Site, Set and Media: Puppeted Architecture
Introduction
Jeff Burke - September 28, 2010
The Project: Macbeth / Macbett
Premise
• The Tragedy of Macbeth (somewhat compressed) with dialogue incorporated
from Ionesco’s Macbett when the characters are not “politically correct.”
• Interpreted as a love story between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; to the
director, this is the only non-pathological interpretation of their actions.
• Use of media and technology to create continuous transformations of
environment and objects.
• “Puppeted scenery” to achieve fluidity that rivals digital media, with live
actors.
Partners
PURE Theatre, Charleston – Producer
UCLA REMAP – Producer / Design Lead
Three Chairs, Los Angeles – Co-Producer / Puppetry, Scenery
Fourthworld, Austin – Co-Producer
Directed by Peter Karapetkov
Context of the approach to media
Burke, Macbett interactive systems, 2001
Burke, Blogger Project projections, 2006
video textures
Burke/Holtgrewe, Blogger Project, 2006
Burke, Homer in Cyberspace, 2008
Burke/Holtgrewe, Dojoji source video, 2009
Burke/Deakins, Homer in Cyberspace source image, 2008
Burke/Deakins, Virgin & the Unicorn workshop, 2008
Burke, Projection Test (Nan Goldin) for The Reader, 2007
Lee/Acheson/Burke, Inevitability of Lem workshop, 2009
Burke/Holtgrewe, Theatre of Memory workshop, 2006
Burke/Moon, Macbeth scenic tests, 2010
Burke, Yorobashi projection, 2009
Challenges for this production
Director- and actor-driven theatrical tradition
Balancing the impact of media with the primacy of the actor
Distillation and metaphor over either representation or abstraction
Cost and complexity of incorporating video projection
Building for rehearsal – an inclusive, iterative design process
Some contemporary theatrical references
Josef Svoboda
George Tsypin
Julie Taymor
Dionsysus Fotopoulos
Builders Association
In later lectures:
Wooster Group
Elevator Repair Company
Robert LePage
The Builders Association, Continuous City, 2008
Josef Svoboda, The Journey, 1969
Josef Svoboda, Polyekran / Laterna Magika at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair
Josef Svoboda, Their Day, 1955
Why Polyekran for this production? The play
presents a mosaic of city life, a mosaic that
evolves with the action of the play… [H]ere we
wanted changes in the dimensions of space as
well as rapid shifts of scene. Because we could
project various images at various angles, we could
create space and spatial relations at will. My
essential point in using projections is the creating
of stage space, not as a substitute for décor or
establishing a locale…
- Svoboda in Burian, p93
Josef Svoboda, Their Day, 1955
Dramatic space is psycho-plastic space,
which means that it is elastic in its
scope and alterable in its quality. It is
space only when it needs to be space.
It is a cheerful space if it needs to be
cheerful. It certainly cannot be
expressed by stiff flats that stand
behind the action and have no contact
with it…
[T]he utmost point and highest degree
of scenic development that it’s possible
to achive at this time [is that] the
combined action of the parts reveals
the dynamic principle of the entire
system…
The goal of a designer… can no longer
be a description or copy of actuality,
but the creation of its multidimensional
model… The basis of a theatrical
presentation is no longer the dramatic
text, but the scenario, the evidence of
the fusion between direction and
scenography, and their aiming towards
a common goal.
- Svoboda in Burian, pp30-31
Josef Svoboda, The Last Ones, 1966
Josef Svoboda, Casanova, 995
Josef Svoboda, Casanova, 1995
A more complex Pepper’s ghost: Svoboda designed a system for projection which enabled the projected material to
appear on a non-existent ‘screen’ cutting across the full width of the stage—to create images literally in thin air.
Suspended from the flies, at an angle of 45 degrees and reaching to the stage-floor, is a large screen made of a
polycarbonate material that is both transparent and reflective (it is also slatted, like Venetian blinds). In the flies
above the screen is a large mirror surface. Video projection bounces off the screen onto the mirror surface and back
down onto a virtual perpendicular plane behind the angled screen.
This produces the effect of the projections appearing in mid-air, so to speak… Performers behind the angled
polycarbonate screen are, therefore, able to operate along the same plane as the projected video. - Giesekam p68-69
Josef Svoboda, Graffiti, 2002
In other words, we substituted projection space for the former projection screen.
- Walter Gropius on his collaboration with Erwin Piscator (Burian, p79)
And what would happen if it were to introduce a wholly new architecture, making the stage a
play-machine, a wonder-world, an arena for battling ideas, perhaps even setting the audience on
a turntable, dynamically bursting the static illusion of the present stage?
I do not say that new techniques will be the saviour of the theatre. I merely say that they can
express new dramatic contents by liberating the creative forces of playwrights, directors, and
actors.
- Erwin Piscator, 1941
Gropius’s total-theater, 1926
Where does this intersect with the technology,
media, theatre, and architecture of today?
LD Systems 3D Projection Mapping – see this and others on YouTube; http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8IICGkOtJ9E.
Kryzsztof Wodiczko, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC, 1988
Kryzsztof Wodiczko, If you see something…, 2005
Kryzsztof Wodiczko, The Europe of Strangers, Venice Biennale, 2009
Walt Disney Enterprises Patent for “High Dynamic Range Projections”
Julie Taymor / George Tsypin, The Magic Flute, 1993
Julie Taymor / George Tsypin, The Magic Flute, 1993
In contrast to the too often too-cute stuffed animal costumes that
accompany Magic Flute productions, I designed large kitelike beasts made
of translucent fabric stretched over. Manipulated by twenty characters in
shaped aluminum frames with articulated moving parts dancers dressed in
“invisible” black and backlit to glow, these delicate, minimalist animals
possess the same ethereal nature as the music.
- Taymor, p178
Julie Taymor / George Tsypin, The Magic Flute, 1993
Julie Taymor / George Tsypin, The Magic Flute, 1993
Dionysus Fotopoulos, Oedipus Rex, 1987
Dionysus Fotopoulos, Oedipus Rex, 1987
Dionysus Fotopoulos, ‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore, 1986
Julie Taymor, Grendel, 2006
Dionysus Fotopoulos, Julius Caesar, 1992
George Tsypin, L’Amour de Loin
Dionysus Fotopoulos, Plutus, 1986
Dionysus Fotopoulos
Dionysus Fotopoulos, Iphigenia in Tauris, 1991
Blogger Project 2006
Sankai Juku, Hibiki – Resonance from Far Away, 2010
Diavolo 2010