Theatre for All: The Scenic Contraption in the Work of O Bando
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Should scenography be audience-specific? Should there be a specific ‘formation process’ of the scenography in performances for children and young audiences? The purpose of this chapter is to address these questions and investigate the process of designing scenography while looking at the work of O Bando. O Bando Theatre Company started out, in the seventies, by touring Portugal hoping to interact with children of all ages and social backgrounds, rural and urban. They defined themselves as a children’s theatre company and their art as being popular, based on traditional tales. Their scenography was made from warm, old, found materials and was put together by all the people involved in the performance, from actors to welders. Rehearsals ran parallel with the set, prop and costume making. The final designs were later on called ‘scenic contraptions.’ A single piece of scenic machinery moving alongside the actors and by them creates all spaces of the performance. In Afonso Henriques, a crib turns into a set of threads, rotates into a throne and finally into a deathbed, as it tells the story of a king. During the last thirty years, their theatre changed: It is now a theatre for all. O Bando believes that their plays are built from popular traditions, and as such, they easily conquer an adult audience and communicate with a younger audience. Their emphasis on materializing these traditions into an interactive scenic object which defines the audience-performers relation, the fictional space and the narrative structure, might be a clue as to what is a scenography valued by all audiences.