Musings on Architecture and Drama

I was flipping through a small book on architecture a few weeks ago, called 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School (by Matthew Frederick), and began contemplating the links between designing buildings and designing dramatic narratives. Both require a vision that must be distilled. Both must fit within a given context, and must suit their audience.

A few lessons in architecture seemed especially relevant to drama… (Students: Which of the five most resonates with you? Why?)

#9 Sense of place.

When my students begin working with script fragments, we first imagine the space in which these people and moments reside. Before exploring The Laramie Project we looked at a map and at a historic guide of Laramie. Before The Crucible we also started with maps, and with artifacts, such as printed (and artificially aged, by yours truly) PDFs of signed confessions from the Salem trials. These space-based pieces initiated invented background scenes, like space based emotional research.

#14 Architecture begins with an idea.

#34 Frame a view, don’t merely exhibit it.

#53 A good building reveals different things about itself when viewed from different distances.

Of course, any dramatic or creative work requires an idea, an initial seed. In terms of framing our dramatic work, form is key. How do we frame our story so it’s cohesive, while ensuring the conventions we use actually suit or enhance our story? When does it make sense to use tableaux, rather than silent movement, or vice verse? And any good art should reveal different things from different distances, in the way that re-reading a good book years later reveals different things, about the text, but also oneself, then and now.

#81 Properly gaining control of the design process tends to feel like one is losing control of the design process.

When gaining control feels like loosing control… especially relevant to drama, to any creative endeavour, and, ahem, to teaching itself. A little chaos, to me, means things are happening, ideas are flexing and stretching, and things are moving forward, through choice towards decision. As the text notes,

“Being genuinely creative means that you don’t know where you are going, even though you are responsible for shepherding the process. This requires something different from conventional, authoritarian control…”

And when you trust your ideas (and students!) and allow for some freedoms, good things usually grow.

Growth in Toronto. New buildings are always going up. A shot I took in August 2013 after a short Porter flight.

More Indie Music for the Drama Classroom

I’ve written about using music in the drama classroom before. But after using the same (awesome) songs semester after semester, the songs I know work so well, for both warm-ups and for silent scene exercises (emphasizing gesture, facial expression, and movement), I needed a change. Beirut’s Gulag Orkestar came on in a café last weekend, and I felt a nervous tick coming on… it was the sound of being at work while sipping my weekend Americano. Not good.

It was time for some new music. Thankfully, my husband knows way more about music than me and had piles of recommendations. Here are the ones I chose. Some are ideal for drama class warm-ups, or even as background music for writing exercises, some are more narrative, and almost have imagined stories embedded in their tone, pacing, and mood…

For warming up:

Sneeze, by Andrea Parker. She literally samples her own sneeze. It’s rhythmic, atmospheric, yet light and almost meditative. It speeds up a bit as it goes. (Her song The Swamp would also work wonderfully…very electronic and again, atmospheric.)

Stripes, by Bell Orchestre. Pulsing and with a BEAUTIFUL central French Horn part. I am partial to the French Horn, as I used to play it.

For acting and scene development exercises: 

The Fifty Minute Hour, by The Hylozoists. The variation in classical instruments suggest a wide variety of characters, and the chromatic build helps establish tension that lends well to narrative. The end provides a lot of closure, too, in terms of mood.

The Man With the Movie Camera, by Cinematic Orchestra. This song is IDEAL. A good sign is that the album it comes from, “The Man with a Movie Camera”, was created to correspond to an old Russian silent film of the same name by Sziga Vertov (produced in 1929). The silent film was experimental, and was focused on a day in the life in Soviet Ukraine. (In 2012, the film was voted the 8th best film ever made.) This song is jazzy, and very mysterious. Here it is, below.