Beyond the Proscenium and Into the Streets of Rome: New Directions in Design for the Theater

Cameron Anderson, Scenic Designer, Assistant Professor of Theater Arts, Brandeis University.

In this talk, interdisciplinary theater artist Cameron Anderson will discuss how theater design is expanding beyond the proscenium and into the streets in the form of site-specific happenings, applied scenography, and urban performance. She will discuss her current project and how it participates in this movement: an immersive sitespecific theatrical installation based on Giacomo Puccini’s 1900 opera, Tosca. Her project will investigate the cultural and historical significance of the specific and extant locations described in the opera, all of them in Rome. This research will culminate in an installation to be performed in the United States that will combine live feed video from these Roman locations with scenic elements, and allow audiences in both countries to interact with one another. Audiences will be invited to reflect upon tensions involving the private versus the public and performative nature of each location, and to relate these to Tosca’s breaching of gender barriers.