Llueve: Stage Directions for Collective Processing
- Emmanuela N Soria Ruiz
- Undergraduate Program in Fine Arts and Design, Weitzman School of Design
-
Independent Creative Production Grant
How do we cope with the emotional aftermath of major and minor disasters in our environment? In 1638, after the Tiber River flooded Rome, sculptor and scenographer Bernini recreated the disaster for a carnival event. Rather than narrating the flood through characters or plot, Bernini staged its conditions, allowing audiences to experience the disaster as an environmental force acting on the collective. This historical precedent is central to Emmanuela N Soria Ruiz’s research into Baroque stage design and so-called “impossible plays,” where scenography takes precedence over storyline. More recently, when latex was dumped into the Schuylkill River, residents were instructed to switch to bottled water for several days. After that, the event faded from public discourse, yet an unresolved anxiety lingered.
Such events point to a condition of environmental precarity that is experienced collectively but often processed privately. How do we attend to disruptions that unsettle shared conditions of living, yet resist sustained collective response? Llueve: Stage Directions for Collective Processing shifts research into a collective form, treating shared attention and co-presence as essential tools. Emmanuela N Soria Ruiz will conduct two workshops that combine writing, discussion, and hands-on experimentation with set design and sound. In one exercise, participants collectively generate stage directions for a remembered or mediated environmental event, then test them as shared conditions (shifts in sound, light, or materials) foregrounding improvisation as shared resilience rather than individual expression. This approach draws from meteorological verbs in Spanish (llueve, nieva), which describe events without a grammatical subject and parallel the logic of stage directions. The central question guiding this research is whether environmental disruption can be processed and remembered through shared sensory and scenographic conditions.
https://www.emmanuelasoriaruiz.com/
https://www.teachingattheendoftimes.org/