This interdisciplinary thesis assembles the literature from the fields of scenography and
performance studies with those of Practice Based Learning (PBL) and Education studies,
navigating the ways in which the ideas within these landscapes might intersect. Framing
Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as sociomaterial situated contexts, the thesis
responds to the call of Hann (2019) to adopt scenography as a way to evoke both critical
and practical possibilities beyond the practices of design and traditional territories of
performance. In doing so the work offers contributions to the fields of scenography and
PBL and critically, creates a meta-cognitive Interdisciplinary contribution to the literature
which the thesis calls practice scenographics; a term used to describe the ways in which
components of situated practice come together forming moments of processional learning.
Recognising theatre and performance as a broad and expanding field, with heterogeneous
ways of making theatre, framed here as scenography methods, the thesis identifies the
dilemma of the HEI pedagogue who must co-construct learning activity in ways which
enables both in-depth knowledge and subject breadth, so that knowledge might be
recontextualised by scenographers in wider paradigms. With a documented skills gap in
the backstage entertainment industry, the thesis presents both personal and industry
arguments outlining the necessity of this work.
Through a flexible research design utilising semi-structured interviews to collect data from
students, graduates and pedagogues, the thesis will consider HEI performance practice as
a unique mode of performance within a web of performance practice possibilities. It will
highlight the heterogeneous trajectories of students studying technical theatre practice in
Higher Education Institutions. In doing so, the thesis is able to make specific
recommendations for pedagogues looking to embark on or reconsider, the ways in which
students are orientated to their craft. A thesis exploring the pedagogy and learning of
technical theatre practice.