Prague Quadrennial

Moonlit forests made of cardboard. Ghosts that float on coat stands roll across the stage. To better conceal its forgery, theatre is experienced in half-light, dependent as it is on deception and a certain distancing from its material reality. The Prague Quadrennial has been celebrating the construction of such illusions for over forty years, though it still contends with the glaring difficulty of fitting design created for the stage or similar contexts into an exhibition format. Artistic director Sodja Lotker summed up the challenge for the Quadrennial as a mandate 'to capture the ungraspable, to make eternal something that is a constant construction site, always temporary and never completely finished'.

This year the Prague Quadrennial International Exhibition of Scenography and Theatre Architecture changed its title to the (somewhat) more succinct Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space. This shift marks a serious change in scope, expanding its relevance across contemporary theatrical practice. While this change was controversial amongst some, it is broadly agreed—in theory if not practice—that set design risks stagnating if it chooses to remain in its disciplinary box.

As well as the typical sections of national exhibitions, student installations and a distinct architecture section, the event incorporated the extreme costume project, performative environments (and performances), workshops and presentations. A very successful series of curated conversations by some of the world's leading performance directors included Romeo Castellucci, Kirsten Dehlholm (Hotel Proforma) and Carlos Padrisa (La Fura dels Baus), laid out cohesive bodies of work united in their tenacious hunger for a richer visual and theatrical language.

As well as the typical sections of national exhibitions, student installations and a distinct architecture section, the event incorporated the extreme costume project, performative environments (and performances), workshops and presentations. A very successful series of curated conversations by some of the world's leading performance directors included Romeo Castellucci, Kirsten Dehlholm (Hotel Proforma) and Carlos Padrisa (La Fura dels Baus), laid out cohesive bodies of work united in their tenacious hunger for a richer visual and theatrical language.

The reframing of the festival away from conventional scenography led to an emphasis on what would traditionally be considered anti-theatrical. Several exhibitions disposed of performative bodies entirely: Switzerland constructed elaborate ikebana sculptures of large-scale objects such as cable cars and trains, while Latvia created an inhabitable instrument, with objects such as miniature saws, stones and timber logs enacting a series of measured, automated gestures that combined to produce an uncanny soundscape.

Perhaps the greatest drama of the Prague Quadrennial came from Hungary's exhibition, which fabricated the disappearance of a leading theatre designer. The topic of authenticity was also explored in Monica Pormale's installation for two people, a performance of intimacy, on a pedestal, under fluorescent lighting and housed in a glass in stage in which two strangers—unlikely in their pairing—pressed in an embrace, eyes softly closed and bodies relaxed. This scene was part of a new section of the Quadrennial titled Intersections, made up of thirty habitable boxes of varying scales, in which the new interdisciplinary direction of the festival found its fullest exploration. Constructed experiences from leading set designers and artists included Anna Veibrock, Ulla von Brandenburg and NYC Elevator Company.

The directors of Intersections asked audiences to take part in a series of performative environments, with the guiding principle that good performance is not to participate but to plunge. Exemplary in the art of the profoundly immersive, Castellucci's Societas Raffaello Sanzio exhibited a single stone medusa head, excruciatingly amplified with the sound of stone pounding against stone from the beat of its lolling tongue. A momentary stillness came only for those who dared place their hand into its gaping mouth. The mask as theatrical device evidenced its ability to still horrify us. The Colombian exhibition presented a rehearsal of social disintegration, moving far beyond the images of fiestas cultivated by Western sensitivities, we saw instead the ferocity and social delirium of Bakhtain's untamed carnival. Its difficult to forget the muscular body of a Colombian performer in drag, roped to a steeply oblique plane, the crack of his whip against the timber echoing through the exhibition hall.

Dorita Hannah's direction of a very different Architecture section for the Quadrennial saw the relationship of architecture and theatre move from the conventional hierarchical arrangement of backdrop and enclosure to a site of creative collision and collaboration. In the extraordinary environment of the deconsecrated St. Annes Church—now operated by Vaclev Havel's cultural foundation, Vision 97—Hannah curated a series of works on tables that invited visitors to gather, commune and discuss.

While some countries simply presented recent examples of local theatre architecture, there was nonetheless a significant ambition to explore more difficult relationships between cities, architectural thinking and performance. Mexico treated architecture as a storehouse for the performance of politics, exhibiting its city through a seemingly ad hoc collection of 70's surveillance paraphernalia. This was in stark contrast to the spare landscape photographs presented by Norway, which imaged a series of potential stages for unknown events. Another outstanding exhibition was Chile's cinematic presentation of the countries 'B grade' performers, street artists who make unsanctioned spaces of the city into stage sets. Lectures by Charles Renfro, Marvin Carlson and Richard Sennet further expanded the discourse from material form into urban voyeurism, social practices and embodiment.

For so many professionals adept at world-making, there was still a notable inability to grasp the shift in context from stage to exhibition. Key countries such as the USA, UK and Germany presented set design in the conventional and deeply uninspiring exhibition format of posters and models. The stark lighting of objects in a gallery exposed the lack of craft and precision while also forgoing the delight of theatrical illusion. The horror of Castellucci's installation or the visceral gentleness of Pormale's Hug stood in stark contrast to the banality of the trade show mentality of a surprising number of the participating exhibitions. One assumes that the example set by this year's Quadrennial will eventually help compel them into new territories. Samantha Spurr