Month: August 2019

In 2017 we rebuilt both, the stage that Adolphe Appia had designed for the first Hellerau Festival in 1912, and the lightroom conceived by Alexander von Salzmann, at its place of origin: The Great Hall of the Festspielhaus Hellerau in Dresden.

Appia used flexible elements to construct a stage for Gluck’s opera Orfeo and Euridice, and von Salzmann built his shadowless lightroom: reams of white fabric lit from behind by some 5,000 light bulbs, creating a diffuse, dematerializing light. This new stage design opened up a whole new world of opportunities for artistic expression and staging. If this space can be understood as the fulfilment of a utopian dream, then its reconstruction after more than 100 years can be seen as an attempt to verify how valid it still is in the present.

Then, artists were invited to engage with the possibilities offered by this historical stage. From 17 October through 11 November 2017, their works picked up on Appias visionary stage concept and transformed it into the present. The works of all these choreographers, musicians, and performing artists, including Robert Wilson, William Forsythe, Richard Siegal, Frédéric Flamand, Constanza Macras et al., can hardly be imagined without Appias visions: they all have used it to develop a whole new language of their own.

These artists experimented with Appias modular stage elements, repositioned them in various ways, built new stage sets out of them, and designed specific choreographies for them or remodelled existing ones.

An academic programme and a documentary exhibition accompanied the project.

Video https://youtu.be/PCA59o7xL7U

Country/Region Dresden, Germany

Designer Héctor Solari, Dieter Jaenicke, Kai Kaden, Tobias Blasberg, Falk Dittrich (DE)

Project Collaborators
Chief-Curator: Héctor Solari
Artistic Director Of Hellerau – European Center For The Arts Dresden (2009-2018): Dieter Jaenicke
Co-Curators: Barbara Damm, Frank Geissler, Gabriele Gorgas, Claire Kuschnig, Carmen Mehnert
Technical Director: Kai Kaden
Head Of Construction: Tobias Blasberg
Lighting Designer: Falk Dittrich

Video Collaborators
Director, Editor: Héctor Solari

Additional Collaborators
Richard Beacham, Richard Siegal, Jan Martens, Frédéric Flamand, Robert Wilson, Daniel Libeskind, Constanza Macras, Luis Camnitzer, Jone San Martin, Amancio Gonzalez, Avatâra Ayuso, Angel Martinez Roger, Picado-De Blas, Lukas Ligeti, Simon Stockhausen

Venue Contact
Web: https://www.hellerau.org/de/

Designer Contact
Web: https://hsolari.wordpress.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/hector.solari.3

It is a new-media art work with participatory, interactive, and growing. It can fully combine the new-media art with the Humanities, history, customs, nature in Longli, and finally finish in the ancient building constructions of Longli. This is a works growing from Longli Town.

In an outsider’s point of view to catch the unique context of Longli town, with the simple art language and methods to trace the context of ancient town with emotion and temperature.

Invite the native people to join in, make the rubbings to the six hundred years historical trace of ancient town with new composite materials. On the one hand, rub the historical trace of ancient town to the works, on the other hand, the process of making the rubbings is the process of the activity of works itself.

Photographed and produced the project in the ancient town, Longli. In this project, the artists tried to explore the relationship between people, people and things, people and space, people and nature, people and history, and people and art festivals in the ancient city by using the camera and method of researching the rubbing of ancient monuments.

The image is projected onto a new material relief installation to show the charming Longli. Through the cooperation of multiple screens, playing the content of the same chapter on the embossed installation causes the image to re-deconstruct the content.

We invite the native artists who are inherited “face dragon” joining in the works, that painting on face, in order to engaging between artists and audiences.

Video https://youtu.be/1gg7NuYr1RU

Country/Region Guangdong Province, China

Designer Liang Xiqing, Zhou Wenhua, Guang Hongzhi, Wu yuzhong, Zhao Hai, Guangdong Stage Art Research Association, Liang Xiqing Huang Haiphong (CN)

Project Collaborators
Curator: Liang Xiqing
Visual Director: Zhou Wenhua
Art Director: Guang Hongzhi
Sound Designer: Wu Yuzhong
Lighting Design: Zhao Hai
Producer: Huang Haizhong
Co-Ordination: Li Yong
Co-Ordination: Yang Xiaofang
Photography: Xie Yiqiu
Behavior Art: Tao Jiang

Video Collaborators
Produce: Liang Xiqing
Director: Zhou Wenhua
Photography: Xie Yiqiu, Kong Dehua, Qin Xiaohan
Editor: Zhang Linghui
Color matching: Kong Dehua
Subtitle: Zhang Linghui

Additional Collaborators
Liang Xiqing, Zhou Wenhua，Guang Hongzhi，Wu yuzhong，Zhao Hai，Huang Haizhong，Li Yong，Yang Xiaofang，Xie Yiqiu，Tao，Jiang，Kong Dehua，Zhang Linghui，Qin Xiaoha，Hu Jia，Li Hua，Li yan，Miss Hu

The Reed College Performing Arts Building (PAB) consolidates theatre, dance, and music programs, previously scattered across campus, into a new vibrant and cross-disciplinary home for the arts. The facility creates intellectual, social and creative communities that cut across disciplines to encourage teamwork and experimentation while meeting the technical needs of each program. The 78,000 sf building serves as the front door to campus enclosing the Commons Quad, it connects the performing arts to the academic core of campus.

The facility is organized around a central atrium lobby and informal learning space that provides an address for each program and four performance venues. The building features: a 200- seat studio theatre with flexible seating configurations, a highly experimental 100-seat black box theatre, a 100-seat choral rehearsal hall, and the 100-seat Performance Lab for theatre. Instruction and rehearsal spaces include: a multi-media lab and resource library, two large dance and theatre rehearsal spaces, a costume / design studio, shared classrooms, and faculty offices.

Video https://youtu.be/y9jGxaPEUPM

Country/Region Oregon, United States

Designer Opsis Architecture – Alec Holser, Paul Kinley, John Shorb, Jeri Tess (US)

Project Collaborators
Design Principal: Alec Holser
Principal: James Meyer
Project Manager: Paul Kinley
Project Architect: John Shorb
Director of Facilities: Townsend Angell
Theatre Faculty: Kathleen Worley, Peter Ksander, Kate Bredeson
Dance Faculty: Carla Mann
Music Faculty: Virginia Hancock

Video Collaborators
Producer, Video, Editor: Ian Harris
Production Assistant: Gavin Brown
Professional Photography: Christian Columbres
Theatre Faculty: Peter Ksander
Dance Faculty: Carla Mann
Opsis Architecture: John Shorb

Additional Collaborators
Josh Dachs, Katie Oman, Michael Yantis, Melissa Clark, Joe Baldwin, Zach Suchara, Matt Peairs, Mike Streb, Nathan Ingraffea, Andi Camp, Tara Damschen, Michael Reed

Venue Contact
Web: https://events.reed.edu/performing_arts_building#.XGTBTFVKhaQ
FB: https://www.facebook.com/reedcollegeperformingarts/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/explore/locations/282915160/reed-college-performing-arts/
TW: https://twitter.com/artsreed?lang=en

Designer Contact
Web: http://www.opsisarch.com/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Opsis.Architecture/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/opsis.architecture/
TW: http://www.opsisarch.com/

CAVE is a site-specific performance based on Plato’s allegory. It features 20th-century works for ensemble and vocals based on texts by Plato, Erik Satie’s Socrate and Louis Andriessen’s De Staat, performed in the first watertight underground structure, the Brunel Grand Entrance Hall.

The site is the world’s first caisson and functioned as the entrance hall to the first underwater tunnel in the world, the Thames Tunnel. When it opened in 1843 it boasted a million visitors in the first three months. After being sealed off to the public for 150 years, the space was made accessible to the public by TATE HARMER, reopening in 2014. Now a performance and gallery space, the chamber is half the size of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Production design for CAVE was directly inspired by the story of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. It featured silhouetted vocalists on stair platforms, a revolving shadow play with model trains with LED’s rigged to them, and a ring of red LED lights lining the smoke blackened walls – encircling the performers and audience – timed to music cues.

CAVE is the first site-specific performance collectively orchestrated by production and lighting designer Laura Hilliard, music director Eli Brown, and visual artist Sam Schanwald. Together they believe that space and light need to be intentional factors in the overall presentation of musical concerts. Harnessing the creative potential of scenic design, architecture, and light, they seek to create more accessible, immediate, and visceral meetings of performer and audience through placing unusual music in unusual spaces.

Video https://youtu.be/vn_pBjN2jhg

Country/Region London, United Kingdom

Designer Elias Brown and Laura Hilliard (USA)

Project Collaborators
Music Director: Eli Brown
Producer / Production and Lighting Designer: Laura Hilliard
Associate Designer / Visual Artist: Sam Schanwald
Robert Hulse: Museum Director
Documentarian:  Yuta Koga

Video Collaborators
Image Directed/Captured/Editied: Laura Hilliard
Sound Directed/Captured/Editied: Elias Brown
Additional Videography: Yuta Koga
Graphic Design: Sam Schanwald

Venue Contact
Web: https://www.brunel-museum.org.uk/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/BrunelMuseum/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/brunel_museum/

Designer Contact
Web: https://www.eliasbrown.com/
FB: http://www.laurahilliard.com/lightinstallation

Bing Concert Hall exemplifies the seamless integration of architecture, acoustics and technology to transform the practice, study and experience of the performing arts.

A beacon above the trees, the concert hall drum draws the eye and establishes the building as an arts anchor and destination, visible from multiple vantage points on campus and the surrounding community.  The building is conceived as an organic form, with no straight lines, no formal axes, no symmetries, no front and back; however, it retains the distinctive color and materiality of Stanford’s architecture.

Continuous glass walls surrounding the hall blur the distinction between exterior and interior and open the façade to the exterior colonnades, a contemporary expression of a traditional Stanford typology.

The oval-shaped, vineyard-style hall, whose terraced seating sections ring the stage, creates an intimate concert experience for both audience and performer. Large convex-shaped sails circling the hall provide optimal acoustic reflection or absorption and are also designed as screens for video projection.

To support Stanford Live, which brings a variety of artists to campus, including jazz, spoken word, experimental musicians and performers, as well as Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), state-of-the-art lighting, variable acoustics, sound reinforcement, video projection, simulcast, and mixing and recording technologies accommodate unamplified musical performances and meet the highest acoustical standards.

Video https://youtu.be/T1vHw5kuKog

Country/Region California, United States

Designer Ennead Architects (USA)

Project Collaborators
Design Architect: Richard Olcott
Management Partner: Timothy Hartung
Project Designer: Stephen Chu

Video Collaborators
Co-Editor: Aislinn Weidele, Ennead Architects
Co-Editor: Eric Koziol, Stanford University

Additional Collaborators
Steven Peppas, Chris Andreacol, Mahasti Fakourbayat, M. Gregory Clawson, Andrew Sniderman, Gary Anderson, Charmian Place, Andrew Burdick, Jeffrey Geisinger, Kyo-Young Jin, Joerg Kiesow, Gihong Kim, Lindsay McCullough, Yong Kyun Roh, Aimee St. Germain

Venue Contact
Web: https://live.stanford.edu/venues/bing-concert-hall

Designer Contact
Web: http://www.ennead.com/

Reviving-Reclaiming unsafe local area through performance : An unsafe, empty urban space in Atabak was turned into a children’s theatre, through Shokoofa NGO art class. The event was held as celebrating the epic poet Ferdosi on his national day, to affect cultural identity in the area and boost the feeling of belonging to local space among children. These empty fields, usually used here as places of drug users and urban crimes, do not feel safe for people. The performance was planned through Shokoofa NGO art class, which is a trusted institute among locals. The selected story/poem Zaal and Simorgh (mythical bird) was based on the theme of child growth and desires, as analyzed by our team psychologist Amirhossein Kamyar. Storytelling by Sara Sajadi was a co-reading of the poem together with children, trying to imagine the scenes. For a deeper challenge we made paintings and masks for each character, and on the event day, Ehsan Paydar theatre group helped kids in diverse groups to make their own plays out of the “desire” theme. In the story, Simorgh gives 3 feathers to Zaal, asking to “burn them whenever you need me for help”. These feathers are symbols for our hopes, so we made a big Simorgh and each kid made 3 feathers for her/himself and wrote her desires on them, sticking to it, and we presented in the street gallery, as “the Simorgh of desires”. In the street show every child took a part of the story to describe. As the specific desired outcome, neighbors and even young locals, usually engaged in drug matters, came for help and participated in our street show.

Video https://youtu.be/o-c6Lr_zMNs

Country/Region Tehran, Iran

Designer Bahar Seirafi (IR)

Project Collaborators
Event Design and Director: Bahar Seirafi
Shokoofa NGO Director: Maryam Siadat
Actress and Director: Sara Sajadi
Analyzing the Mythical Poem: Amirhossein Kamyar
Director: Ehsan Paydar
Performer and Director: Shiva Fallahi, Sonia Sanjari, Ehsan Falahatpisheh

Video Collaborators
Bahar Seirafi

Venue Contact
IG: https://www.instagram.com/shokoofa/?hl=en

 Designer Contact
IG: https://www.instagram.com/bahar_seirafi/

Located in Wade Oval, among Cleveland’s most respected cultural institutions, a nationally registered historic synagogue, The Temple-Tifereth Israel, is repurposed as a new, multi-disciplinary performing arts center for Case Western Reserve University. The venue is the largest gathering space on campus and is being used for a variety of ensembles, festivals, and lectures.

Through ingenuity, collaboration, and respect for the historic preservation of the 95-year-old building—the only seven-sided synagogue in the country—the design team successfully, resurrected a beloved but often unused facility into a nexus of culture, education, student life, and faith. The project required a significant preservation component to uncover the beauty of many historic details, including the stained-glass clerestory, the Guastavino tiled vaulted dome, marble corridors, original Akoustolith tiles, and wood pews, as well as the limestone facade.

The Sanctuary was restored and converted into a Concert Hall by carefully integrating new acoustical insertions into the historically significant space that tune the large volume for varying performance ensembles. The insertions are adjustable, allowing the Hall to continue to be used as an occasional place of worship by the congregation. The most prominent addition, a 66,000 pound glass and metal canopy, becomes the signature identity of the new performance venue. Additional insertions include a 1900sf stage, piano lift and platforms, a technical gallery, and acoustic side panels.

Video https://youtu.be/ReYWENgktYw

Country/Region Ohio, United States

Designer MGA Partners (US)

Project Collaborators
Lead Designer: Dan Kelley
Acoustician: Paul Scarbrough
Project Director: Katie Broh
Project Partner: Amy Stein
Project Architect: Matthew Karp
Project Architect: Andrew Ferrarelli
Engineer: Halim Saab
Theatre Consultant: Scott Crossfield
Lighting Designer: Al Borden
Lighting Designer: Emad Hasan

Video Collaborators
Videographer: Giuseppe Scarabello
Director: Christine Marsal

Designer Contact
Web: https://www.mgapartners.com

The Levitating Theatre was conceived as an idea questioning the boundaries that currently lie between different expressions of art in form of sight, taste, and form. A performance was envisioned that combined the arts of the scenographer and the chef through the orchestration of an architect, with the vision to expand the performance beyond the physical and visual, and into the realm of sensory and engagement.

A fluid platform was poured through the trees, creating pockets of spaces for synchronic movements, allowing for multiple scenarios to be visually relished and embedded into a natural environment. The lack of surrounding walls demands the reception of the surrounding as the backdrop to the performance. The stage floats, as like a spaceship, that becomes for a moment, a Levitating Theatre holding the bridge, the conversation and the network between the arts of this world.  The audiences sits around the Dining Table, synchronously used as the stage, and together, the feast and the act comes together as a singular performance.

Video https://youtu.be/VcRDAOZiKrc

Country/Region Bronice-Kolonia, Poland

Designer Unism Studio (UK)

Project Collaborators
Architectural Designer + Maker (Builder): Artur Zakrzewski
Architectural Designer + Maker (Builder): Konrad Weka
Maker (Builder): Paulina Michalewska
Scenographer (Lecturer in Theatre History): Agnieszka Koecher-Hensel
Chef: Marek Flisiński
Administration: Martyna Groth
Client: Polish branch of the International Theatre Institute and Association of Bronice Manor House
Sponsor: Naleczów Zdrój S.A. (Cisowianka + Perlage + Water&Wine)

Video Collaborators
Filming + Montage: Artur Zakrzewski
Filming + Montage: Konrad Weka

Venue Contact
FB: https://www.facebook.com/ITIPoland/

Designer Contact
Web: https://www.unismstudio.net/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/unismstudio/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/unismstudio/

The Hungarian State Opera and the Erkel Theatre are to gain new art studios and rehearsal centre. Establishing and equipping the new centre as well as preparing the refurbishment of the Opera House in Andrássy Avenue is to be financed by the government.

The largest indoor complex in Hungarian railway history, a system of vast covered spaces unique in Europe, the Northern Railway Maintenance and Engineering works was built between 1884 and 1886. As operation on the 22 hectare site ceased in 2009, the government offered 6.7 hectares of the area to the Opera together with the five-nave core repair complex of 22,000 square metres, named after Gustave Eiffel, two auxiliary buildings, and a complete train station.

The rehearsal, production, and storage centre for the opera is being built here where the Bánffy Stage, with an auditorium with 400 seats, will be constructed to include a rehearsal stage of the same size as the stage of the Opera House and a music studio suitable for recordings. In addition to moving all of its nine production workshops, all of its sets and its costumes and props here, the institution will also create a memorial room for János Feketeházy, the designer of both this building and the Opera House’s iron skeleton.

There will also be a costume rental shop and a visitor centre. The training centre for the Opera will be established here too: the Opera Studio, the Opera Music School and the Opera Ballet Institute. The production studios will also function as a practical training centre.

Video https://youtu.be/Sf2Hb-CjyiY

Country/Region Budapest, Hungary

Designer KÖZTI Architects & Engineers, Marosi Studio (HU)

Project Collaborators
Architect: Közti Architects & Engineers
Interior Designer: Szenes Design Studio
Construction Company: Strabag Hungary
Project Manager: Céh
Project Architect/Hungarian State Opera: Anka Józsa

Video Collaborators
Videography: Péter Farkas
Project Coordinator: Orsolya Szigeti

Venue Contact
Web: http://www.opera.hu/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/Operahaz/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/operabudapest/
TW: https://twitter.com/OperaBudapest

Water Theatre is located in Wuzhen, Zhejiang Province, China, described as “the Venice of Asia”.

Water Theatre was transformed from two fishponds and the slope in the West Scenic District of Wuzhen. It included the original water area, geography and architectural relics in its design. The concept was to find a balance between “preservation” and “modification” with the intention of making the theatre itself a cultural symbol with Oriental imagination. Its purpose was to serve as a site for performance and also a Zen place to recollect Eastern humanistic tradition.

The relationship between water and the theatre here is a continuation of the traditional Chinese theatrical experience. Among canal towns in the south of the Yangtze, there were once many conventional stages built alongside the river: viewers could row from all directions to watch performances at the bow. These old stages form the most classical parts of theatrical architecture in China.

Water Theatre is a transformation of an existing site in an old culture town. While rural reconstruction is a trending topic now facing China, a diversity of conceptions and the needs of social groups are intertwined, and the construction of Water Theatre was no exception. These interwoven notions not only exist in the design of theatrical architecture, but also appear in the performance rehearsals. The tense collision of different ideas is the epitome of the reality in China as a whole; a surged fluid results from rapid development, and a spectacle of the current society is filled with surrealism and the unknown.

Video https://youtu.be/HwBLsR4oTSU

Country/Region Zhejiang Province, China

Designer Chen Xianghong (CN)

Project Collaborators
General planner and Designer: Chen Xianghong
Garden and Landscape designer: Zhang Yun

Video Collaborators
Author: Tan Zeen
Co-Videographer: Wang Yongli
Co-Videographer: Hai Qi
Co-Video editor: Liang Mei
Co-Video editor: Qu Xiaoyu
Text Editor: Tam Tam
Coordinator: Ni Fang
Coordinator: Zhang Xiaomeng

Venue Contact
Web: http://www.wuzhen.com.cn/