Sonic Scenography by Rachel Dagnall is a series of twelve radio broadcasts about the experience of incarceration. The theme is explored through non-verbal sound or sonic scenographies composed by former inmates in Beirut, Syria, the Mojave Desert, Oslo, Berlin and Barcelona.

The project aims to showcase artistic expressions about prison, surveillance and imposed mental and physical demarcation, and illustrate how such experiences distort or change our interpretation of space and immediate surroundings.

Actors move and create images of one specific place – both physical and mental – in the form of musical performances, physical movements, readings, conversations and more, with the use of resonance bringing a specific focus to the different rooms in which this takes place. 

Sonic Scenography is commissioned by and produced in collaboration with Tenthaus Radio and forms Rachel’s Master project at the Norwegian Theatre Academy.

Rachel Dagnall is a visual artist who has worked with socially engaged projects since 1997 in various collaborative groups and forms. Now she works mostly with sound and sonic investigations in connection with scenographic expressions. With this she tries to represent spatial / material surroundings through sound. She works with non-physical scenography, where she creates rooms without objects where sound and light and personal interventions are instruments. What will be heard in the radio broadcasts will be real-life theater, not commercial, unedited and recognizable, but still scenographic experiences