Methuen Drama Consuming Scenography: The Shopping Mall as a Theatrical Experience (Performance and Design)

Consuming Scenography offers an insight into contemporary scenographic practice beyond the theatre. It explores the ways in which scenography is used to create a global cultural impact and accelerate profits in the site-specific context of themed shopping malls. It analyses the effect of the architectural, aesthetic, spatial, material and sensory aspects of design through their performative encounters with consumers in order to offer a better understanding of performance design. In the first part the author explores the spatial seduction of an enclosed market space and traces the origins of scenographic temporality in permanent architectonic spaces for trade and commerce, from early Roman arched markets and Oriental bazaars, to 19th century arcades and department stores, though to modern-day shopping malls. The second section addresses the site-specific theatricality of the shopping mall, considering the exploitation of performative aspects of scenography in the creation of corporate identity. It engages with how casual shoppers are modified and transformed into spectators, sales personnel into performers, and shop-filled alleys into stages in themed malls. In the final section, the author investigates the consumption of scenographic experience and scenographys sensory influence on consumers through their immersion in themed shopping malls. Considering a variety of case studies of themed shopping malls, including the Ibn Battuta Mall in Dubai, Terminal 21 in Bangkok, the Villaggio in Doha and Montecasino in Johannesburg, as well as further examples from Europe, USA and Asia this book provides a wide-ranging critical examination of the ways in which scenographic thinking and practices are exploited in wider cultural contexts for impact, branding, and higher profits.