Contemporary scenography is a crafting of material and technological stagecrafts that orientates performers and spectators within a staged atmosphere. The term scenography derives from the Ancient Greek for skene (‘hut or tent’) and the action of graphos (‘etching or scribing’). ‘Scenography’ in English only becomes directly associated with theatre making in the 1960s. Variants on the original Greek as it pertains to theatre making are, nevertheless, represented in the majority of continental European languages: such as scénographie (French) and scénografie (Czech). All of the continental European variants before the 1960s had a strong association with ‘stage design’ or ‘set design’. The contemporary English usage, and a number of continental variants, now exceed a purely physical construction of scenery, to account for how the material and immaterial qualities of a stage atmosphere are composed and experienced.

The collaborative practice of scenography as a crafting of stage atmospheres often exceeds the authorship of a named professional, such as a designer or director. Accordingly, a scenographer is a particular kind of theatre maker who sustains a distinct focus on how the material and technological elements of performance come together as a felt atmosphere. In this regard, certain directors are also scenographers, such as Robert Wilson (1941- ) and Robert Lepage (1957- ), along with designers of lighting, sound, set and costume. A scenographer is typically a lead collaborator, practiced in a number of stagecrafts that, more often than not, transcend the strict conventional production hierarchies of author, director, designer and performer.