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.