 |
Available on:
Straight outta the 90s two-track tape recording of a live set. Enjoy. Try the Spotify… |
2006 Disciplicity & Academics Excerpt – Final Acting III
The recorded-acted word, as opposed to the live-acting word, lives in its own defined space of premeditation. This is not taking into account the possible visual aspects of the acted word. In a sense the only differences sensually would be the audio speakers. If while at a live theatrical piece, one which is amplified through audio speakers by any means to the extent where I would be unable to distinguish any of the dialogue whatsoever from the actors on the stage, but only through the speakers; if I close my eyes and only hear that through the audio system, I am more or less listening to recorded music and speech. I must draw the distinction at the point where what is done live can be exactly reproduced in a set of headphones. In explicitly technical terms, live acted-word-amplified is pre-recorded, as it is passed through a recording and redistribution mechanism to the hearer without any vestige left from the original speaker’s voice, the source.
This leads one directly to the question of how necessary is the speaker’s voice to the fundamental live presence that separates theatre from film, just as considering how necessary peripheral vision is leads one to question the separation of live theatre from live television broadcasts, especially live television broadcasts of live theatre. For even in that situation the built in chaos of live performance and its standard by-product of a unique and unrepeatable representation remains. There the only difference is the peripheral vision, and the sound. The framing and the sound in this day and age are all that separates live theatre from film and television as two separate arts. Of course going to a theatre is an event in itself quite separate from sitting on your couch, but even this is essentially framing.
What I am attempting to do finds its origins in the thought above. I will take a fairly typical realistic scene from Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the opening scene, to be precise, and direct and block it as a typical piece. The spoken lines of the actors will be entirely pre-recorded from the last rehearsal of the scene, and played over the presentation with the actors performing all characterizations as before, except not actually voicing the words. In essence I will be fabricating as close as possible the side effect of amplified theatre, but in a way so as to isolate it and study its effects. Interspersed throughout the scene will be sections where the actors will override the pre-recorded soundtrack and the lines will be vocalized to create a contrast between nothing but the sound quality of the dialogue. It is this specific contrast in which I am interested.
Read the rest in the book…
Buy the Book!
2006 Disciplicity & Academics Excerpt – OAC First Impression
I’m always fascinated by arriving at the headquarters of an influential, well known organization that has impacted my daily life indirectly for years and finding an insignificant looking, bland little building from which so much influence flows. It was somehow refreshing to arrive at what is considered one of the best state arts councils in the nation, if not the best, and to find it housed in a humble little converted Victorian. It lent a sense of open-mindedness to my attitude as we walked in to sit in an under-heated room for an interview with the man who had more or less defined the Ohio Arts Council (OAC) for three decades.
The interview was a short hour, and it was followed by a perfectly contrasting interview with a bureaucratic subordinate. The director was tanned, dashing, well spoken and he seemed to know exactly what to say about the motivations and processes behind the OAC. In contrast, the bureaucratic subordinate was less than plain, spoke in sporadic over-detailed garble about the admittedly complicated functioning of the organization, and was almost unbearably boring to listen to. The sales pitch was much more pleasant than the product, after a fashion.
The director went right to the point and spoke about the OAC’s commitment to public value based on qualitative rather than quantitative criteria. He spoke about the recent shift of the organization from a transactional process to a transformational one. He mentioned significant and exciting programs that sent Ohio artists overseas and brought foreign artists to Ohio. In a description of the political difficulties faced by an organization such as the OAC, he told us about the Appalachian phenomenon and how he dealt with the political goals of those in power in the state legislature, and how these goals shifted continuously. He spoke about the difficulty in judging public good – how a mural on a river wall in a small town in eastern Ohio had to be almost directly compared to the needs of the major orchestral symphony in the state’s largest city. One could easily tell that the director was a master salesman and politician. Nobody that white tans that well unless they are a master salesman.
The subordinate, as mentioned above, rattled off an endless stream of organizational details, budgets, grants panel processes and errata. I sat back and wondered where the true nature of the organization lay. As I had no direct experience working with the OAC, I had only the opinions of colleagues who had to guide me, most of which were not completely positive. According to the director and subordinate however, the problems about which my colleagues had complained had been recently resolved. As a matter of fact the subordinate explained these solutions in intimate and excruciating detail. So, all in all, I wasn’t quite sure what to take away from my visit to one of the best, or the best, state arts council in the nation. Other than maybe that they had been led by a director very good at directing, and who believed in the mission, and that satisfying the numberless constituents necessarily attached to such a public organization was a very complicated and ever-changing process indeed. It gave me a mixture of inspiration and dread.
Read the rest in the book…
Buy the Book!