Scenography has generally played a mere subsidiary role in theatre studies. The last English-language book attempting a Greeks-to-the-present survey was Allardyce Nicoll's The Development of the Theatre in 1956, although there have been important contributions over the years by Denis Bablet, David Wiles, George Izenour and Christopher Baugh, as well as an increasing number of publications dealing with the more conceptual aspects of space, visuality, phenomenology and reception. Part of the problem is the concept of scenography itself. Ill-defined in often contradictory ways, and frequently used – wrongly – as a synonym for scenic design alone, its very complexity makes it difficult to address in conventional historic or academic discourse. These two books, in their own ways, make a case for scenography as a central – perhaps the central – component in the production and reception of the theatrical event. McKinney's and Butterworth's textbook is a coherent and thoughtful examination of the subject that weaves together primary sources and contemporary scholarship as it maps out an understanding of how scenography works physically, technologically, philosophically and culturally. Despite the subject matter, the illustrations are few, small and of middling quality. Making the Scene, on the other hand, is a coffee-table-size book that surveys European and US/American theatre design and technology from ancient Greece to the present. It is a gorgeous book with many illustrations from the Robert Tobin collection at the McNay Art Museum, one of the great collections of scenographic art. Particular attention is paid to technology, although the book does not quite manage, as the dust jacket claims, to ‘rediscover lost tricks and techniques’. The exclusion of non-Western theatre means that the influence of Asian theatre on design and technology remains ignored.

The chapter titles of both volumes give a clear indication of the variant scope and aims of the two books. McKinney and Butterworth, focusing largely on the contemporary, divide their book into three sections: ‘Elements’ tackles a definition of scenography with one of the most cogent examinations of that topic I have encountered. Then follows an extended section on ‘pioneers’, from Appia, Craig and Schlemmer to Mielziner, Svoboda and Robert Wilson. While one could certainly think of some others who might be included, the artists grouped together here share an approach to the totality of the visual and spatial aspect of theatre and are thus true scenographers in the literal sense of the term. Part 2, ‘Processes of Scenography’, describes text, image, space and ‘technology as performance’, while Part 3, ‘Realisation and reception’, is an in-depth investigation of the ways in which scenography is perceived and comprehended in the context of performance. Many of these figures and aspects make their appearances in the other volume as well, but generally in a less comprehensive and analytical manner.

The chapters of Making the Scene are a mix of chronology, geography and genre, an approach that will be familiar to readers of Brockett and Hildy's History of Theatre (2007 [1968]). Some are provocative, such as ‘The Influence of the Scena per Angolo on Eighteenth-Century Design’, while others appear more arbitrary: ‘Design in France and the Holy Roman Empire from 1640 to the Early Eighteenth Century’, or a forced montage of ‘American New Stagecraft, Russian Constructivism, Epic Theatre, and the Bauhaus’ in one chapter. This organization, with its multiple subdivisions, creates an occasionally fragmented and confusing narrative within a reductive social and political history, a problem perhaps exacerbated by a surprising reliance on tertiary sources. There is an admirable attempt at contextualization by concluding each chapter with a short essay usually examining some aspect of the audience. But there are some odd choices, and in places – considering the amount of ground and material inevitably omitted – one could have imagined a much better use of some pages, perhaps with more in-depth analyses. So one should read the two books together: Making the Scene for its beautiful images and as an encyclopedic reference; The Cambridge Introduction for an examination of what scenography is and of how it works, and for a coherent understanding of its impact in twentieth-century theatre.