Domestic Spaces Unbecoming
Wes D Pearce
University of Regina
Since March, my husband and I have spent more time in our modest sized townhouse than we ever thought possible. With little notice, we found ourselves at home (working) which is a radically different notion than working from home. In this new reality we, like many other households, had to re-conceive our domestic space by finding new ways for these private spaces to function. That was the easy part. Echoing Henri Lefèbvre’s disruptive ideas of ‘ambiguous continuity’, in 2020 being at home (working) has meant private space is now shared public space. One of the difficulties of the past months has been trying to maintain some sense of domestic order as our home is now simultaneously used as a workspace, as a creative space, and as a get away from workspace. How physical spaces had been defined and objects used is now relatively meaningless. In our home the dining area is more often than not a conference room and the dining table is now a workspace; in Julia Moriarty’s teaching video “Spicy Blocking,” Julia’s mom’s kitchen is a studio and the kitchen pantry is now a stage. The conflating of life into a single domestic space has, for the most part, meant abandoning the working and the non-working parts of the day. Strangely, we are always at work and yet not. The concentration of our lives into this single space not designed to serve all these purposes feels unnatural and has challenged us both at numerous times.
The zoom environment privileges the performative self and a day of zoom meetings is exhausting because we have never been more aware of how we present ourselves than when we watch (but try not to watch) ourselves perform day in and day out. Further, this virtual environment has become intrusive, depriving us of narrative markers insofar as everything is immediate and exactly the same. Over the past months the constant re-performing of self within a space that is at once familiar (the domestic) and yet unfamiliar (virtual public space) has meant staging our lives differently. Julia’s video reminds viewers of the importance of composition, “the picture a director is creating at any given moment of the play”. As the director of our own performance we have the ability to control the composition, to ensure we perform ourselves as desired, trusting that our moment in the narrative is understood.
Scenographers, like directors, have a vested interest in composition and the effect that a carefully composed stage image can have on an audience. Scenographers, like directors, like to have a certain amount of control—and the last few months have been about everything but control. Composition of the public self within the private world is one of the few things any of us have control over. After the first week of being at home (working) my goal has been trying to mitigate the effects of the “public-ization” of our domestic space. But how? Julia reminds us that a production is composed of thousands of moments, and that successful blocking requires staging a play moment by moment and then connecting those moments to create the larger performance and not the other way round. Restaging the visual was one thing and involved rearranging furniture and art in order to give a view of private space I am comfortable with, it has meant fighting with various lamps and then eventually buying a ring light in order to have more control over what is seen, and it has meant a parade of virtual backdrops which have been useful in terms of hiding the private while providing some escape from the current reality. Restaging the self has meant learning that some days are better than others and a “no video“ day is more than okay. The rupture of private/public continues to be disquieting; there are still moments when the familiar seems completely unfamiliar and I think to myself, “how can I be lost in my own home?”
Post Script
I designed sets and costumes for As You Like It as my thesis production. Two months before rehearsals began the director asked for 42 characters in quarter-inch scale ASAP so he could start using the maquette to figure out blocking. How I wish he had known about “Spicy Blocking”.
Lefèbvre, Henri. The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell:1991).
BIO
Julia Moriarty is a director, actor, and scholar based in Kansas City. She is a lecturer at Wayne State University and California State University, Bakersfield and holds a PhD in Theatre, with a directing emphasis, from Wayne State University. Her research focuses on integrating feminist theory and script analysis methods. She is the co-founder and co-editor-in-chief of Etudes, an online theatre and performance studies journal for emerging scholars.
Wes D Pearce is Professor of Theatre at the University of Regina where he teaches a variety of courses in theatre and pop culture. Being a bad Virgo and having little focus to his research he has contributed chapters to a variety of books on a wide range of subjects, he has designed for theatres across Western Canada, and spent a decade as an associate dean (with a number of portfolios). He is currently working on critiquing aspects of Come From Away OR trying to articulate why musicals look like they sound. He has strong connections with MATC, CATR, ATHE, and World Stage Design 2022.