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saki ichikawa
Diploma 9

URBAN PUBLIC THEATRE

Introduction:

Centre Pompidou has a huge public square, sole official space for street culture in Europe and it has contributed to public to commit artistic conducts. While Southbank in London has been a greater potential space for street culture where artists, performers and learners have performed yet there is no theatres for the performers and audiences. My project will therefore explore Urban Public Theatre for street culture.

By borrwing the idea from Manhattan Transcripts by Bernard Tschumi to be contextualism, my project will utilize three protagonists, 'the visitor, the performer and the observer', to reconfigure the city of London in the context of experience.  The tourist as a visitor has viewpoints for the city, the performer senses the city as a theatre and the stage set designer investigates the quality of the space, street theatre.

Borrowing montage technique from Manhattan Transcripts, my plates have three protagonists and three plates, the gestalt image for narrative, the mind map and the diagrams of movement to reconfigure the relationship between city of Paris and the event in the public square of Centre Pompidou. The Tourist The tourist found a fire juggling in the public square in Centre Pompidou. The background is the facade of the building and advertisement of the exhibition inside. The tourist is also a visitor who has only viewpoints. The map of Paris can be compressed by the tube stations and the mind map collects the icons of Paris into one place. The Performer The performer is a native. His mind map is a collage of venues of public events in Paris with data. The diagrams of movement indicates the movement of juggling. The Security Guard The security guard is an immigrant in Paris. His map is a collage of dangerous areas where CCTV cameras set up. The diagrams of movement for him is like a CCTV camera, the pattern of the crowd by time and the opening times of the shops and restaurants around there.The tourist next visited London and met another performer in the greater street theatre designed by a stage set designer.The tourist spent four days and visited 12 sight-seeing spots. The section of four routes is plotted the name of the street the tourist walked and the places she visited such as British Museum, Tower Bridge and Central Line.Although the actual route of the tourist walked down was incredibly long, her experience of London was not so long and boring. The drawing compressed the time and space by following to the her experience of London.The tourist has viewpoints. The pictures of what she paid attention to and the compressed time and space in the context of experience are drawn in one plate. Similar to my project did in Paris, in the tourist's mind map, the iconic buildings can be gathered into one place compressed by the tube stations in London.The areas cut off are left as a blank.The stage-set designer investigated how a street theatre can be configured in Covent Garden. The street theatre in Covent Garden has small steps and slopes and people visited there gathered the unprogrammed seats. A street performer started to prepare his performing and people started to pay attention to him. When he begun to talk, some people stopped and circled around him. As the performer attracted the people walked through there, they naturally created a stage and the places people had a rest, drunk and ate became the auditoriums, including the balconies upstairs. She concluded that the duality of the space, the street theatre should be a space to rest or gather for the auditorium and at the same time, it has a possible space for a stage and sometimes stage set. Left: The images of theatrical spaces Centre: The general condition of the spaces Right: The theatrical condition of the spaces The performer senses the city as a theatre as he is always looking for a space to attract people and gain exchange from them. The routes of the tourist can be read as full of theatrical qualities by the performer. The plant bed and the wall of the Marble Arch for him are an auditorium and a stage set. This is the city guidebook of theatrical space by the performer. Although the general condition of the spaces are a wall, a picket fence, and a barrier, these elements for the performar are an auditorium, a stage set where people sit, to lean on, to gain a sight line.The micro-theatrical spaces the performer conceived now connected and created a macro-theatre in Jubilee Garden, the site of 'Urban Public Theatre'.This long plan utilises idea from MT2. The 'equal area map' of an incredibly long street has the theatrical spaces conceived by the performer. With use of geometry of mobius ring, the theatrical spaces create complicated relationships between them and theatrical relationships with the site, South Bank, looking at London Eye, Big Ben and River Thames.The protagonists appear in 'Urban Public Theatre' and witnessed the quality of the space and the event. The tourist experienced the sequence of the performer's conceived theatrical space of London. The performer, by contrast, looked at only how the audiences gathered. As for the stage set designer, she checked the infinite, mobius slope combined micro-theatrical spaces and created theatrical spaces between its building and the surroundings.