Changing sonic experiences : sound and soundscapes in contemporary theatre

Abstract

Over the course of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, sound and soundscapes have changed as our daily environments developed in line with the zeitgeist of the time – one that began to value the concept of individual experience. The awareness of sound and soundscapes in daily life as an orchestration is reflected in artists’ compositional soundscapes in performance. The changing sonic experiences have evolved in theatre through the actor’s work and increasingly through the digital work of the sound designer. The separation of the body from the voice has created an awareness of sounds and images as separate elements, as the telephone, gramophone, and cinema transmit acousmatic sounds, i.e. unseen sounds, through loudspeakers, microphones and headphones. Digital technology complicates and impacts the experience of sound, altering its spatial location as sound is heard as acoustic imaginary. In investigating this phenomenon, Jean-Luc Nancy’s philosophy on listening is applied to examine the interaction between daily life and artists’ work, since it is grounded on the fact that through sound, resonance generates inference and kinaesthetic sensations as the body positions itself to listen. From a historical perspective, the search for sonic experience is considered through three artists’ work, namely: playwright Anton Chekhov’s breaking string effect in The Cherry Orchard; visionary Antonin Artaud’s idea for a theatre based on interweaving sound and gestures; and practitioner Jerzy Grotowski’s work on the body–voice dynamic during the Theatre of Productions phase via Akropolis and The Constant Prince. The interweaving of elements by twenty-first-century artists develops into a separation and even elimination. Therefore the considered total act of theatre, i.e. the actor–audience dynamic is challenged and the interaction with alternative mediums instead of direct human interaction in theatre merits ethical considerations. Finally, in contemporary theatre, two twenty-first-century case studies are investigated: Simon McBurney’s The Encounter 2016 in 3D binaural sound experienced through headphones for a more intimate audience experience; and Heiner Goebbels’ Stifters Dinge 2008 – an installation-type performance that investigates the effect that an absent actor has on audience involvement. Theatre artists experiment with sound in order to involve audiences in sonic experiences through listening, employing sound designers as collaborative artists. Therefore, one may argue that through digital technology, the sound designer, like the actor, has become one of the main elements in the act of theatre.