AN EXHIBITION AS OPEN SPATIAL LABORATORY, PRESENTING THEATRE ARCHITECTURE NOW AND WHAT IT COULD BE NEXT In this age of global media events, new technologies, shifting performance genres, and local festive expression … … what is the contemporary place of performance in your country? ... what do you bring to the table at the PQ 11? The history of theatre tends to illustrate how theatre as art form and the theatre as built form intersect, inform, and accommodate each other. However, last century this relationship between theatre and architecture became a troubled one, with the architectural rejected by theatre and the theatrical negated by architecture. This tension led to a lot of exciting experimentation in which the boundaries between performers and audience were tested and realigned. Yet, despite the exciting inroads made into performance space last century, such experimentation has dwindled with an invariable deferral to more conservative models of theatre architecture. The most inspiring venues now tend to be found-spaces for site-specific projects where performance refuses to be contained and its artists choose to leave traditional auditoria and wander–free from those dark and disciplined interiors–in search of more complex and challenging sites. What is this saying about theatre buildings in the early 21st century? Traditional theatre architecture is often considered a static object designed to contain performance: the playhouse, concert hall, dance space, opera house, stadium, or even art gallery. But performance cannot be contained... it exceeds architecture, especially in this age of media spectacles, fluid technologies, and uncontainable bodies. So what role does the purpose-built auditorium now play other than forcing us to perform as well-behaved spectators? If we acknowledge that architecture itself performs, as space-in-action, then perhaps we can explore new strategies for experiencing live performance as a more dynamic, creative, and communal spatial event. The aim of the PQ 11 Architecture Section is to provoke architects, theatre-makers, and the public into re-thinking the potential of performance space in the new century by creating a lively meeting space for presenting, representing, and discussing new ideas. What better event to host such a gathering than the Prague Quadrennial, which has changed its name from International Exhibition of Scenography & Theatre Architecture to that of Performance Design and Space, thereby broadening the field? And what better site to stage such an event than in the ancient deconsecrated church of St Anne’s set up by Václav Havel – former Czech President, dissident and playwright – as a space for promoting cultural diversity and creative dialogue? Named The Prague Crossroads, St Anne’s forms a literal and metaphorical junction for expanding conventional notions of performing arts architecture. The term ‘crossroads’ is a spatiotemporal phenomenon; spatially it refers to a place where many pathways join; temporally it constitutes a decisive moment in which concepts can shift. Crossroads therefore form a productive and radical intersection of space and time, which is the very art of siting performance. The spatiotemporal is what transforms our understanding of architecture from a static, mute object to a complex system of active forces. NOW/NEXT: Performance Space at the Crossroads is therefore both exhibition and event integrated within a site-specific installation in St Anne’s Church, which houses exhibits from 32 countries, commissioned media screenings, and an open laboratory, as well as other scheduled and spontaneous events, including guest lectures, panels, and presentations. Through exhibits, dialogue, and live action the Architecture Section of the 2011 Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space therefore asks “what is (a) theatre now and what could it be next?” As an event-space NOW / NEXT consists of three parts: the contemporary state of play, potential future propositions, and projects that fall between reality and imagination, as well as between theatre and architecture. Dorita Hannah
Architecture Section Commissioner