About

I am a Senior Lecturer in Performance and Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Technical Theatre and Performance Design.

As Partnership Lead between UoD and Vakalo College of Art and Design, Athens, Greece, my aim is to develop creative relationships between the two institutions.

I am a practicing scenographer with over 20 years of experience in a variety of national and international performance design and practice (UK, USA, Europe, Mexico).

I am also co-convener of the Scenography Working Group for the International Federation for Theatre Research.

I have a PhD in Performance (Scenography) from the University of Leeds exploring the intersections between performance design practice, participation and cognitive neuroscience, contributing to the field of expanded scenography.

Teaching responsibilities

I lead and teach modules on performance design and practice across all undergraduate levels with a focus on research-informed practice projects, design-led methodologies and the use of established and emerging technologies. In preparing graduates for the workplace I work with staff at Derby Theatre and Industry partners to embed professionalism throughout the Programme.

• I teach UG students at the Derby Theatre campus, contributing actively to its mission to engage, empower, include, inspire and enable the widest possible audience through transformational learning and theatre
• I also teach the MA Design Tech Hi and Lo lab module to PG students where I embed my research on contraptions, error and participation/user experience
• I currently co-supervise two PhD students (subject themes: BSL in theatre institutions; Costume, post-colonial studies and Carnival)
• I am open for supervising PhDs with subjects related (but not limited) to Theatre/Performance/Design explorations, Performance Design and Practice/Design-led performance, Expanded Scenography, Critical Costume, Performance Installation, Design and Participation/Co-creation/Interaction, Audience Experience, Performance in public/found spaces, 4Es/Embodied cognition and Performance

Professional interests

I have worked as a Designer for plays, devised and site-specific performances, events and short film (such as Secret/Future Cinema, The Other Way Works, National Theatre of Greece).

With my company xristina penna+ aswespeakproject I have devised, directed and produced my own immersive, interactive and participatory performances in collaboration with sound, performance and visual artists working with mixed-media, handmade bizarre objects, inefficient aesthetics and material stemming from the audience to create hybrid collaborative performance installations and actions which I call 'contraptions'.
My work has been presented internationally in the UK, USA and Greece in festivals, theatre and gallery venues and found spaces such as... 

• Currents 2013, USA
• The Bluecoat, Liverpool
• The Benaki Museum, Athens
• Shunt Vaults, London
• The Roundhouse, London
• stage@leeds
• Derby Theatre
• The Museum of Making, Derby

Research interests

• Performance Design / Scenography / Design-led performance making/ Immersive theatre / Installation Art/ Design
• Spatial, material and social interactions in Participatory Scenography
• Cognitive Neuroscience and Consciousness (E-cognition: co-origination between brain, body, social, material and cultural world)
• Contraptions
• Inefficient aesthetics, uncertainty and error as methods of co-creation and participation

My research tests how participatory performance practice can be informed by neuroscience theories of human consciousness and cognition to facilitate collaborative thinking through audiences, space and materials. I have developed my practical, conceptual, and analytical framework of the ‘scenographic contraption’ (Penna, 2013) as a method of generating participatory actions between materials, space, and audiences, and used this as a way of conceptualising contemporary scenography and participatory performance practice. See an example of my practice-research.

I have contributed to multiple international academic conferences and symposia in the fields of performance, humanities and cognition (Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities, IFTR, PSi, Worlding the Brain) and have published a visual essay (Intellect) and articles (Theatralia and Performance Research).

Membership of professional bodies

• The Society of British Theatre Designers SBTD (committee member)
• Performance Design Educators Collective (PDEC) (co-treasurer)

Qualifications

• PhD. Thesis title: Towards a CogScenography: Cognitive Science, scenographic reception and processes (University of Leeds, School of Performance and Cultural Industries)
• MA Scenography (University of the Arts, London, Central St Martins College of Arts and Design)
• BA in Theatre Studies and Stage Design (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, School of Fine Art, Drama Department)

Recent conferences

Papers

• Penna, X. 2024. Scenographic contraptions: Practice-research methodologies of endurance and duration in a groundless contemporary performance landscape. TaPRA Scenography WG: Enduring Scenographies. Northumbria University, Newcastle 4-6 Sept 2024
• Penna, X. 2024. Error, glitches, exposure and inefficient aesthetics as methods of enhancing a sense of togetherness within a co-created scenography. IFTR Scenography WG Manila Our States of Emergency. University of the Philippines Quezon, Philippines 15-19 Jul 2024
• Penna, X. 2024. Scenographic Contraptions: Designing uncertainty and orchestrating error for the generation of participatory scenography. Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities 2024. University of Catania, Sicily 3-5 June 2024
• Penna, X. 2023. Holding Stories. IFTR Accra The Stories We Tell: Myth, Mythmaking & Performance. University of Ghana, Accra, Ghana 24 - 28 Jul 2023
• Penna, X. 2022. Generating non-egocentric storytelling using a scenography from cord, fabric and trust . IFTR Reykjavik Shifting Centres: In the Middle of Nowhere. University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland 20 - 24 Jun 2022
• Penna, X. and Murphy, M. 2021. Cognitive Ecologies in Theatre History, Training and Performance. IFTR Galway Theatre Ecologies: Environments, Sustainability and Politics. National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland (On-line) 12 - 16 Jul 2021
• Penna, X. 2019. To You <-> To Me: Generating Non-Egocentric Habits of Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended Spectating . Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities 2019: Paradigms of Understanding - Sharing Cognitive Worlds. University Mainz, Mainz, Germany 19 - 23 Jun 2019
• November 2018, The Predictive Scenographer: Performance design as predictive affordance-o-graphy (paper). Worlding The Brain Conference 2018, Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Denmark
• November 2017, Designing Uncertainty for Generating Audiences’ Participation (paper). Worlding The Brain Conference 2017, University of Amsterdam, NL
• June 2017, Scenographic Contraptions: a manifestation for a post-representational performance design method (flash presentation). PSi#23, performance+design group
• June 2017, ‘Phishing Things Together’: Using Cognitive Theory, and Practice Research to Further our Understanding of Designing in a Groundless Contemporary Performance Landscape (paper). Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Conference 2017, New York
• June 2016, Applications of Cognitive Science in Scenographic Reception and Processes: Scenographic Contraptions (paper). Cognitive Futures in the Humanities Conference 2016, Helsinki
• November 2015, Scenographic Contraptions: An Embodied Conversation (talk). ‘Embodied Mind, Embodied Design’ workshop at the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Science and School of Education, The University of Edinburgh
• July 2015, Attempts on Staging Consciousness: Towards a Cognitive Scenography (paper). IFTR2015, Theatre and Democracy Conference, Hyderabad, India
• June 2015, Work Space I- a Scenographic Workshop on Consciousness: Scenographic artefact (flash talk). Scenography as Shared Space Symposium (IFTR scenography working group), Prague Quadrennial 2015
• April 2015, Attempts on Margarita (multiple drafts): A Cognitive Dramaturgy Generated by Voice and Space (paper). Second Symposium on Embodied Cognition and Performance 2015, AISB Convention, University of Kent
• March 2015, Costume Project(ion)-The Costume Rehearses (Flash Talk). Critical Costume Conference, Aalto University of Design, Helsinki, Finland

Practice-led presentations

• Penna, X. 2023. Hello Stranger East Midlands (phase 2) Exhibition- National Exhibition of UK Performance Design 2019-2023. Nottingham Playhouse 16th-19th March 2023
• Penna, X. 2023. Hello Stranger East Midlands (phase 1) Workshop-National Exhibition of UK Performance Design 2019-2023. Derby Theatre 23rd-24th Jan 2023
• July 2019, To You <-> To Me: Generating Non-Egocentric Habits of Embodied, Embedded, Enactive and Extended Spectating. Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Conference 2019, University of Mainz. Practice-led presentation involving the participation of the delegates
• July 2018, Attempts on Post-representation (multiple drafts). Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities Conference 2018, University of Kent. Practice-led presentation involving the participation of the delegates and a piñata in composing a collective definition of what could be a ‘post-representational’ performance
• (Colloquium organiser) May 2017. I Want You to Participate || pause for thought, PCI, University of Leeds. Supported by the Audience Engagement and Experience Research Group and the Post Graduate Research fund of the University of Leeds, and a fund from The National Academics and Creatives Exchange with money from ACE and HEFCE
• PhD practice-research: Using the understanding of cognition as co-originating between brain, body, and world to make participatory scenography (Work Space I, II, and III)
• Work Space III: Phishing Things Together (the predictive brain) – a participatory performance installation, 20^th October 2015, Live Art Bistro, Leeds
• Work Space II: Attempts on Margarita (multiple drafts) – a participatory performance installation, 26^th February 2015, stage@leeds
• Work Space I: A Scenographic Workshop on Consciousness. A participatory workshop, May 2013 stage@leeds

Recent publications

• Penna, C., 2024. Scenographic contraptions: designing uncertainty and orchestrating error for the generation of participatory scenography. Theatralia, 27(1)
• Penna, X. 2023. Scenographic Contraptions: The importance of error, exposure of process and inefficient aesthetics for orchestrating conversation.In Sandys, Kathrine and Thornett, Lucy (eds) Hello Stranger: The festival. Performance Research Books, 2023: Aberystwyth.22-25., 2023
• Penna, C. (2017). Towards a CogScenography: Cognitive science, scenographic reception and processes. PhD thesis. University of Leeds http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/20624/
• Penna, X. (2014). Uncovered – Performing everyday clothes, Scene. 2 (1&2), pp. 9–14
• Penna, X. (2012) ‘I Know this, I do this all the time (I don’t like it though)-shifting the boundaries between performance space and audience space’, Proceedings of the 4^th international conference on Spectacle-City-Identity, Novi Sad, Serbia 7-9 November. ISBN 978-86-7892-435-4