Reflections on Stagecraft

Perhaps I could have jumped into writing this entry when these thoughts were still fresh, clear, and passionate, but I will try to capture them with lucidity here despite their slight recession in my mind over the past few days. For context, this week, I have had a debrief with Leah and Toby regarding the first Hearing Now performance; transcribed the conversation Sachi, Julia, and I had at the Apollonian after the show; and constructed a functioning weather station. The weather station is called the ‘Little Weather Man 1’. 

What I have wanted to write is a meditation on stagecraft, or more broadly, ‘creative production’. What I am referring to is everything around the performance itself, everything that makes it possible, or, more accurately: everything that makes it different to a typical ‘live music’ performance as we know them in Australia. I’m still trying to straighten out my thoughts, but this is part of that process. My background is really in live music - rock music - that happens in venues, or at festivals, or even at house parties. Raucous, high energy environments - or at least we wanted them to be. Over the last few years, I became increasingly unenthused by these environments, and ‘rock’ music as a whole. First, I found myself unimpressed with lyrics - the egotistic one-way conversation, amplified by sole bodies on risen stages, in which the most used work is by far ‘I’. This grew into a contempt for song forms themselves… Then stages… Then venues entirely. I may risk sounding jaded here, but I will note that for several years I averaged witnessing or participating in about ten rock sets a week, between bartending in venues, sound engineering, and performing. COVID-19 came like a wrecking ball to the industry, most obviously by closing venues, outlawing dancing, and enacting social distancing regulations, but the pandemic’s consequent inflation crisis along with broader changes in behavior have inflicted seemingly fatal wounds on live music infrastructure long-term. It is easy to see this as a fatal wound against music, and it is often described in this way, but I propose that it is in fact a failure of bars that’s taking place. Music venues (generally) don’t receive any revenue from ticket sales - they make their money on the bar. Music serves as a something to attract patrons, from the smallest pubs putting on a solo covers act, to larger venues hosting touring bands. Once in, the venue sells alcohol to a captive audience lured in by the promise of a fun, or better yet transcendent, experience. With net alcohol consumption dropping across the country, particularly in younger generations, venues are struggling to cover costs, even with sellout shows. Many of my old friends are in management at significant venues in Brisbane, this is informed by their reports. Popular music in Australia is potentially explained by this phenomenon - our big bands are bands that encourage the consumption of lots of alcohol. They are the bands that are booked to come back. The Triffid can host a sellout crowd for a unique, interesting international act, but if the bar doesn’t cover costs, that act will not be welcome again. Music does not need to go down with the sinking ship of the alcohol industry. 

The ‘Hill Stage’ at Yonder Festival 2020. I produced this stage in an effort to work with the splendour of the scene - but we still had to put a big black stage in the way!

This is one part of my motivation to pursue this project. In fact, it sits so deep in the foundations, that it has taken me some time to identify its influence. It seems I have chosen to deal with the erosion of my livelihood (the live music industry) by bringing my performance practice out into the open. Natural spaces do not need to make a cut on the bar, and people are welcome to curate their experience of my performances without any pressure or containment. Wide, open skies, distant landscapes, and environmental sounds are welcoming settings, making for more immersive and transcendental experiences than are possible in most venues. Why do we lock music away in dark, dank, blackened rooms? Soundproofed, contained, away from the world? It feels so artificial. One needs cocktails of drugs to enjoy it profusely. Out in the open, connection is fostered, relationships are deepened, subtleties are noticed - the differences between these two settings are astounding. Everything changes, so everything must be reconsidered…

‘The Space Between Notes’ at Yonder 2021. I produced this as an environmentally embedded stage featuring long form ambient music, including an all-night program. Again, the environment is there, but operational logistics necessitated an enclosed scaffolded stage, taking performances out of the environment.

This brings me to the second point I wanted to explore. Venturing out of the world of rock, out of ‘live music’, I have gradually realised how much is ‘assumed’ in this - Form? Medium? Industry? We barely even have a word for it that isn’t tied to the economic model… Conversely, have been so inspired by working in contemporary dance and art, where nothing is ‘assumed’ to be neutral - everything is intentional, questioned, considered. There is discussion, research, dramaturgy, and conceptual deliberation (albeit occasionally to the point of meaninglessness - there is a happy medium). Working across these art forms has revealed what is said by elements in live music that are taken for granted. Stages are black, curtains are black, venues are invisible, performers are raised and amplified, audiences are lowered and muted, mic stands are black, performers face the front… There are logistical justifications for this - market forces - that need concerts to operate smoothly, in a replicable fashion, to maximise exposure and limit obstacles. This makes sense, sure, in an economic model - but how much is taken for granted by the performers themselves!! Including myself! Even small deviations from the ‘norm’ can be met with extreme adversity. Ask any band with more than five members, or anyone who has ever wanted to bring audience members on stage, or have performers move through the crowd… An operational status quo is fiercely defended. This is admittedly for safety - but shouldn’t a place for enjoying music have the capacity to be safe while being more dynamic? 

Okay, maybe I’m getting carried away. What I want to say is: Bringing music out of these spaces, and into the real, natural world, has necessitated some ground-up redesign of the whole scene. Considering this redesign is a pillar of this project, so much so that it has even happened automatically; without conscious design. Each little element has fascinating repercussions on audience experience, and working through these is a wonderful aspect of this whole venture. Even through this first iteration, positioning, production, duration, and mis-en-scene have all been discussed for their impacts on audience experience. These are elements that rarely get a second thought in typical ‘live music’ scenarios, and the recipe that Hearing Now is devising may end up forming the thrust of this project’s contribution. They include:

1. Mis en Scene

In live music, mis en scene is often non existent, or hidden. Intentional mis en scene is explored only in the most extreme and passionate cases of stage design, which become more possible with more success. Björk springs to mind. But largely, operational fluidity minimises the amount of things that can be on stage - festival acts need to change quickly - and lighting or staging is designed to hide the things that actually are on stage (risers, amps, cables, stands, etc.). Out in the open, not only can everything be seen in the natural light, but incongruences between black production equipment and the natural environment become extremely clear, and beg the question - why are they black? This has pushed me to consider the things on stage and their aesthetic/semiotic qualities with more depth than I ever have. In some cases, largely, these qualities have informed operational choices, rather than the other way round. Most obviously, I built ‘The Easel’. 

1.1 The Easel

In preparation for Floating Land, I built myself a new stand to hold the modular - a great big easel. The easel is a large A frame made from pine and bolts, solid and heavy enough to withstand the 40kg synthesizer and case. My commercial stand for the synthesizer, as with almost all instrument stands, is black metal. It is functional and invisible - but is it invisible? Or does it carry connotations to industry, mass production, and commercialization of the arts? It is also finicky and inconvenient, funnily enough. Aesthetically, I designed the easel to take me away from the semiotics of music, and into the semiotics of art forms that demand less attention. I feel like if you see a music performer, you feel an expectation to give them your entire attention, and even some cash you have in your wallet. If you see a landscape painter, their presence allows more impartiality, they are embarked on something durational, and you are not expected to watch, or wait for a conclusion - perhaps the only expectation is that you will not talk to them. That’s good too.

1. Facing the scene - not the audience.

In live music, it is a given that the performers will face the audience. At its most mystical and anonymous, performers will be back-lit rather than front lit, becoming mysterious silhouettes, but will still show the audience their front. There are some cases for punk guitarists turning their backs to perform, but this is the exception that makes the rule. Operationally, it is very difficult for a singer to face the rear without feedback due to the default position of foldback wedges downstage facing up. And why would they anyway? In a venue, the focus is on the performer, their perspective, their opinion, their message - they are lit, against dark backgrounds, a sole voice amplified above and over the unified cheers of a crowd. This relationship is very one way, it is ironically non-relational, it eschews dialogue, isolating and elevating the individual above the environment. This is not the relationship I am trying to construct in ‘Hearing Now’ - I want to place everything within its relationship to the environment, in dialogue, in response. I want the environment to be the focus, not any performer. As I repeatedly state, the perfect ‘Hearing Now’ performance is one that makes itself redundant - it is witnessed but not independently noticed. Even in my most recent performance in venues, I have chosen to face the rear of the stage, with the upright modular synthesiser facing the audience. I enjoy how the audience can see me adjusting the synth, they are along for the ride behind this wild space-ship pilot modulating their controls. This decision extended over to Hearing Now, both for this reason, and to draw attention to the environment over myself as a performer. This is one of the elements that help the work become a performance-installation, something that appears more perennial and unaware of observers. In the first performance, there was a key moment before the final movement, after a tall crescendo, when I gestured to Julia to turn from the audience and face the lake. Up until then, she had been facing the audience, sat on a small stool, while Sachi and I had modulated our positions often. Julia turned, and all three of us were then facing the lake, with the audience in our rear. Everyone I have spoken to has identified this as a significant transformation in the dynamic; the audience went from ‘observing’ us, to being ‘with’ us. In my performances over the last year or so, I have chosen to have my back to the audience, with the modular facing the audience. I do this because I feel it brings the audience on the journey with me - improvising with that great big space-ship looking behemoth. They can see what I’m doing, and I feel as though I’m leading a procession into the unknown. With Hearing Now, I always imagined myself doing this as well, for those reasons and also additional ones - I think it makes my presence feel more permanent, more involved with the scene rather than an audience, and with the easel, it has a semiotic relationship with a landscape painter. 

3. The Duration

A key part of these performances is the duration. In ‘live music’, a set is 30 to 45 minutes, and almost always comprises songs of 3-5 minutes. Anything outside these constraints is considered unique. A song will have a certain structure that contains some kind of journey, and then a resolution; the audience is repeatedly swept up, comforted, and applauds. I think this holds focus in a setting where there is nothing other than the performers to pay attention to; little sugar hits that propel the audience through the bland surroundings they find themselves in, but out in the natural world, I want attention to be shared with - even directed at - the surroundings. I want the music to permit people to be in nature for hours. I want it to elevate out of time, so that two hours ends up feeling like minutes; rather than 30 minutes feeling like an hour. The style of performance necessitated by these goals is also one that become almost transparent, a performance mode that is more akin to listening than playing. It must become a deep participation in the timescales of nature, which are long. It takes two hours for a noticeable change to occur in the place, even at the dynamic time of dusk. In my experience, it often takes an hour to even reach this performance state. Part of this is due to subtlety - changes in the environment are subtle, changes in durational music need to be subtle, and as La Monte Young says, static sounds become dynamic over prolonged exposure. Duration itself can change perception: the ear become more accustomed to stasis, and hears phenomena more and more subtle, the breaks from stasis. Operationally, this kind of duration is not really possible in the live music industry as we know it - not the most typical form that I have been alluding to (possibly strawmanning) in this entry. Hence, an element that we take for granted in live music (short forms) is once again an operational necessity that limits the kind of experiences that can be created for audiences. I will note however, this kind of duration and subtly is absolutely present in other cultures and contexts, forming the basis of Hindustani and other music traditions on the Indian subcontinent.