shaping theatre aesthetics.

Who? Margaret Hamilton is Associate Professor in Theatre Studies at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Her current research is at the intersection of digital humanities and dramaturgical analysis and examines the relationship between artistic form and prospect of critique in the context of neoliberal capitalism. She is the author of Transfigured Stages: Major Practitioners and Theatre Aesthetics in Australia (2011), the first major study of postdramatic theatre in Australia. Her writing has appeared in journals such as Theatre Research International, Theatre Journal, and Contemporary Theatre Review, as well as in several edited collections, including Theatre and Internationalization: Perspectives from Australia, Germany, and Beyond (2021) and Rimini Protokoll Close-Up:Lektüren (2015). She is a member of the Management Committee of AusStage, the Australian National Performing Arts database (ausstage.edu.au), honoured by UNESCO for its significance as documentary heritage and recognised as one of the most significant innovations in the last 50 years by the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2021. Hamilton is a co-convenor of the ADSA Working Group: Cultural Policy, Funding & Labour in Performing Arts Research, and a former consultant in international arts market development for the Australia Council for the Arts and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. 

Co-organised by S:PAM (Studies in Performing Arts and Media)