ASD Master of Architecture Thesis Booklet: Cinema and Kabuki- A Hybrid Reality (Part 2 of 2)

u A HYBRID REALITY

CINEMA AND KABUKI

TAN XUN HUI ZENON

u SINGAPORE UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY AND DESIGN MASTERS OF ARCHITECTURE

SUTD MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE THESIS DOCUMENT

CINEMA AND KABUKI: A HYBRID REALITY

TAN XUN HUI ZENON, MASTER OF ARCHITECTURE STUDENT ADVISOR: ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, CHRISTINE YOGIAMAN, ARCHITECTURE AND SUSTAINABLE DESIGN SECOND ADVISOR: SENIOR LECTURER, DR. JAMES ROWLINS, HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES E-MAIL: ZENON_TAN@MYMAIL.SUTD.EDU.SG

uABSTRACT

This thesis first explores cinema and its relevance and application to the realm of architecture. Film is the perfect act of architecture for it is able to craft immaculate narratives and scenes of reality through manipulating space and time. By studying the chosen films such as Blade Runner 2049 and In The Mood for Love and dissecting selected scenes, we understand the importance of framing as the scale of the object, and editing as the flow of narrative, as tools for crafting narratives.

Most importantly, the control of what the eye sees personified by the camera, and bodily motion through movement as the most important elements of cinema.

To exhibit the power of such techniques, we then turn to Kabuki, a traditional Japanese performance art, as a canvas for such cinematic techniques to occur architecturally. The proposal of a radical new stage in a changing landform where the audience and the performer, the viewer and the viewed, becomes blurred. The Kabuki performance is no longer experience while seated; the audience, guided by changes in stage formation, lighting and actor movement, follows the drama as it unfolds.

500m

250m

306m

171 m

250m

500m TOKYO SKYTREE とうきょうスカイツリー

TOKYO SKYTREE STATION とうきょうスカイツリー駅

SUMIDA RIVER 隅田川

SUMIDA PARK 隅田公園

ASAKUSA STATION 浅草駅

SENSOJI 浅草寺

Studying the old format and layout of the Kabuki theatre and keeping and amplifying some of its important elements, I seek to redesign the Kabuki theatre through the cinematic techniques of movement and vision as identified.

The new kabuki proposal includes a changing landform as part of the stage and audience area. This landform blurs the boundary between the audience and the actor. The audience is no longer bound to their seats; they are free to move around the audience area and watch the performance unfold. This movement of the audience in accordance to the actions and plot of the actors and play allows for cinematic sequences to occur. Movement as an action changes the views of the play as the audience moves on the landscape, creating different viewpoints for different audiences to experience.

The proposed theatre design includes a configuable audience space that changes according to the play. No longer

bounded by the physical constraints of the theatre space, the theatre changes according to the play. For cinematic effects such as closeups and special effects not available in a typical theatre setting, livestreaming cameras provide such opportunity for a closeup to the reaction, action, gesture of the actors, projected on screens that adjust according to the position of the audience. This hybrid reality of the cinema and kabuki creates a new performance typology.

The four different general configurations of the theatre setup provides for different audience and actor movements and interaction, creating different viewpoints, interpretations and understanding of the kabuki play.

Setting the theatre in Sumida Park in Tokyo, Japan, the park would be redesigned using the same techniques applied in the design of the theatre. By making use of the cinematic relationship between the viewer and viewed, the audience and the actor, the park becomes a stage where leisure activities unfold. Through the use of a created natural landscape with small rolling hills. The addition of an observation space that is a continously sloping corridor, which serves as an observation space, as well as containing auxiliary spaces for the kabuki performance, encloses the park space. This observation space becomes the audience area where the viewer can watch the activities of the park unfold, as well as look out into several curated vistas of Tokyo, such as the Sumida River and Tokyo Skytree.

Sagi Musume Horikoshi Nisôji I (lyrics) Kineya Chûjirô (music) Nishikawa Senzô II, Hanayagi Jusuke I (choreography) The “Heron Maiden” was a role performed by the star Segawa Kikunojô II in a 5-role hengemono, which was staged under the title “Yanagi Hina Shochô no Saezuri” in the 4th lunar month of 1762 at the Ichimuraza. This role was revived several times, under different forms, by actors like Nakamura Utaemon IV, who performed it in the 11th lunar month of 1839 at the Nakamuraza. The current version is based on the performance done by Ichikawa Danjûrô IX in May 1886 at the Shintomiza.

The set is a frozen pond in the middle of Winter. The music from the geza is the classic sound effect for falling snow. The spirit of the heron appears on a platform, dressed in white, solitary and silent. This dance is a series of transformations, done through costum changes using either the bukkaeri or the hikinuki techniques to switch the roles. The first change turns the dancer into a young maiden in love, dressed in a beautiful red kimono, who dances the joy of love in a lively atmosphere. Her love is a short one and the next section of the dance is no more about happiness but sadness and jealousy. The dance is getting darker and the final change brings back the spirit of the heron, who frantically dances, depicting the torments of hell and pleading for pity. The highlight of this section is an ebizori pose. Then the heron maiden collapses on stage, bringing the dance to a close.

Besides using the cinematic techniques identified to design the theatre and the park it is situated in, the format of the play also has to be redesigned. The kabuki play chosen an example for this redesign is Sagi Musume, or Spirit of the Heron. Sagi Musume is a Kabuki dance play of a single actor about a Heron spirit that is transformed into a young woman. The set is a frozen pond in the middle of winter. The spirit of the heron appears on a platform on a stage lift, dressed in white, solitary and silent. This dance is a series of transformations through costume changes.

The first change turns the dancer into a young maiden in love, dressed in a red kimono, who dances to the joy of love in a lively atmosphere. Her love is a short one and the next section of the dance is no longer about happiness but sadness and jealously.

The dance then gets darker and the final changes brings back the spirit of the heron, dressed in white, who frantically dances, depicting the torments of hell depicted by the frozen pond. The heron maiden that collapses on stage, bringing the dance to a close.

The cinematic redesign of this play requires the understanding of the atmosphere created not only by the actor but also the stage setup. The lighting changes are especially important. The cinematic redesign makes use of the previous studies of film about vision as scale of subjects in the frame and movements of the camera, a personification of the audience, as well as the subject. Hence, we make use of the same analysis methods used in both BR2049 and ITMFL to dissect the 33 minute play, and redesigning it to form a new cinematic form, through physical space and the phenomological.

Studying the play, it consists of 7 portions. Part 1, the play opens with a cinematic view of a frozen lake, with snow falling. Screens project the atmosphere and the space of this lake. The stage slowly transforms to reveal the maiden on the stage, through a stage lift. The audience space is a gentle sloping space for the audience as they enter into the theatre, providing a panoramic view of the space.

Part 2, the maiden fully appears on stage, while shrouded in white cloth. The stage spaces becomes level with the audience space as the maiden performs slow movements. The audience themselves become visual obstacles for each other as they move, hiding the maiden in several scenes, as the audience surrounds the main stage as they move about.

Part 3, the maiden reveals her face. The audience space rises to form a typical seating arrangement with a full view of the maiden. Closeups of the maiden’s face and movement appears on the screen overhead.

Part 4, the theatre space suddenly changes as a costume reveal goes underway. The atmosphere transforms into a more hopeful spring as the maiden falls in love. The audience space transforms into a gently sloping landscape as the stage space transforms to form 3 stages, allowing the maiden to move in between these stages, showing joy in the quick movements of the dance. This gently sloping landscape facilitates movement and exploration as the audience watches the maiden in love.

Part 5, as the maiden descends from happiness and innocence to that of jealousy, the audience space becomes steeper as the audience is forced to experience the more aggressive emotions of the dance. The overhead screen also displays disjointed closeups of the actors gestures and facial expressions, portraying a certain franticness .

Part 6, the space then turns back into the grim and dark frozen lake. Movement of the audience stop as the audience space transforms into a sitting environment. Closeups of the frantic movement of the maiden is also projected onto the screen.

Finally, in Part 7, as the maiden slowly dies from an injury, the stage becomes level with the audience space as it flattens out like in part 2, showing the maiden again the cold panoramic landscape.

The theatre becomes darker as the spotlight focuses on the maiden’s dying movements. The screen then projects the same dark cloudy images as that of part 1 and 2. The maiden then dies, the music stops. The play comes to an end. The last transformation of the stage provides a way for the audience to exit.

Besides designing the theatrical performance of the new kabuki theatre, I’ve also designed and redesigned some of the theatre technical elements for this theatre to occur. The audience space is no longer a seated area, but a configurable space that changes. The rise and fall of the components that make up the space are the movable lift devices that allow for the vertical movement of the audience space. It makes use of the stage lift technology as a way to allow it to occur. It makes use of a hydraulic system that allows for this movement. In between the gaps of each piece of the audience lift, a small cautionary light that psses

through a stretchable membrane, provides guidance to the audience movement.

The stage lift is a typical stage lift that can be leveledd with the audience space, or lowered all the way down to fully form a separately stage that is underneath the audience space.

A livestream camera that can be remotely controlled by the workcrew is also hidden underneath the stage space, providing live feedback to the screens overhead the audience space.

The screens overhead the audience space provides for cinematic closeups and zooms not possible outside of the film format to occur in the theatre. On important scenes where a closeup of the actor’s reaction or gesture is required, the camera would focus on these frames and then project onto the screens. These screens are back projected by aprojector, and they are rotatable to either be in parallel with the audience space, as a backdrop, or perpendicular to serve as a screen.

The setup of the theatre is that of the rotated layout of a traditional kabuki theatre. The stage is found underneath the audience space, and the backstages are above or underneath the audience space. This arrangement create fly spaces for backstage events like lighting and harnesses to occur, while allowing the audience to freely explore this changing landscape.

These theatres are also designed not to be a black box, but also an object that sits on the designed park as a landscape object, like a piece of rock. The theatre interacts with the park through crafting several openings where the events of the audience movement during a play can be framed and watched by people outside in the park. The viewer becomes the viewed as their actions become the performance for those

outside in the park. Such openings of the theatre turns the massing of the theatre into that of an iregular object in space.

For the redesigned park, the sloping rolling landscapes of the park intersects and interacts with the theatres, semi burying it in. The park users approach the theatre in a panoramic manner as daily leisure activites occur in the park.

As a result of creating these hilly landscapes, several interesting conditions are formed. These special occurances are then framed, like a cinematic object, using enclosed walls, to form open theatres and gardens. For instance, because of the sloping condition here, the enclosing walls turn the slop into an open theatre for traditional performances to happen outside.

These enclosed spaces also have openings to frame certain views in the park. These enclosed landscape objects also react to the contect of the city, through its alignment and massing.

Lastly, the observation corridor acts as a sort of boundary to the park, and the slop gently and meander in and out, influenced by the views of the sumida river and the skytree, and the park, to form a continous and meandering space that allows for a smooth transition of view and movement. The observation corridor also branches into a second route on a higher elevation to watch the park in the more panoramic manner. The users of the corridor becomes the viewer to the performance the park users while they conduct their activities. The corridor, typically 3m wide also expands in certain areas to contain programs such as offices, exhibition rooms, and other service spaces.

The few drawings of the park depict the space in different seasonal conditions, from the way the par can be used in the celebrtory spring, to leisure activities like picnics, kite flying and

outdoor performances with the theatre and skytree as a backdrop, to the wintery beauty of the park in snow, as one watches the movement of people in the snow and in the corridors allow for a cinematic feeling to arise. The drawing of the interior of the theatre shows a scene in Sagi Musume, near the end, where the stage becomes pronounced as the maiden dances frantically. Closeups of her emotions and dance gestures are projected onto the screen, which can display these closeups or act as a digital backdrop.

Creating the cinematic architecture as a hybrid reality is the use of movement and vision to form a landscape. In the theatre, the boundary between the viewer and viewed becomes blurred as the stage and the audience space can sometimes become one under the proposal. The redesigned park with the rolling hills and the observatory corridor, and the objects in the space landscape further generates a stage where the leisure activities of theatre, and park becomes one.