The in-person assumptions of social experience, of performances and performers of all sorts, was changed by the pandemic. From being high on the list of activities to shut down at the start to being amongst the last sanctioned to resume, the traditions of performance derived from centuries of practice took a beating. Accompanying this were alternatives to going dark. There were already substitutes for in-person theatrical experiences in films, games and images. New outlets included online presentations, revisiting recent (and older) recordings, TikTok challenges, internet performances, socially distanced work, the use of PPE in costume and character, shows on Zoom, positing new ways to engage with performance. Technological enhancement reduced distances between people, solutions were found to latency issues, training continued online, the quality of home cameras and sound improved, and a redistribution of who and how to perform, for how long and to what audience with what skills and in what location emerged to reassert the sense of performance and reset the context. The resulting collection in this volume is an account of the variety of ways the pandemic affected the concept of performance. Time will tell whether the strategies and devices resorted to and collected here will sweep away centuries of traditional performance, whether they will find themselves incorporated into that tradition or if they will branch off on their own. But there is no doubting the imagination applied, not just in these examples but in many more worthy of collection. The instinct to make and perform was not snuffed out by the pandemic and its lockdowns, that the acts of creativity seen here are as essential to cultural continuity as finding a vaccine.
{"title":"Performance in the pandemic","authors":"G. Sporton","doi":"10.1386/scene_00043_2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00043_2","url":null,"abstract":"The in-person assumptions of social experience, of performances and performers of all sorts, was changed by the pandemic. From being high on the list of activities to shut down at the start to being amongst the last sanctioned to resume, the traditions of performance derived from centuries of practice took a beating. Accompanying this were alternatives to going dark. There were already substitutes for in-person theatrical experiences in films, games and images. New outlets included online presentations, revisiting recent (and older) recordings, TikTok challenges, internet performances, socially distanced work, the use of PPE in costume and character, shows on Zoom, positing new ways to engage with performance. Technological enhancement reduced distances between people, solutions were found to latency issues, training continued online, the quality of home cameras and sound improved, and a redistribution of who and how to perform, for how long and to what audience with what skills and in what location emerged to reassert the sense of performance and reset the context. The resulting collection in this volume is an account of the variety of ways the pandemic affected the concept of performance. Time will tell whether the strategies and devices resorted to and collected here will sweep away centuries of traditional performance, whether they will find themselves incorporated into that tradition or if they will branch off on their own. But there is no doubting the imagination applied, not just in these examples but in many more worthy of collection. The instinct to make and perform was not snuffed out by the pandemic and its lockdowns, that the acts of creativity seen here are as essential to cultural continuity as finding a vaccine.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79092162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The COVID-19 outbreak made theatre and performance practitioners think to find alternate ways of performing for an audience. This article engages with the idea of site specificity in relationship with the living experiences of the residents’ pre- and post-COVID outbreak. It also illuminates the alternatives which were designed to bring the audience in a physical space following lockdown guidelines. The article investigates the different aspects of site-specific theatre, and seeks to understand what role site, space and place play in thinking about dramaturgy for a performance. Using a practice-based research example, The Present of the Past (TPOP), which was devised during the lockdown in the United Kingdom, I examine the potential of unconventional theatre lights (ceiling bulbs, table lamps), sound and pre-existing objects to find scenographic solutions in devising a site-specific performance.
{"title":"Site specificity in The Present of the Past: A critical reflection","authors":"Ashish Kumar Sharma","doi":"10.1386/scene_00052_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00052_1","url":null,"abstract":"The COVID-19 outbreak made theatre and performance practitioners think to find alternate ways of performing for an audience. This article engages with the idea of site specificity in relationship with the living experiences of the residents’ pre- and post-COVID outbreak. It also illuminates the alternatives which were designed to bring the audience in a physical space following lockdown guidelines. The article investigates the different aspects of site-specific theatre, and seeks to understand what role site, space and place play in thinking about dramaturgy for a performance. Using a practice-based research example, The Present of the Past (TPOP), which was devised during the lockdown in the United Kingdom, I examine the potential of unconventional theatre lights (ceiling bulbs, table lamps), sound and pre-existing objects to find scenographic solutions in devising a site-specific performance.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"91229253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
There can be little disagreement that the pandemic disproportionately affected the arts. Whilst it removed livelihoods and purpose for many overnight, it afforded the performance industry a pause in which many thought about what and who the industry was for. The rise of streaming and online cultural activity – necessitated by governmental indicatives and changing social responsibilities – created a new type of audience and, it is argued here, the beginnings and conditions for a new genre and/or way of making work. This article argues that the ‘liveness’ of performance art is key to the essence of performing and that the streaming of ‘past glories’ did not give audiences and creatives what they needed and wanted from interactions and cultural product. In order to see positives in a potentially negative situation, a new genre – here named Live Digital – is suggested, that democratizes, empowers, facilitates and builds creative culture for artists and audiences alike. Using tropes from theatre, film and streaming, Live Digital presents provocations to posit a new way of creation, distinct from these progenitors – one that strives to be more inclusive.
{"title":"Live Digital","authors":"Dermot Daly","doi":"10.1386/scene_00044_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00044_1","url":null,"abstract":"There can be little disagreement that the pandemic disproportionately affected the arts. Whilst it removed livelihoods and purpose for many overnight, it afforded the performance industry a pause in which many thought about what and who the industry was for. The rise of streaming and online cultural activity – necessitated by governmental indicatives and changing social responsibilities – created a new type of audience and, it is argued here, the beginnings and conditions for a new genre and/or way of making work. This article argues that the ‘liveness’ of performance art is key to the essence of performing and that the streaming of ‘past glories’ did not give audiences and creatives what they needed and wanted from interactions and cultural product. In order to see positives in a potentially negative situation, a new genre – here named Live Digital – is suggested, that democratizes, empowers, facilitates and builds creative culture for artists and audiences alike. Using tropes from theatre, film and streaming, Live Digital presents provocations to posit a new way of creation, distinct from these progenitors – one that strives to be more inclusive.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82258199","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The new artform of online theatre performance created by isolated actors, which emerged during the COVID-19 lockdowns beginning in March 2020, is a new performance medium and creative artform, with a new theatrical discipline for online action choreography. This new art form and its attendant specialist discipline deserve their place in theatre industry and theatre history. The article focuses on the experience of one UK theatre company, Shake-Scene Shakespeare and their online action choreographer: Alexandra Kataigida. The emergence of online performance is outlined, with its attendant opportunities and challenges, and the soon-identified need for online action choreography. Different categories of action choreography are detailed: individual and shared actions, changing perspective, prop passes, combat sequences and dances. Reference is also made to insights gained into Renaissance theatre practices through this experience.
{"title":"Experiencing Renaissance theatre on Zoom: The creation of action choreography for online theatre and its unexpected insights into Renaissance theatre","authors":"Lizzie Conrad Hughes, Valentina Vinci","doi":"10.1386/scene_00048_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00048_1","url":null,"abstract":"The new artform of online theatre performance created by isolated actors, which emerged during the COVID-19 lockdowns beginning in March 2020, is a new performance medium and creative artform, with a new theatrical discipline for online action choreography. This new art form and its attendant specialist discipline deserve their place in theatre industry and theatre history. The article focuses on the experience of one UK theatre company, Shake-Scene Shakespeare and their online action choreographer: Alexandra Kataigida. The emergence of online performance is outlined, with its attendant opportunities and challenges, and the soon-identified need for online action choreography. Different categories of action choreography are detailed: individual and shared actions, changing perspective, prop passes, combat sequences and dances. Reference is also made to insights gained into Renaissance theatre practices through this experience.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"133 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79507034","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article explores notions of scene and locality as they are played out amongst Oxford’s musicians and music industries personnel. Based on interviews carried out in 2016, it charts the tensions between local distinctiveness and universal issues, showing that even in an increasingly online world, physical location still matters.
{"title":"Oxford town, Oxford town: Music scenes in a small English city","authors":"M. Cloonan","doi":"10.1386/scene_00050_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00050_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article explores notions of scene and locality as they are played out amongst Oxford’s musicians and music industries personnel. Based on interviews carried out in 2016, it charts the tensions between local distinctiveness and universal issues, showing that even in an increasingly online world, physical location still matters.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"105 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77811257","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article recounts designing and performing an intimate encounter with strangers during the pandemic. At the end of 2020, as Australians emerged from a long period of ‘lockdown’, the celebrated Sydney Opera House again opened its doors to the public. Commissioned to create a new work for the Sydney Opera House’s Antidote Festival, I designed a ‘touch’ performance that met the Australian Government’s COVID-19 protocols for social distancing at indoor events. Instead of being frustrated by the restrictions, I used the health and safety rules as if they were conceptual instructions. Surprisingly, I was reminded of the 1960s and 1970s conceptual artists whose experimental capacity was borne from instructive limitations. Seeing the restrictions as an opportunity, I discuss how the physical limitations ushered in by COVID-19 (along with the heritage status of the Sydney Opera House) provided the parameters for conceiving a scene and an experience that was everything the pandemic denied – public, participatory, intimate and physical. I also reflect on what I learned in the process and how needing to keep people safe brought profound ethical understanding.
{"title":"‘Keep people safe’: Designing a participatory performance within the strict parameters of social distancing in Australia","authors":"Cherine Fahd","doi":"10.1386/scene_00045_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00045_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article recounts designing and performing an intimate encounter with strangers during the pandemic. At the end of 2020, as Australians emerged from a long period of ‘lockdown’, the celebrated Sydney Opera House again opened its doors to the public. Commissioned to create a new work for the Sydney Opera House’s Antidote Festival, I designed a ‘touch’ performance that met the Australian Government’s COVID-19 protocols for social distancing at indoor events. Instead of being frustrated by the restrictions, I used the health and safety rules as if they were conceptual instructions. Surprisingly, I was reminded of the 1960s and 1970s conceptual artists whose experimental capacity was borne from instructive limitations. Seeing the restrictions as an opportunity, I discuss how the physical limitations ushered in by COVID-19 (along with the heritage status of the Sydney Opera House) provided the parameters for conceiving a scene and an experience that was everything the pandemic denied – public, participatory, intimate and physical. I also reflect on what I learned in the process and how needing to keep people safe brought profound ethical understanding.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81855127","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Don Pasquale, Opera by Gaetano Donizetti, Damiano Michieletto (dir.) Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 20 May 2022
唐·帕斯夸莱歌剧:多尼采蒂、米切莱托(导演)2022年5月20日，伦敦考文特花园皇家歌剧院
{"title":"Don Pasquale, Opera by Gaetano Donizetti, Damiano Michieletto (dir.)","authors":"Gregory Sporton","doi":"10.1386/scene_00046_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00046_5","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Don Pasquale, Opera by Gaetano Donizetti, Damiano Michieletto (dir.)\u0000 Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London, 20 May 2022","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"21 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76531115","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
For a puppeteer specializing in the rare and beautiful Japanese otome bunraku, the story might have ended at COVID if it were not for a series of unexpected turns. First, there was a surprise primary school lockdown job making films of reading-books to beam into pupils’ homes; then, the sudden COVID precautionary ejection from the school building carrying an inadequate stock of books to continue the filming from home; then, the unexpected and possibly ‘barmy’ personal decision to write any extra books needed when the school stock ran out. Over weeks, my books, mainly drawings, were mounting up and intriguingly the filmed performances offered something extra, they became the stories and the images to mount on uchiwa rigid fans for me to play with. I rediscovered my ‘performance body’ in a ‘theatre of paper’ – small, private Japanese pēpāshiatā or ‘paper-theatre’. My body and brain woke up. The move from a Japanese-type puppetry pre-COVID (otome bunraku) to another kind during and post-COVID was happening. Lockdown was now promisingly creative. Directly out of the pain and suffering of COVID, and enforced restraint, a little known theatre practice was offering restitution.
{"title":"Instead of a body: The animation of Japanese pēpāshiatā in COVID-time","authors":"Caroline Astell-Burt","doi":"10.1386/scene_00051_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00051_1","url":null,"abstract":"For a puppeteer specializing in the rare and beautiful Japanese otome bunraku, the story might have ended at COVID if it were not for a series of unexpected turns. First, there was a surprise primary school lockdown job making films of reading-books to beam into pupils’ homes; then, the sudden COVID precautionary ejection from the school building carrying an inadequate stock of books to continue the filming from home; then, the unexpected and possibly ‘barmy’ personal decision to write any extra books needed when the school stock ran out. Over weeks, my books, mainly drawings, were mounting up and intriguingly the filmed performances offered something extra, they became the stories and the images to mount on uchiwa rigid fans for me to play with. I rediscovered my ‘performance body’ in a ‘theatre of paper’ – small, private Japanese pēpāshiatā or ‘paper-theatre’. My body and brain woke up. The move from a Japanese-type puppetry pre-COVID (otome bunraku) to another kind during and post-COVID was happening. Lockdown was now promisingly creative. Directly out of the pain and suffering of COVID, and enforced restraint, a little known theatre practice was offering restitution.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"52 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84869648","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In recent decades, there has been considerable interdisciplinary debate around the theories of scenography, but less so around the practices of scenography. This article revisits scenography to reposition it as a contemporary design discipline, with a reminder that its history is embedded in the traditions of art theory and philosophy. Using Isabelle Stengers’ ‘Introductory notes on an ecology of practices’ as an opportunity to rethink the practice of scenography, a project is revisited, under the rubric ‘design fiction’. This project ‘Burying the Narrative’ is presented as a source of conceptual and theoretical encounter as several objects are buried under the ground. This was a tactic to deliberately disassociate scenography from traditional conventions and methodologies. Design practice is considered an integral part of the ecosystem of theatre and performance, and certainly in the early stages of a project, clever manoeuvres give rise to creative speculations.
{"title":"The deep, sometimes wild, subjectivities of practice…","authors":"É. D’Arcy","doi":"10.1386/scene_00036_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/scene_00036_1","url":null,"abstract":"In recent decades, there has been considerable interdisciplinary debate around the theories of scenography, but less so around the practices of scenography. This article revisits scenography to reposition it as a contemporary design discipline, with a reminder that its history is embedded\u0000 in the traditions of art theory and philosophy. Using Isabelle Stengers’ ‘Introductory notes on an ecology of practices’ as an opportunity to rethink the practice of scenography, a project is revisited, under the rubric ‘design fiction’. This project ‘Burying\u0000 the Narrative’ is presented as a source of conceptual and theoretical encounter as several objects are buried under the ground. This was a tactic to deliberately disassociate scenography from traditional conventions and methodologies. Design practice is considered an integral part of\u0000 the ecosystem of theatre and performance, and certainly in the early stages of a project, clever manoeuvres give rise to creative speculations.","PeriodicalId":41671,"journal":{"name":"AVANT SCENE OPERA","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90904644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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