Stage Floor Research Articles

Stage floor of the Kyoto Concert Hall

The orchestra riser system has been installed in the Kyoto Concert Hall, which was newly opened in the autumn of 1995. This paper introduces the design process of the stage riser system and its floor structure in detail. The orchestra, including string sections, could be arranged in a three-dimensional manner with this riser system. Its drastic effect on the acoustics of the hall was confirmed at actual rehearsals and concerts in Suntory Hall. The form, division size, and height of each riser element were discussed with the resident of the hall, Kyoto Symphony Orchestra, using the riser mockup. The extent of the orchestra became more compact for the 3-D arrangement than that for flat one. The stage floor structure was selected through audition of 14 floor samples on which strings and a timpani were played. The samples contained four timber materials of several different thicknesses, and with or without an underneath layer. Some listeners preferred floors that resounded with fullness, but others preferred different floors that resounded tightly and clearly. Finally, a 40-mm Hinoki cypress without an underneath layer was selected as the stage floor structure.

Paul Bunyan (review)

Reviewed by: Paul Bunyan Mary Louise Hill Paul Bunyan. Libretto by W. H. Auden, score by Benjamin Britten. Glimmerglass Opera Festival. Cooperstown, New York. 15 July–20 August 1995. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. James David Lynn, Thomas R. Trotter, Kevin Murray, Scott Murphree, and Jeffrey Lentz in the Glimmerglass Opera production of Britten’s Paul Bunyan, conducted by Stewart Robertson, directed by Mark Lamos. Photo: George Mott/Glimmerglass Opera. The Columbia University premiere of Benjamin Britten and W. H. Auden’s opera Paul Bunyan on 5 May 1941 was met by negative criticism, most of it finding fault with the work’s weak text and predictable score. Auden himself ultimately apologized to Britten for the libretto. The composer subsequently withdrew it from his repertoire for about twenty years. [End Page 229] Only in retrospect, and through a carefully staged presentation such as Glimmerglass Opera House’s summer 1995 production by Mark Lamos, can the timeliness and foresight of this much-maligned opera crystalize. Lamos’s conception exposed the ambivalent undertones in American mythology that Auden saw with an insight that perhaps only an expatriate Englishman in 1941 could have possessed. Indeed, it may well have been this insight that his contemporary critics really found fault with. Influenced in part by Kurt Weill’s work, in particular on Der Jasager with Bertolt Brecht, Britten and Auden wrote a “school opera” that asked young singers to contemplate the death of American collective myths and the rise of individual responsibility. Auden’s text calls attention to what might happen should that responsibility go astray, and the result is a sizzling, satirical pill that depression-weary America might have not wanted to swallow—at least not in the theatre. Auden’s libretto met with considerably more understanding laughter from the Glimmerglass’s audience, sitting in an opera house known for its daring productions and in part maintained by unreliable NEA funding. Similarly, the contemporary audience had no problem with the absent Bunyan, another detail that put the 1940s critics into a lather. People expected to see Bunyan at its 1941 premiere, but Britten and Auden’s work called for a disembodied voice on high—something perhaps better realized by today’s technology. Furthermore, in performance this detail incriminated America’s tendency to substitute a state religion with a state mythology that advocates nationalism, unity, and a certain kind of progress, no matter what the cost. The emphasis on such costs proved one of the most powerful elements of Lamos’s production. The opera begins with a chorus of trees, most of which resist the inevitable approach of progress. Realizing the possible triteness of dressing people as trees, set and costumer designers Paul Steinberg and Constance Hoffman produced a striking stage picture of blue rocking chairs in which blue-clad chorus members rocked against a yellow background, holding trees on their laps while they sang. The rocking chairs, the chorus, the trees, and the contrasting blue and yellow became recurring [End Page 230] scenic elements of this production’s own unique language, a language that often expressed itself through minimal movement or tableaux. The first stage picture presented a gently swaying forest that gained energy and action less from physical movement than from the build-up of music and voices. With bitter irony, the opera’s final tableau contrasted this first picture with the aftermath of the Bunyan myth: as the lights dimmed, business-suited men and women collapsed one by one onto the bare stage floor, where their weary bodies joined a clutter of dead, used Christmas trees. In the grey shadows cast just before the curtain dropped, the audience saw the physical shape of what can be lost in the name of progress: the whimsical forest, the brilliance of myth, and with it, collective hope. Between these powerful opening and closing images, the opera cartwheeled forward, a collage of brightly colored, corrugated cut-outs and various musical and theatrical styles. Lush orchestral buildups gave way to musical comedy patter, to bluesy interludes, to reflective arias. In addition, the ballad singer, an ever-present reminder of Britten’s American folk sources, kept the narrative going through tales with a...

The Presence of Mediation

Two productions, precisely 20 years apart, emblematic of their respective decades as well as of the immense chasm that separates the 1960s from the I980s: the Living Theatre's Paradise Now (1968) and Richard Foreman's What Did He See (1988). former is often regarded as a quintessential affirmation of live, unmediated presence. Its most notorious sequence, The of Universal IntercourSe, was also its most representative. Julian Beck and Judith Malina described it as follows: The actors gather near the center of the playing area. They lie down together on the stage floor, embracing. Their bodies form a pile, caressing, moving, undulating, loving. They are breaking the touch barrier. [. . .] If a member of the public joins this group, he is welcomed into the Rite (1971:74). Twenty years later Foreman's production was intent upon constructing barriers, not eradicating them (or, perhaps more precisely, objectifying otherwise invisible barriers). Here the performer/spectator relationship was mediated both aurally and visually. A transparent, Plexiglas wall separated the audience from the performers. actors' voices were heard indirectly, filtered through microphones and speaker systems-but not for the conventional purpose of amplification. performance took place in an exceedingly intimate space (the Susan Stein Shiva Theater in Joe Papp's Public Theater complex). That thin sheet of Plexiglas notwithstanding, there was no conventional reason to amplify the actors' voices. Indeed, the space was so intimate, one could virtually read the actors' lips. No, this mode of technological mediation was there to mediate, not to amplify or to allow for some sort of hypernaturalism or whispered intimacy. (The body mikes, by the way, were unabashedly and rather gruesomely visible, taped to the actors' cheeks like I.V. needles that had missed their marks.) This may sound like yet another set of classic confrontations between Antonin Artaud and Bertolt Brecht. And indeed, one could easily approach the juxtaposition in that way. Certainly 20 years ago, one would have read it that way. Paradise Now would have been viewed as an attempt to reunify the community in a neo(or pseudo-) ritual, erasing any sense of theatrical rift. Our word theatre, after all, derives etymologically from the Greek theatron or seeing place, implying a necessary separation between the audience (those who watch) and the actors (those who do). What Did He

Half-pint playhouse: A training tool for WIC paraprofessionals

WIC nutrition educators are frequently asked how to handle preschoolers' eating problems. So as a public health nutritionist supervising a county WIC program, I wanted to develop an interesting and memorable training session on that topic. Inspired by Shakespeare's well-known metaphor All the world is a and Joan Rivers' comment .. . and mothers are the stagehands, I developed the Half-Pint Playhouse. This easy-to-replicate resource consists of a stage (made from a cardboard box) and cardboardbacked paper dolls (taped to wires). The stage (see Figure A) can be constructed from a large cardboard box (26 X 16 X 9) in the following manner: First, open the bottom flaps of the box, cut off the smaller side flaps, fold the top flap up (this becomes the marquee above the stage), and anchor it with small wires. Then fold the bottom flap out so it becomes an extension of the stage floor. (The stage may be completely closed for travel.) Next, cut a longitudinal slit (12 X 21h) in the long side ofthe top of the box (which has become the roof of the stage) . This slit is used to lower the dolls onto the stage. Spray-paint the inside and outside of the box brown, and wire a small rod to the inside ofthe box to serve as a curtain rod. The curtains open manually from the center. To make the paper dolls more durable, glue them to cardboard backing, and then tape each one to a strong wire slightly longer than the distance between the roof and the floor of the stage. At the top of the wire, tape a rectangular piece

Kyogen for Kids: An Examination into the Adaptability of the Japanese Comic Interlude to Western Children's Audiences

KYOGEN FOR KIDS: AN EXAMINATION INTO THE ADAPTABILITY OF THE JAPANESE COMIC INTERLUDE TO WESTERN CHILDREN'S AUDIENCES Children's literature has long been under the mystical spell of the Orient. Tales of the "Arabian Nights," the travels of Marco Polo, and Hans Christian Andersen's beautiful tale of "The Nightingale," have provided feasts for the imagination for over a century. There is something about these faraway lands that stirs the wonder in a child's fancy. It is not surprising then that writers of children's fiction have, over the years, been quick to perceive this interest and have capitalized on it with numerous tales and novels of a pseudo-oriental nature. No less aware, yet somewhat more discriminating, are the children's playwrights who in the post-World War II era have produced a number of these oriental exploitations for the unwary child audience. A few, like Madge Miller's The Land of The Dragon and Betty Jean Lifton's Kap the Ka»»a, warrant some attention while the vast majority (like t ose in children's fiction) are poorly conceived and degrading to both the oriental culture they try hopelessly to emulate and to the child audience compelled to sit through such abominations. One of the more interesting oriental adaptations, the short Brecht plays (performed together) , He Who Says Yes and He Who Says No, inspired by the Japanese Noh drama, have ""Eeen includecTEy Lowell Swortzell in his anthology of plays for children, All The World' s A Stage . These pieces were not written with children specifically in mind but would go far in charming and enlightening the juvenile theatre-goer. The inclusion of Brecht in this anthology for children, particularly when he is anthologized along with others primarily associated with the adult drama, prompts a question: What makes a dramatic work ostensibly for adults popular with children? It can safely be argued I think that, though some children could find pleasure in its performance, George Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion is best suited to the adult stage, yet Aurand Harris ' s Commedia dell 'Arte rendition of the same tale attracts hearty applause and laughter from young and old alike. This brings up a second question related to the first: What makes certain performing styles traditionally adult (e.g. the Italian Commedia) successful for the child audience ? In the case of Commedia it is the recognizable comic types, the simple yet action-packed plot, and the abundant slap-stick comedy which make it a crowd pleaser for all ages. If committed children's dramatists wish to explore similar styles to expand their theatrical possibilities, it may be to the East that they once again turn, particularly to the islands of Japan and to an ancient, rustic performing art form identified as "Kyogen." An indication that perhaps Japanese Kyogen has a potential audience among America's young comes from Francelia Butler, who in her 1977 anthology, Sharing Literature with Children includes the Kyogen piece "BusuT" Butler In including the piece without special alteration for children justifies the form's theatrical possibilities by stating: In some respects they [Kyogen] resemble the Western theater of the absurd in their restraint and their concern with social comment. . . . The broad humor and brevity of ["Busu"] make it a good choice for acting by or for children, (p. 142) Perhaps then, as the styles of Italian Commedia dell 'Arte and the Moliere-inspired French farce have found proper niches within the realm of dramatic literature for children, so too will the Japanese Kyogen. Before the Western audience may stand in a position to evaluate the Kyogen' s potential, it remains a necessity to know something of the origin and practice of the form in its native land and of the classic Noh Drama to which, by tradition, the Kyogen is inextricably fused. There is no Western counterpart to the dramatic world of the Noh; it is almost wholly wrapped up in the history and culture of Japan. Western concepts of stage setting, acting, and musical accompaniment find no parallel in this stark yet poetic form. The production is given on a simple stage floor of highly polished wood connected to the...

M-G-M'S New Camera Boom

A new type of intermediate-size boom incorporating a number of very desirable features has been placed in serivice at the M-G-M Studio. The device is of the crane-arm, or boom, type, with a boom 9 feet in length carrying an underslung camera mounting. The camera may literally be laid upon the stage floor, or lifted to a maximum height of 16 feet. The entire boom-arm may be raised or lowered bodily by means of a motor-driven helical hoist.