PQ 011_day five

As the programme on the morning of day five looked fairly empty and the weather looked damp, I decided to take advantage of the comfort of my free room upgrade and work on my overdue literature review and methodology. This productive session was in danger of taking over my day when a break in the weather forced me out into the city centre to return to visit the remaining 10 or so Intersection 'Boxes'. The architecture of these pavilions was somewhat less inspiring than the first visit a few days previously, perhaps something to do with the weather or general wear and tear - the ongoing plastering and repainting suggesting a poor choice of construction and detailing given that the buildings only needed to sustain 10 days of intensive public use. Once inside the 'black box' interiors this was soon forgotten as the theatrical experiences continued. The three standout installations were the total sensory deprivation of Brett Bailey's labyrinth (and then the chilling 'sculpture' when you found the middle), Ionoa Mona Popovici's 'Cosmic Harmony Club' - a miniature and realistic recreation of a techno-club where users were invited to become part of the installation, and Egon Tobias' 'Comment Dire' - where an interactive projection of an 'audience' watched and responded (laughed, yawned, cried) to your voice as you were invited onto a podium to give a speech / song / stand-up routine.

Just down from the Piazetta of the National Gallery was the site of the highly anticipated Third Act (Vltava) by Louise Ann Wilson and students. The crowds gathered at the bridge across to the Slovansky Island were disappointed to learn that the increased interest had led to a late ticketing policy for the event, but I was extremely fortunate to meet someone in the queue with a spare ticket. On the Island, viewers were greeted by a series of eerie living sculptures and vignettes, each of which told a story about someone (historic, fictional or recent) whose life was connected to the river. The audience were then presented with an unexpected surprise - a fleet of pedalos and other small boats was awaiting them (the ticketed policy suddenly became clear). Once on the water, your perception of the relationship between the city and river suddenly changed, though this feeling was interspersed with the surreal and ridiculousness of being part of a pedalo flotilla for the sake of art. However the return of the rain, along with further encounters with performances as we journeyed across the river, changed the atmosphere of the group. The sight of three women dragging themselves out of the water and clawing the muddy riverbank was a particularly poignant image. On a personal note, I was lucky to share a boat with Nigel Stewart (partner and collaborator of Louise Wilson), who I chatted to about Fissure (their last project in the Yorkshire Dales), architecture and northern humour, as well as receiving PhD advice and references.

Despite the soaking and the chill (or maybe because of it), this was group experience that will live long in the memory for those lucky enough to take part.

PQ_011 day four

The morning began with a 3 hour session presenting current research in scenography, in particular phd students associated with Universities of Zurich and Vienna. This was hugely informative for my own work, as the students were all at various stages through the process of and there was a mix of research by practice, purely theoretical, and one student who was looking at community performance from a more ethnographic / social science perspective. It was also another chance to have coffee and appreciate the dramatic panoramic view of the city from roof terrace atop the Veletrzni Palace.

A quick tram ride across the river was required to ensure a seat for the Richard Sennett lecture. He had been invited to address the Architecture Section on the subject 'when is a theatre', but quickly confounded then charmed the audience with a different topic; his 'sideline' as a professional cellist. The experience of becoming a craftsman of the musical instrument was analogised with the master craftmans - both, he suggested, must learn the skill of 'minimal force' and both are essentially about arriving at form through a difficult process of 'collaging ambiguities' - rather than beginning with a 'quick fix' clarity of form or identity. Form is an arrival from a multiplicity of means, not a start point, and if you can create this type of form or beauty you are more 'in touch' with the world. Unfortunately it seems that contemporary online condition and more passive/easier 'user-friendly' interfaces (both digital and physical) are eroding this sense of 'touch'. Inspiring stuff from a man who's voice and style reminded very much of a cross between Garrison Keillor and Larry David!

Following Richard Sennett, I finally had a chance to properly take-in the architecture expositions. Commissioner Dorita Hannah had asked participating countries to submit a 'table', as one of her interests is table as a site; one that can be read as 'feminine' / domestic or 'masculine' / confrontational. One thing I found frustrating is the fact it wasn't clear how participants were invited and under what criteria; as a result we had both dour entries (such as the UK exhibit - a history of the thrust stage in traditional architectural scale models set into a 'table') next to highly pretentious but totally illegible. Very few were actually to do with table as site! Of the more interesting exhibits, Serbia had an amazing and disorientating 3D video shot in a building site that is half-constructed (stalled) project for new national theatre, while the Chilean exposition used video and text to ask questions about choreographed / mediated 'public performances' - with particular reference to the nationalistic outpouring that followed the rescue of the 33 miners.

PQ 011_day three

A slow start had been planned for Saturday morning (day 3), but a talk at the Veletrzni Palace caught my eye; a panel discussing on the future of scenography with reference in particular to trends in the PQ expositions and Intersection programme. It was well worth the effort as a lively panel led by Arnold Aronson explored the surge of recent developments and fragmentation of a discipline which now informs (and is informed by) a multitude of (performance) art practices beyond the text-based narrative of traditional theatre. Richard Gough, Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research gave a particularly engaging presentation, drawing a divide between the redundancy of 'museum-like' national expositions and the enchantment of more immersive and performative environments. Following this I made my way down via the student submissions of which just a few stood out as truly inventive or beautifully executed; students from Serbia composed dramatic characters and compositions by extrapolating the details openly accessible on a random selection of facebook profiles, the Australian submission mapped the forensic traces of urban walks through Prague, and one of the Spanish exhibits was a pod for exchange crafted from recycled juice cartons.

The main programme looked a little empty for saturday afternoon, but a quick check of the PQ+ events found that the nearby Fabrika arts centre (which boasted a beautifully detailed industrial interior) was hosting a 'site-specific' opera by renowned director and scenographer Pamela Howard. Her staging of Bohuslav Martinů's 'The Marriage' broke

down the formal conventions of the opera by taking place in a backroom / warehouse-type space, with the orchestra packed in one corner and the audience seated on a random assortment of chairs and tables on hastily constructed terraces. While the plot and scenography did not only faintly referenced the unusual setting, the overall effect was to bring the incredible singers immedaitely proximate to the audience and give the whole performance a fun, community feeling - a radical departure from the stuffiness of most opera events. Of course, such an the informal arrangement is likely to have potential downsides, typically the acoustics (which were great) and/or the sight-lines, and though I was well positioned the woman next to me repeatedly disrupted the atmosphere by complaining she couldn't see!

An already busy day was completed by the first of 'Six Acts', a series of site-specific performances created by Scenofest students in collaboration with an experienced performance-maker. The First Act took place at dusk in the atmospheric Frantiskanska gardens, with a large audience free to move around and follow a series of alien creations using paper/cardboard costumes and animal-like movements. As dark fell, the choice of setting became magical, as sound and light in particular were used to 'key' each new performance in a different space - the audience were kept in flux; rushing, turning, moving and crowding round to see the next strange character. The most popular of these was a comedic ball-on-human-legs in the rose garden, and as viewers moved round onto the four sides of the space, the creature revealed itself as a girl (albeit still a crazy girl) who had been holding up her paper dress. By the end the group had the spectators exactly where they wanted them confused yet delighted and on tenterhooks as to where the next spectacle would show up. And as we drifted away at the end, there was the sense that they had not only created some entertaining physical theatre, but a palpable feeling of community and 'shared experience' among the audience.

PQ 011_Day Two

Day two began with a wander through the sprawling market district of ... where the purchase of a small day bag (somehow forgotten) was successful despite my frailties in the Czech language and a market seller determined to try to charge 10x the price I was willing to pay!

One of the architectural installations I had been most excited about was the 'Boxes' an intervention on the Piazetta of the National Theatre. This outdoor showcase formed a central part of the Intersection (Intimacy & Spectacle) 'undisciplined' programme of events. The highlights were the audio installation for one person by Hans Rosenstrom, and Monka Pormale's beautifully simple installation of two local performers frozen in embrace in a glass box. While you had to be a PQ accredited to gain entry into the intervention, two public spaces a cafe / bar and open air cinema for the evenings are perched over the top of the boxes. Here I met the architect of the pavillion Oren Sagiv, who gave his insight into the project and after two years planning, he was clearly excited about its inhabitation (though he had mixed feelings that the building would last only 10 days). An enjoyable morning was topped off by a birthday lunchtime treat of a beer & Czech pasty in the sunshine.

Rushing from the Piazetta I made it in time to get a seat in the packed spatial lab for the lecture from Charles Renfro (of Diller Scofidio & Renfro), who romped through the backcatalogue of the practice's projects, drawing a thread from architectural / performative installations to their current multi-million dollar commissions. While he was hugely engaging speaker and showed off an enviable array of projects (how could anyone fail to make a great project of the High Line!), not everyone in the audience (including me) was convinced about the theoretically-lite terms he explained the dramatic leap from installation (eg. blur building) to the huge museum constructions in Boston & Rio in particular.

Despite all of this, the unexpected highlight of day came from Voicequake, who used the streets and passageways around the Piazetta area to put on a walkabout piece that comprised of from a musical / choral troupe and physical theatre / clown troupe, whose performances intersected as we made our way through the city. The sizable and diverse audience (which grew and shrunk as we twisted and turned through the narrow streets) were guided simply by a lead and rear megaphones (!KEEP WALKING!), and were entertained by vignettes that were at one moment comedic and hauntingly beautiful the next. And of course, the flashmob-style appearance of 100+ people suddenly arriving outside of a restaurant of public square kept the passers-by confused and entertained.

PQ 011_day one

After the initial disappointment of arriving in Prague too late to register for the Scenofest workshops, the first real day of PQ11 got off to a good start with the sun out and a proper czech buffet breakfast. After topping up on sun cream I headed for walking to the Veletrezni Place HQ (the whole day was on foot due to a europe-wide public transit strike).

The national expositions inside the modern art gallery (of which I saw only 6) were fairly big budget pavilion-type structures, and generally either celebrated a range of recent (avant garde) national performers or attempted to give a more general impression of the country's culture through performance / architecture. Im looking forward to finishing the rest along another day, as the time came for the first scenography talk to kick off the rebranded 'Quadrennial of performance design and space'. Arnold Aronson described how the new name for 2011 represented the recent blurring of boundaries in theatre and scenography and the intersection of many other disciplines. He went on to argue that it wasn't theatre that changed in the last 10 years but audiences; the cardinal technology of the internet, hypertextuality, and visual bombardment has redefined our concept of reality, therefore new audiences have a different set of expectations for what (a) theatre should/can be. Jane Collins of Wimbledon College of Art then gave a whirlwind tour of the theories associated with scenography and performance (essentially a long book plug but well presented and useful nonetheless).

Due the transport situation, the next destination was the architecture section- a long and very sunny walk away, but there were plenty of distractions as I crossed the Vltava into the narrow twisting streets of the old town. The exhibtion and 'open spatial lab' above are housed in a fantastic refurbishment of st Annes church, a deconsecrated building tucked away in a private courtyard at the original crossroads of the city. Commissioner Doritta Hannah of Wellington University introduced the concept for the section and broad theoretical grounds to be covered during the 10 days of talks, workshops and symposium. One key contested point was the statement that theatre really had 'left the building', and following the talks there was a lively debate, which gave the impression that theatre makers were much more keen on the idea of found space while architect-practioners were suspicious and much more keen to design specific buildings for them. We then heard Omar Khan of Buffalo University talking about designing for (rather than trying to control) the agency of crowds as well as rolling out the much-hyped Tahrir / facebook link. Jane Rendell was not in attendance but a lecture delivered on her behalf covered the spatiality of language both in her own practice of 'site-writing' as well as highly relevant theoretical ground of Bhaba and

Benjamin's Arcades (the dialectical image). Finally Andrew Todd tried to cross theory and practice and posited the notion that something is lost when the theatre building leaves the civic centre. He certainly would lose - as his practice has collaborated on a number of high-profile new and refurbished theatre projects.

Crossing the Letenske park (with an ice cream) to the last third main event of the day I passed Claudia Bosse's billboard installation; 'The Tears of Stalin'. I was responding to an open call to a rehearsal for the second and third parts of the same performance event, which involved a mass occupation of a 'public space'. The major road bridge into Prague was due to be closed to cars, and participants would descend upon it en masse, standing silently for 50 minutes before whispering secrets to the passers-by/audience. Unfortunately for Claudia, the people of prague / PQ did not seem to be quite as keen on participating, and for a whatever reason only around 30 turned up- bit of a disaster as she was genuinely planning for 500 (!). After some interesting discussion about this gap between utopian expectation and reality, why people in prague dont use their public spaces, why people in general dont want to take part in this sort of collective art/protest, and what alternatives could be offered (500 empty chairs was a popular idea), the PQ organiser began to get stressed about all of the expense and effort they had taken to close the bridge and book the hall for rehearsals etc. From a research point of view the whole thing turned out to be quite good, but in the end we had to choose whether 30 of us should try and do something different (whisper through megaphones from a boat?) or whether just to call it off, which descended into an argument in czech (not translated by this point) so I chatted with the artist for a bit, wished her luck and left!

Ulrike & Eamon Compliant, Blast Theory, Sheffield

This performance installation arrived in Sheffield as part of DocFest, the annual documentary festival which seems to have grown substantially in scale and ambition this year.

The mixed media, techno-philhic performance practice that is ‘Blast Theory’ have produced a range of game / performances that place the spectator-participant in direct contact with the reality of the city. In U&E, you are invited to assume the persona of one of two iconic anti-heros, Red Army Ulrike, or IRA informer Eamon. Whatever the choice, the work draws upon the documentary of the violent political lives of these figures, and provokes participants to contemplate the effect of these actions at an emotional / personal level.

Blast Theory’s physical unassuming physical installation is a plywood box that sits in the very centre of the Winter Gardens. Very limited instructions are given (or needed), the piece works on a one-at-a-time basis, so an assistant ensures that at least six minutes are left between each participant. The only device is a single mobile phone (and umbrella for the weather if required!), and upon dialling the number you are asked to choose which character to play.

The phone works perfectly as a device for this performance, on one hand the idea that Ulrike is ‘on the run’ suited the covert feel of talking to the invisible co-conspirator / narrator– yet it is such a ubiquitous piece of technology that you can carry out the whole 30 min piece on the line to the narrator – walking and briefly taking - without conspicuously ‘performing’ in public.

Ulrike’s story follows her separation from her partner, political activism, violent rescue of a comrade from prison, and loss of her children before she turns herself in. Though the story itself doesn’t relate to the urban landscape you are witnessing, I found that the disconnection from the reality of the city (that I know very well) heightened the sense of spatial and social interaction. And on the occasions when a moment in the narrative did ‘fit’ with the more filmic nature of the surroundings (under Fountain Precinct, down a back alley off Fargate) the suspension of belief crept in and the social reality began to erode.

When offered the final choice – echoing Ulrike’s choice of ‘flight or fight’ is asked “hang up in the next 30 seconds if you want to escape home”, and it transpired that you had to meet a man by nodding across the street, the first contact with an live actor felt all too real. He led you into the backstage of the Crucible, where a second box (mimicking the first) sat in a darkened room. This was lit with single strip light and designed to recreate an interrogation chamber, and a 10 minute grilling by the actor on your personal attitude of violence for the cause. It wasn’t entirely clear by this point whether you were still ‘in character’, but I found this manipulation process (akin to real interrogation techniques?) made me open up emotionally in a surprising way. It was also a final shock to realise that the interview was being monitored by a webcam through a two way mirror in the chamber, which was broadcasting a live feed back into the first box!