Conclusion

A brief recapitulation of my monograph’s main points will serve as a concluding summary for my project.

First I outlined the three ages of scenic models: (1) childhood–the age of potential–when models signify as something yet to come, (2) adulthood–the age of work–when models represent full-scale scenic designs, and (3)  the afterlife–the age of retirement–when models are considered obsolete. I demonstrated how models in their childhood and adulthood transcend their material purpose as a tool for production and function as space for imagined performances. It is this capacity to engage the imagination and invite performance that makes the model worthy of more consideration in their afterlife.

Next, I surveyed several possibilities for the ‘afterlife’ of scenic models, including displaying them in retrospective exhibitions and preserving them as instructional tools for future scenic designers. In both cases, I showed how the models, as extant artifacts, remained tied to the productions they were originally created to serve. Then, I revealed the most common fate for scenic models–being discarded to the model graveyard, or worse, being thrown in the trash. A new possibility for the afterlife of scenic models was inspired by Bill, the super who rescued my own models from the trash bin: making them available for play.

I devised an exhibit for scenic models that divorced them from their history as tools for production. I presented them instead as toys and invited spectators to play. As they imagined and performed in the models stories of their own making, the models revealed their true ontology as engines for creating new dramaturgies. Thus, liberated from their past and revitalized through play, the models finally achieved their autonomy as works of art.

Afterword

When I spend time with my models, my past becomes present and I feel my age and mortality. This feeling is nicely captured in a quote from theater theorist Mark Fortier, whose book Theory/Theory I referenced earlier in this paper. It reads:

Works of art are privileged instances of endurance in time, an endurance always accomplished by death, loss of origin, loss of self. The endurance of art reminds us that life is short; the presence of a single work of art reminds us of everything else that is passing or missing (34-5).

In other words, it is my art’s potential for outlasting me that makes me aware of my impermanence, but if all the art I make is temporary, then what of me endures? Like the model, I had a childhood that included performances of imagination about what I might one day become. Like the model, I grew up and spent my adulthood in service to the theater, imagining many performances, and laboring to realize them. I am only halfway through this life, and I have much more to create, but I feel the coming of the next generation of artists. I must move out of the way or be moved. Like the model, I will become obsolete. So, I have tried to change the way we see the scenic model to make it worthy of more permanence, not preserved like an artifact under glass, but reincarnated as other works of art. In this way, the model, and I might endure.

What is the next evolutionary step for this project? I imagine some kind of retirement home for aging models where we can visit and play with them—but where will we find the space? Who will pay for and maintain it, and how will we ultimately decide which models are worthy of being included and which models are left out? I know this idea seems highly impractical, but ultimately, I want for my models what I want for myself (and for my colleagues): a place where we can be together in dialogue, unpacked and played with, performing and performed upon—some final, new resting place where we can continue to create.