John Collins

Theatrical Sound Design – A Binary Paradigm
Keynote Address
13.45 WEDNESDAY 22 APRIL | EMBASSY THEATRE

In his Theatre Noise keynote address, John Collins will discuss his design techniques through an analogy to stage acting. Proposing that the theatrical performance space is itself an actor, he will use two terms borrowed from acting technique – psychological realism and character alienation to explain his binary paradigm for theatrical sound design. The discussion will begin from the premise that sound design is unique among theatrical design disciplines in its capacity to create illusions. Collins will describe some aspects of his sound design that correspond to psychological realism – where the audience suspends disbelief and accepts the performance as reality – and others that correspond to character alienation – where the performance draws attention to its own artificiality. Using examples from his work with Elevator Repair Service and with The Wooster Group, he will discuss various cases of a sound designer's ability to manipulate not simply an audience's imagination, but their immediate sensation of their own physical reality.
www.elevator.org

The facilitator for this keynote will be Andy Lavender
A graduate of Yale University's theatre studies programme, John Collins founded Elevator Repair Service (ERS) in 1991 and has been its Artistic Director ever since. Between 1993 and 2006, he was also resident sound designer for The Wooster Group. In his work for these groups John has developed a unique and recognisable approach to sound in live theatre performance. This approach combines the manipulation of ambient sounds and the re-association of pre-recorded sounds with live actions on stage. John's designs have received multiple Drama Desk nominations, multiple Bessie awards and his work as a director and designer has been seen across the United States, Europe and Australia. This year, John received the 2009 Foundation for Contemporary Arts award.

Cicely Berry

Shakespeare and the Aural Expectations of the Audience
Keynote Address
14.30 FRIDAY 24 APRIL | EMBASSY THEATRE

For over thirty years Cicely Berry, Voice Director for the Royal Shakespeare Company, has helped shape the way its audiences listen to Shakespeare. In her 1987 publication, The Actor and the Text, she addressed audience aural expectations when she commented on the shifts in 1950s British theatre. From her experience,

Not only did the actor have to make choices regarding the presentation of language, those who went to listen also had to make choices: the audience was divided in that some people went to the theatre wanting to hear the play the way it used to be/sound—others began to want to hear something new. How do today’s RSC audiences want to listen to Shakespeare and does the new thrust configuration at Stratford signal another shift in the audiences’ aural expectations for the new millennium?

Ms. Berry’s keynote will share some of her experiences working with actors and Shakespeare’s language across the different acoustic spaces at the RSC. She will address some of the challenges for both actor and audience in the act of listening to ensure “the physicality of the language is reaching everywhere”. (From Word to Play).
www.rsc.org.uk

The facilitator for this keynote will be Tara McAllister-Viel
The world-renowned voice and text coach, Cicely Berry, taught for many years here at The Central School of Speech and Drama. She has published many books on voice including the influential Voice and the Actor and The Actor and the Text. Awarded an OBE for her services to theatre in 1985, Berry has been bestowed with numerous other awards including three honorary doctorates and, in 2000, the Sam Wanamaker Prize for pioneering work in theatre. in 2005 she was the subject of the documentary film Where Words Prevail, made for WGBH Boston, in which her work is discussed by Adrian Noble, Jatinda Verma, Helen Hunt, Edward Bond, Neil Kinnock and Sam West, among others.

Heiner Goebbels

The Thing Seen / The Thing Heard - voices in Stifters Dinge
Receipt of Honorary Fellowship | Keynote Address
10.00 FRIDAY 24 APRIL | EMBASSY THEATRE

The separation of the performance into a visual and an acoustic stage is a defining characteristic of the music theatre of Heiner Goebbels, the renowned German composer and director. This division was demonstrated most starkly in his recent work Stifters Dinge, performed in London in 2008. In this piece disembodied voices were heard but never seen. With no performers on stage, no actors to be seen, the absence became a creative alternate to the classical celebration of presence and intensity in theatre and opera. It proves his thesis, that “a theatre, which is essentially defined through listening and which can separate what is heard from what is seen, allows significant free spaces for the perceptions of every individual, every audience member”. In this keynote address, which will be illustrated with video extracts, Heiner Goebbels will discuss his theories with reference to his recent work.
www.heinergoebbels.com

The keynote will be introduced by Gavin Henderson.
The citation for his honorary fellowship will be delivered by Rose Fenton.

Born in 1952 in Neustadt, Germany, Heiner Goebbels has lived in Frankfurt since 1972. After studying sociology and music in his adopted city, he worked as a performer, theatre director and recording artist, forming the avantgarde rock group Cassiber, with Henry Cow’s Chris Cutler in 1982. As a composer he has released a number of works on the prestigious ECM label and his music theatre works have been performed throughout Europe, the USA, Australia and Asia. His first opera Landshaft mit entfernten Verwandten premiered in 2002 and, the following year, his orchestra piece From A Diary was commissioned by Berlin Philharmonics conductor Sir Simon Rattle. Since 1999 he has been professor at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany.

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