Rehearsal Hall Research Articles

Masterpiece of the Leningrad School of Constructivism – House of Culture Named after Ilyich (Cultural and Leisure Center «Moscowsky»)

Architects of the 1920–1930s acted in the context of the new communist agenda, constructing the spatial environment of the person of the future. The projects of that era realized a dialectical connection between formality (geometricity) and functionality (utilitarianism). Constructivism became the key style of this stage; he was characterized by experiments with volumes, rectangular and curvilinear shapes. House of Culture named after Ilyich, which is the focus of this study, became one of the signs of the time — the era of palaces and houses of culture, where cinemas, concerts, sports, rehearsal halls, libraries, music schools, premises for clubs and circles were located under one roof. The article presents an analysis of the volumetric-spatial solution, the functional characteristics of the building and the history of the existence of the building of the House of Culture, and also identifies the problem of the preservation and restoration of constructivist architecture. In 2020, the House of Culture named after. Ilyich received the status of an object of cultural heritage of the Russian Federation of regional significance. The analysis of the scientific context makes it possible to conclude that today in the scientific community there is an increased attention to avant-garde architecture as a striking phenomenon of Russian architecture and a change in the protective status of the House of Culture building is a positive marker of a change in attitude towards the architecture of the 1920–1930s.

Active Analysis in the beginning acting classroom

ABSTRACT Often, the exercises in the acting classroom can feel at odds with the processes used in the rehearsal room. I believe Konstantin Stanislavsky’s rehearsal method of Active Analysis provides tools and perspectives for dealing with these challenges. At The S Word Symposium in November 2022, I outlined a process I developed for teaching beginning acting using principles of Active Analysis as a tool to bridge the gap between training and rehearsing. This article expands on that presentation, including the experiences and thought processes that went into creating this class structure, and reviews the benefits for students. Applied in this way, Stanislavsky’s impulse to place embodied action before intellectual analysis yields valuable results in the classroom as well as the rehearsal hall.

Bridging the Digital Divide: Distance music learning among older adult musicians

The purpose of this study was to examine the experiences of conductor-teachers and older adult musicians in a New Horizons ensemble engaged in distance online music-making and music learning. This study employed intrinsic and particularistic qualitative case study designs in which older adult musicians and conductor-teachers of a New Horizons orchestra were interviewed and observed for one year during the COVID-19 pandemic. Primary data sources included verbatim interview transcripts of 11 older adult musicians and the principal conductor, e-mail correspondences, video recordings, and the principal conductor’s journal entries. Findings distilled from the data included (a) the information communication technology (ICT) and music learning technology (MLT) introduced and the technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) needed to teach orchestra members and (b) how orchestra members navigated both ICT and MLT to engage in meaningful music-making and music learning in a distance learning environment. Implications for research and practice include challenging implicit assumptions and messages regarding technology use among older adult musicians, continuing post-COVID distance music learning that may lead to promising models for informal music learning, and continued connectivity beyond the locality of the rehearsal hall.

Toward a more versatile venue: The Hahn Recital Hall renovation at the Music Academy of the West, Montecito, CA

The Music Academy of the West was founded in 1947 by German operatic soprano and lieder singer, Lotte Lehmann and Otto Klemperer and has evolved to be regularly lauded as the “Julliard of the West.” Because their 1970s, 350-seat Recital Hall could no longer properly serve as a suitable recital hall or rehearsal hall, MCH was retained in 2005 to design a full overhaul to ensure the hall could wonderfully serve ensembles ranging from 2 or 3 musicians to the 70-piece Santa Barbara Symphony in rehearsal. It serves now as the home of Marilyn Horne’s Vocal Institute. We present our design process that involved major reshaping, mitigating rail traffic 300 ft away, a new HVAC system, a sensitive re-do of the copious stage (including mitigating practice rooms below), designing novel recital screens, providing variable acoustics and an 11th hour effort to accommodate “Met Live!”.

The Reverend Billy Project: From Rehearsal Hall to Super Mall with the Church of Life After Shopping

The Reverend Billy Project: From Rehearsal Hall to Super Mall with the Church of Life After Shopping

Optimizing Optimal Experiences: Practical Strategies to Facilitate Flow for 21st-Century Music Educators

In 1990, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi warned against an excessive emphasis on how well music learners perform rather than on the experiential aspect of music in and of itself. Whereas the former approach is, in his words, “a source of psychic disorder,” the latter approach offers access to “flow”: the optimal, enjoyable, meaningful, and happy state. What might an approach to music education that aims to optimize optimal experiences (i.e., flow) look like? This article presents concrete strategies to facilitate flow experiences in music classrooms and rehearsal halls by drawing on flow theory, research findings, and the authors’ own professional and applied experiences. The authors clarify the nature of the flow experience, sketch the benefits of flow, and propose ten strategies to facilitate flow for music educators.

Directing O'Neill: Mourning Becomes Electra, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Desire Under the Elms, Days Without End

Directing O'Neill: <i>Mourning Becomes Electra, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Desire Under the Elms, Days Without End</i>

Hands On/Hands Off: Pedagogical Touch in the #MeToo Era

ABSTRACT This study explores two key questions: (1) How and why the use of touch—defined here as hands-on physical touch—is effective in teaching voice and Alexander Technique, and (2) How might the use of this powerful pedagogical tool change in light of the #MeToo era? The article first discusses when, how, and why touch is effective in teaching. The article then examines when teachers might choose not to touch and discusses curricular methods that can encourage individual choice in this area. The article argues for practices that ensure no student feels coerced or pressured to comply with assumed directives regarding personal space. The authors argue that clear communication about the specific use of touch in the classroom, rehearsal hall, and in private coaching is imperative if teachers are to create a working environment that respects personal boundaries and individual needs. The article includes the authors’ experiences with students in performing arts programs, professional actors, private clientele, and community work. Also included are perspectives from the authors’ work with Intimacy Directors International (IDI) and from colleagues. Ultimately, the purpose of this article is to engender further inquiries in this area of research and practice.

A more thoughtful approach to the acoustical design of music rehearsal halls

With insufficient volume, one must choose between a rehearsal hall that is either too loud or too dead. Increasing room volume helps to reduce this conflict but adds to the cost of construction. Achieving the proper balance between reverberation time, room strength and cost can be challenging. The new 70 733 GSF Music Activities Center for the at Texas A&M University (TAMU) offers four large, purpose-built rehearsal halls for musicians who participate in TAMU bands, choirs, orchestras, and jazz bands, respectively. The design was aimed at creating a balanced acoustic environment with a focus on an acoustically “safe” environment for each of the respective ensembles. The design of these halls was informed by the new Norwegian standard for music facility design, NS 8178, modelling, and close collaboration among design team members.With insufficient volume, one must choose between a rehearsal hall that is either too loud or too dead. Increasing room volume helps to reduce this conflict but adds to the cost of construction. Achieving the proper balance between reverberation time, room strength and cost can be challenging. The new 70 733 GSF Music Activities Center for the at Texas A&M University (TAMU) offers four large, purpose-built rehearsal halls for musicians who participate in TAMU bands, choirs, orchestras, and jazz bands, respectively. The design was aimed at creating a balanced acoustic environment with a focus on an acoustically “safe” environment for each of the respective ensembles. The design of these halls was informed by the new Norwegian standard for music facility design, NS 8178, modelling, and close collaboration among design team members.

Simulations and Subjective Rating of Acoustic Conditions in a Symphony Orchestra—A Case Study

Acoustic conditions in a symphony orchestra on a concert hall stage are very different from those on an empty stage. Since inter-orchestral sound transmission and other acoustic conditions with the orchestra present is easier to simulate than to measure, a method for simulations in Odeon models of orchestras in different rooms was developed by this author. This method was applied in the Grieghallen Renewal Project, which involved changes in concert hall, orchestra pit, and rehearsal hall. The resident orchestra members gave their overall rating of playing conditions in the home venues in addition to a number of international venues. Acoustical conditions in the rated venues were simulated and compared with ratings. Several metrics were investigated, and their correlation with subjective ratings varied between r2 = 0.09 and r2 = 0.85. It turned out the orchestra clearly preferred to play in conditions where the direct component and the reverberant component of the inter-orchestral sound-transmission on average were equally strong; |D-R| = 0. Any deviation from equality was associated with reduced preference, with correlation coefficient r = −0.92. Several interesting implications and interpretations of the result are discussed in the paper.

Armerding center for music and the arts at Wheaton College

Wheaton College has long cultivated young musicians in a tight-knit community outside of Chicago. As the program has grown in recent decades, however, the community has burst at the seams in need of expanded space for faculty and students alike. The construction of a new science building on campus led to the availability of Armerding Hall to be redeveloped into a new home for the Conservatory on the central campus quad. Shallow floor-to-floor heights and limited structural capacities led to acoustic isolation strategies that provide “just enough” separation between faculty studios and relied on careful detailing for success. A steeply-raked Lecture Hall was reimagined to become a 100-seat recital hall with volume carved into adjacent spaces. Other spaces within the building include ensemble rehearsal rooms, a recording suite, and a room for multi-media composition. A second phase of the project will include new construction of a 650-seat concert hall and the college’s first dedicated rehearsal hall for their formidable choral program.

Towards a Poetics of Affect: Staging Sound in Wajdi Mouawad's Theatre of Compassion 1

Erin Hurley and Sara Warner in their insightful study “Affect/Performance/Politics” (2012) remind us that the humanities and social sciences today experience a new sweep of theoretical inquiry, focusing on studying affect or thrill experience as a leading mechanism of our cognition and communication, as well as the making and reception of art works. Today, “the affective turn signals [our] renewed interest in embodiment and sensorial experience” (2012 : 99), allowing scholars to examine a theatrical performance as a venue to reinforce the subjectivity of the artist and that of the receiver. A theory of affect strives to describe the mechanisms of reception in theatre as our psycho-physical experience, regardless of our linguistic, cultural, social, or ethnic background, and thus aspires to bring the question of universals back to the rehearsal hall and the theatre auditorium. This article takes such a theoretical framework further to argue that in today’s theatre it is the multiple soundscapes of performance – actors’ voices, music, artificially produced and live sound, the architecture of performance aurality – that has the most potential for instigating the audiences’ visceral experience. Hans Thies Lehmann (2006) in his influential book on post-dramatic theatre aesthetics names this phenomenon as chora, the sonoric space of the performance, which possesses the great power to deconstruct the semantic meanings of words, turning them into mechanisms of performative psycho-physical affect as xperienced by the audience (ibid. : 145). In order to illustrate how words (as poetry) and sounds (as singing and music) generate affect in today’s performances, an example of Lehmann’s chora-graphy (2006 : 146), I examine Wajdi Mouawad’s theatre of compassion (Naugrette 2008 : 88), emphasizing his dramaturgy, directorial choices (mise-en-scene), use of sound, and work with actors, as an artistic project called to shock and shake audiences emotionally. In the first section of my study I outline the major principles of the theory of affect; in the second, I discuss Mouawad’s approach to staging a canonical dramatic text and investigate how sound serves as the leading compositional element of affect in his 2011 production Des Femmes, an adaptation of Sophocles’ three tragedies Les Trachiniennes, Antigone and Électre.

Introduction: Shaw in Performance

Introduction: Shaw in Performance

Physical Theatre: Text in Body and Space

his project explores the creative process of making physical theatre. I am exploring the creation of physical performance ‘texts’ that respond to a play script, but that do not incorporate spoken word as part of the storytelling. Up until now, my experience with theatre at Queen’s has been mostly centered around the spoken word as the primary mode of storytelling. Even when that script has been a musical, complete with choreography and vocals, the process has still been largely centered around the spoken (or sung) text. With this research project, I am exploring storytelling in theatre through movement. I am experimenting with creating a physical theatre narrative, inspired by a previously published script (Lilies by Michel Marc Bouchard), but not entirely driven by the spoken word in that text.&#x0D; This project includes concentrated research on noted physical theatre theorists such as Jacques Lecoq and Philip Gaulier, as well as on prominent physical theatre companies around the globe. Inspired by that research, I am workshopping a short piece of physical theatre. I will report on my experiences experimenting with creating a physicalized text in the rehearsal hall. The goal of this project isn’t about removing or disregarding the text, but is instead it to use what is given, and perform it through a different medium of theatrical communication: the physical body.

The cognitive Stanislavski in the rehearsal hall

AbstactAlmost a century after he last wrote about the practices and ideas he developed in the rehearsal hall, Stanislavski’s impact is keenly felt in classrooms and productions. Is it even possible to identify key Stanislavski concepts that may be useful for contemporary actors? Jean Benedetti’s translation of Stanislavski’s theories and practices, An Actor’s Work, draws together many of his disparate writings. This large tome, however, covers a great deal of material and what sometimes seems to be contradictory advice. So how does an actor, director or teacher decide what is relevant to use? One method may be to apply current understandings of the way human brains work to Stanislavski’s writings to see if cognitive science may be able to shed a light on his work, and at the same time point out especially useful concepts and techniques for an actor. Inspired by Rhonda Blair’s and Rick Kemp’s work in acting and cognitive neuroscience, I recently concentrated on three of Stanislavsky’s important concepts – Embodiment, Imagination and the rarely studied concept of “The Will” -- in the rehearsal of a production of Emily Mann’s post-modern play, Mrs. Packard. My paper highlights various ways in which these focused Stanislavskian principles of Embodiment, Imagination and The Will can be very effective in the rehearsal hall, and can also serve as a streamlined and practical guide for the actor.

City Profile: Stratford, Ontario

WORLDLIT.ORG 5 For half the year, the hamlet of Stratford , Ontario—named after the birthplace of William Shakespeare—is much like any other small North American town. But in April, the town’s atmosphere changes overnight. Lifeless buildings are suddenly transformed into theaters, production studios, and rehearsal halls. Through October, the quiet streets are full of cars and buses and the odd carriage ride. And every gift shop within the city limits is packed with tourists hoping to take a little of Shakespeare home with them. Since its start in the summer of 1953, Stratford, Ontario, has become associated with some of the most notable Shakespeare productions in the modern era. Its inaugural performance of Richard III featured the talents of Alec Guinness and Irene Worth. The town’s high standard for actors has continued ever since. Now an internationally recognized event, people come from all over the world to take part in the Stratford Festival. Over the years, the productions in each season have varied—from Shakespeare, old classics, and new plays debuting for the first time—though there is always at least one production of the Bard’s work being performed. The year I attended, not only did I get to see Twelfth Night or What You Will and Richard III but also classic greats such as The Grapes of Wrath and My Fair Lady (with the original Bernard Shaw ending replacing the modified one from the musical adaptation). One of the great things about the city’s productions of Shakespeare are the different ways they reimagine the settings and show how adaptable and relatable the stories are. For instance, Twelfth Night had a new twist: instead of sixteenthcentury Illyria, the sets and costumes were reimagined in a fantastical steampunk style, adding to the light and comedic sense of the play. This year, on the 150th anniversary of Canada’s independence, the festival will be putting on iconic classics such as Guys and Dolls, Treasure Island, and Romeo and Juliet. Stratford isn’t just about its plays, though. During the day the streets are lined with trees, pots overflowing with flowers, and an atmosphere of calm merrymaking by tourists and residents alike. Running around the city is the Avon River, which forms Lake Victoria with its classic Juliett III boat tours. For those wishing to take in the quaint atmosphere, there are also bikes for rent to explore the historic downtown area. When night falls the area becomes deserted, but only because everyone is hitting the local pubs to wind down. The main pub for the actors to hang out in—at least when I was there—was the Boar’s Head. Attached to the Queen’s Inn, the inside of the pub smells like an old library crossed with a 1920s speakeasy: old leather, older wood, musky cigar smoke, and just a touch of the good stuff. It’s a great place to pull up a stool at the bar, try your luck at a game of pool or darts, or find a small booth for reading. Anna Hernandez, a WLT intern, is currently working on her MA in library science at the University of Oklahoma. photo : richard bain Notebook city profile Stratford, Ontario by Anna Hernandez ...

Rehearsing Justice: Theatre, Sexuality and the Sacred

The theatre actor’s process in a rehearsal hall is reality and metaphor. It can be a rehearsal for justice, where we can live freely. In this laboratory the actor becomes all of us. Like the actor, we inhabit our bodies and our sexualities, sometimes as spiritual practice, or as sacred and creative, even as incarnations. In particular, women’s bodies remember what it is like to be no-body and what it is like to be a some-body. The texts of women’s bodies contain their history of pain, wellness and illness. In creating a character, the actor creates a biography, an inner life, and the actor’s imagination aligns with the character’s situation. This is the creation of a character’s ‘living story’. Similarly, for all of us, this is akin to self knowledge. When women and sexual minorities tell their stories and listen to each others’ self knowledge, they are reading their bodies as texts. And worlds split open.

Electronic shell―Improvement of room acoustics without orchestra shell utilizing active field control

This paper introduces an example of Electronic Shell acoustic enhancement system that was installed in a multi-purpose hall without an orchestra shell. The system is based on the concept of Active Field Control using electro-acoustic means. The three objectives of this system were 1) the enhancement of early reflection for performers, 2) the extension of the reverberation time and the enhancement of the total sound energy on stage, and 3) the enhancement of early reflection in the audience area. The application of this system showed an improvement of about 1 to 2 dB in STearly and more than 2 dB in G in the audience area, which is equivalent or better performance than simple mobile type orchestra shell. Regarding the spatial sound structure and the time domain characteristics between simple mobile type shell and the Electronic Shell system, there are differences since the mobile type shell mainly takes care of lateral reflections; on the other hand, the Electronic Shell system takes care of overhead reflections, and it cannot provide some early reflections after the direct sound arrives. It was clarified the relationship between the differences in physical features and the subjective improvement of the musical performance using a temporal system installed in a rehearsal hall.

Signature pedagogy in theatre arts

Critique in undergraduate theatre programs is at the heart of training actors at all levels. It is accepted as the signature pedagogy and is practiced in multiple ways. This essay defines critique and presents the case for why it is used as the single most important way that performers come to understand the language, values, and discourse of the discipline. In actor training, critique is used in the studio, classroom, and rehearsal hall as the way that students learn to take theory and practical skills and apply them through choices that are clear and justifiable, demonstrating an understanding of text and dramatic style. The focus is on where and how critique is used, who is doing the critique in what setting, and how students learn and grow through this process. This is discussed in relationship to the development of self and community and preparation for the professional world.

Conceptualizing Conceptual Teaching

Half a century ago, calls had already been made for instrumental ensemble directors to move beyond performance to include the teaching of musical concepts in the rehearsal hall. Relatively recent research, however, suggests that conceptual teaching remains relatively infrequent during rehearsals. Given the importance of teaching for long-term musical goals, revisiting this critical topic, backed by research and learning theories, is important and timely. Enriched by insights from my own teaching experience, the goal of this article is to clarify the nature of conceptual teaching and encourage conceptual teaching in large instrumental ensembles by addressing the following questions: What is conceptual teaching? Why teach conceptually? and How may musical concepts be taught through the rehearsal hall? I conclude with some thoughts on the future.