The Designer’s Dilemma 2.0: Visual-ness and <i>Canadian Theatre Review</i>

This article is a brief overview of the fifty-year relationship between scenography/design and Canadian Theatre Review ( CTR). In the past and given the journal’s (necessary?) privileging of text, this relationship has, at times, been fraught, perhaps even non-existent. The essay problematizes ‘scenography’ by recognizing that with very few exceptions, there are very few self-identifying scenographers to be found within the pages of CTR or working in Canadian theatre. This has led to concerns of representation, for when the journal has focused its attention on the visual, scenographers and designers have often responded in ways that downplay the creative, the collaborative, and the thoughtful and embrace the pragmatic. Despite the many challenges of capturing scenography/design in a two-dimensional journal, CTR has demonstrated great leadership in expanding the understanding of how theatre is defined. Scenography/design has greatly benefited from this more inclusive approach to understanding performance