Frieda Schneider & The Friends of Scenography, On Women in Set Design & A Pinch of Salt at the Kampala International Theatre Festival

“…One of my nicest moments at the Kampala International Theatre Festival was before the show ‘People of Mine’, where I saw Vicky on the stage with the drill. She was very confident, very cool. She looked wonderful! Not just because she is already a good-looking woman, but because the drill was her tool, and she looked excellent executing with it. This is what I wanted to achieve. These tools are ideally a male tool, the field is male-dominated, and to see her there like that, in a very natural way was wonderful!” – Frieda Schneider.

Dear Reader,

If you attended this year’s Kampala International Theatre Festival (KITF), as produced by Tebere Arts Foundation, you most likely witnessed a variety of activities and set designs. If you didn’t attend, this blog will fill you in with all the detail; brace yourself!

One of the outstanding things about this 11th Edition of KITF, was the fact that outside of productions having their own teams to design sets, Tebere Arts Foundation (TAF), also had a team of young creatives, dubbed the ‘Friends of Scenography’, who were not only involved in workshops by Frieda Schneider, a female scenographer from Germany, but also spent weeks of intense learning, theory and practical aspects of design. The team also got the opportunity to work on the stage plays ‘People of Mine’ written by Dorothy Muhirwe and directed by Herbert Nkera, and ‘The Greenline at the Horizon’ written by Lloyd Lutara, Directed by Brenda Ibara, among other shows that happened at the festival.

In dialogue with Frieda Schneider, she shares her highlights at KITF as a scenographer and mentor, snippets of her background as far as Scenography is concerned, and projects on industry potential and what it means for women in set design. But first, here is a few images from the scenes.

Here’s a pinch from our dialogue…

What does it mean to mentor the Friends of Scenography?

So, I’m just showing my way, but nobody is bound to follow it. But I think its a good introduction to understanding the space you’re going to perform in, angles, how to take pictures of that, how to talk to the people, all that. That was for three weeks, and Tebere asked me to make the experience practical. So we materialized that experience with designing. But I think in Germany this would be a job a production manager and not really designing.

My mentees had to understand what those technical riders meant and embed them with those scenography elements. So maybe it was not really designing. But making.  Luckily enough at this point two productions didn’t have designers so my team could come in. Even though that meant even more work without time.

 

How easy or how hard is it for someone who has completely zero background in architecture or physics or even Mathematics, to get into scenography? Let’s assume if this person even normally struggles with imposter syndrome. Let’s assume they do not even have an opportunity to get into school to study scenography, yet, they aspire to join and thrive at the work?

You know some of ‘the friends of scenography were at that point, that you just described because for them this idea of measuring and calculating was very foreign. Not to diminish the amount of time we spent together, but I think if we had like a three months course or an even bigger timeline, I think in this environment they could even have done more than they did. Of course you take your own time to learn, make mistakes but the idea is that one can really sketch in-proportion, what is going to happen on stage.

Would you say that’s like story boarding in film?

No, that’s like three-dimensional model-making. In sketching you choose a view point, but we are talking about space. And people have a lot of view points. Some are looking from up, others from the sides at the front, some from down, some from the left or right, name it. So from everywhere, you need to understand the space. Who sees what, not necessarily that everyone gets to see everything, but you need to understand how the character or actor is relating to the space, and how the audience is also relating to that space. In a two dimensional way you have proportions, but in a three-dimensional way you have the proportions between the space and the audience and the actors. Of course you are playing with colors, let’s say, but proportion is as important as colors. Color is one thing, but the proportion of the space is another. But its super-serious.

You make a space but how many actors can fit in that space, and this is where the technicalities come in. You make a model. We have to build those walls, then we have to color them, mix the colors until you decide on the colors that you want.

 

Why Scenography?

I trained as an architect but at the time I could see that in that field, that when I finished, I would never be able to really talk to the people on the building sites. The respect that I had for the field was so that I don’t just contribute to designing something with a client. I always loved the talk with the client to understand what the client wants, and then to come up with a design. But if you can’t really supervise on the building site what you want, then it becomes very diluted. As soon as I finished my study, and know my personality. I am a woman and I have this appearance of being an eternal student and not somebody to take very serious because I don’t care how I appear. I am interested in doing good work, but not really putting my personality to the field and selling that. So there was no space for me.

Also, there is so much money involved and its not about serving the client like who is really going to live in the flat, but its more of the company that wants to sell very cheap places for a very high price. I didn’t want to be involved in that kind of game as well. 

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For seven years after her studies, Frieda worked in the publishing industry, particularly publishers of books on architecture especially as her mother was a writer on architecture and both her step father and real father were both architects. 

“So it was quite easy for me working in the sector but after seven years, I felt the book was very dimensional so I needed to get back into the field. But then for love reasons, I realized I also needed to do an MA. So for a long time, I worked and was able to save and do an MA in Theatre Designs in England. Then I felt that I was allowed to enter the theatre world. So my background in architecture helped me to understand easily the practicality of scenography and the MA helped me to understand what is the difference between architecture and theatre. 

My assumption is that fewer number of girls would enroll for a course in scenography if we had it in our institutions, and I’m using that assumption because until my experience with theatre, chances are I would not know that such a thing as scenography even existed. Could you possibly share more about that, and what chances there is that this is the case in Germany or anywhere else in Europe where you’ve worked? Could it also be because of mindset and societal constraints, or simply because many women are perhaps not interested in Scenography and would gravitate towards what is presented as more feminine alternatives?

Maybe this something you’ve not asked, I feel that if we had here a course for three months or six months, the subject would be easily demystified. And about women, especially in German speaking countries like Austria and even Switzerland, we have there even more women in scenography design. Normally its a three years course if not five. So here, trying to make the course into three weeks.  That just gives an idea of the time difference we are talking about. 

Generally also the arts in Europe are quite dominated by women I think, and I’ve seen more women enroll for maybe  a course in set-design, where they think they just have to design and not the practical aspect, and somehow they don’t really see the implications. But where I was teaching I was encouraging them to have practical experience while they were studying so they know what they are really getting into. This is my experience. But I even like to work in my femininity energy when I’m working with directors or actors, but when I’m at the stage , then I put on a different hat. So I think its all really interesting. 

I think also, some of these male dominated spheres are really not because the men are interested in the art or the arts. It is just because they just want to know what to do, and then they do it.  Just give them the information, they execute, and they can see.

How has work as a Scenographer enriched you?

“… Working as a scenographer has really served me well because it has so much more to do with talking to the client and from watching people to see how they move. Especially these actors in these very special situations. So that also helps to be really specific also depending on the budget available, and what tools or materials are on ground. I find that more fulfilling than just having  a global design from somewhere else and imposing it on a client so that it fits into their situation.” Frieda Schneider. 

I worked on something like Commedia Dell’arte, something called ‘Physical Mind’, I’m not sure if I translated that well, but I did that for like three or four years. So for me, watching people move and express themselves through movement is something that I can read easily, so having actors and direct communication on your stage and changing the set accordingly to what I see, so to really make the work perfect for them is a big love of mine.  That is in contrast to architecture where you never get to interact with the client who is really using the design. But in theatre, I could be in complete communication even if its silent.

One of the directors I worked for most in the last fifteen years has autism. So we worked a lot in a silent way, in that I would observe what he is doing and just change the set overnight. So the next day he would recognize it, and I see what he does with it. It was always surprising for me because he would read it in a different way, and that would inspire me. For me, that’s a happy game and I can only work on a set design when I am there for each rehearsal and I follow that process for at least six weeks.

Frieda, I think your work is very interesting, but then I also think that it requires a lot of creativity. For instance having to interact with a client, and seeing how they interact with your design, then going back and forth making changes, It appears to me that every project is a new invention, a new innovation. Wouldn’t you say that’s a bit draining; and if so, how do you deal with such moments of exhaustion? Do you need to take a step back and recharge the way for instance a creative writer might have to do some times? 

Absolutely. But its a bit easy with me because as I said, for me doing a project is normally about three months. Six weeks of which are just talking to the director and figuring out what could be the very rough setup. How big is the audience and where are they, close to the set, further away, what is the distance between them and what they are watching? Should the audience be involved, should they not be involved, just very general questions, then I’m looking at the spaces where the performance is going to happen. What materials I’m going to need, what sort of lighting, so I get that information for the first six weeks, then I go on for other six weeks of attending the rehearsals, all that. 

That also means that if I am on a project for three months, then I get to do only four of them in a year. And as a freelancer sometimes I have many projects at a go so I have to choose, and sometimes I have no work, depending so thats all part of it. So I normally have two or three plays, and normally I get to recharge in-between. 

So, for a program like the Kampala International Theatre Festival, you’ve been having many projects on-going at the same time. You’ve had to do scenography on several projects that are all happening within a short period of time, compared to how you’d normally do it. What’s been your experience doing that and how were you and the friends of scenography able to deliver? 

The idea of this program ‘Friends of Scenography’ at the beginning, was that I would digitally introduce these young people ‘mentees’ to my way of designing. To make them understand that the design process. Its about working together. 

How we did you cope?

We just tried. And had to lower our standards. You do the task with what you have. 

We were also fighting on many levels with the weather, the timeline, but we cope. Its a wet season so we paint, it rains and we have to repaint, or its dark and we can’t find our tools again, but we really just lowered our standards and tried to do something for everybody. 

How did you get connected to Kampala International theatre Festival?

My former director Erik Altorfer endorsed me. He had been working with people in Cairo, in Syria, Lebanon and at some point started working with Asiimwe Kawe to do the radio plays. So because we worked together doing theatre in Switzerland, so when they asked a question in Egypt and Kampala on who could be lecturing on scenography, he put up my name. And since I’ve been involved in teaching theatre designs for years, its been easy for me to mentor others. Because I work not only as a theatre designer, but I’ve also been finding ways to mentor or teach.

Frieda lived in Switzerland for eight years and during the times, she worked with Eric Altorfer on a few plays where he was the director. But when Eric gravitated towards Audio Plays/radio dramas, Frieda’s scenography design services were no longer needed. That’s when she left Switzerland. 

Favorite or major Highlight at the Festival?

One of my nicest moments on the festival was before the show of ‘People of Mine’, where I saw Vicky Aselle on the stage with the drill. She was very confident, very cool. She looked wonderful! Not just because she is already a good looking woman, but because the drill was her tool, and she looked excellent executing with it. This is what I wanted to achieve. These tools are ideally a male tool, the field is male dominated, and to see her there like that, in a very natural way was wonderful!

 

What would you say, is your unique interest at the moment?

My unique interest right now is that I would love to come back. Maybe work with the same cohort, or another group, but even take a longer time. 

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When not doing her scenography work and theatre, Frieda  works at a healthy facility over the weekends. “We work with people who are drug addicts and the facility tries to give them free drugs and assistance so they can stabilize and get out of criminality. Its a support unit that engages with these people to see how they can get other support and resume their normal lives. I find this very enriching because theatre is about life, and we can’t be just in the art world. Otherwise I would have nothing to take impressions from. In Germany for instance, some people can live too much in the art world that they forget for whom they are working. I don’t want to work just for the elite. I want to understand all the perspective. Those that differ from my point of view. That way I am inspired to do different kinds of projects. For instance I would love to do a comic. That’s also a very special environment. But it still very much feels like theatre because of the way they are talking and moving.” She adds. 

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The Kampala International Theatre Festival (KITF) is an annual event that brings together theatre practitioners from around the world to showcase their work. The festival is platform for artists to share their stories, exchange ideas, and connect with audiences. Produced by Tebere Arts Foundation, this year’s (2024) / the 11th edition featured artists from Uganda, Germany, Rwanda, Columbia, Namibia, South Africa, Kenya among others.

This Blog has been sponsored by Tebere Arts Foundation.

THE END.

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