Towards a theory of experimental music theatre: 'showing doing', 'non-matrixed performance' and 'metaxis'

Although recent years have seen the emergence of sustained research on experimental music theater, most of this is of a largely descriptive nature. To address the shortcomings of such approaches, this essay outlines a theory of experimental music theater based on a clear definition and a number of constitutive features. A number of theoretical terms from the fields of performance theory and theater practice are introduced, namely “showing doing” (Richard Schechner), “non-matrixed performance” and “non-matrixed representation” (Michael Kirby), and “metaxis” (Augusto Boal). The analytical effectiveness of this theoretical framework is demonstrated by discussion of case studies drawn both from the “classics” of experimental music theater (John Cage, Mauricio Kagel) and from recent work (Christopher Fox, David Bithell, Trond Reinholdtsen)

The Silent Space of the Vacuum

In this paper I argue that a reimagining of the notion of silence as more than a sonic phenomenon is needed to address the dominant structural apparati of Western discourse. Silence as an existential medium is where the Foucauldian apparatuses that power the status-quo of the world operate. They forge connections between things like ideology and social organization where one falls into the wake of the other and is shaped in a way that is nearly invisible to the passing glance. It is the indeterminacy within silence as explored by John Cage that that allows this to happen, but it also offers the potential to have an active role in the shaping of these apparatuses toward a more beneficial and culturally aware form of society. This new approach is crucial in helping one learn to embrace the indeterminacy of life and the hazy relational structures that drive our existence

Beatrice and Benedict, April 19, 2001

This is the concert program of the Beatrice and Benedict performance on Thursday - Saturday, April 19 - 21, 2001, at 8:00 p.m., and Sunday, April 22, 2001 at 3:00 p.m. at the Boston University Theater, 264 Huntington Avenue, Bosotn, Massachusetts. Digitization for Boston University Concert Programs was supported by the Boston University Humanities Library Endowed Fund

Spartan Daily, October 25, 1935

Volume 24, Issue 22https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2350/thumbnail.jp

The Politics of Resonance

‘GIB SIE WIEDER’1 is a series of two political compositions, dedicated to exceptional performers Garth Knox (viola d’amore) and Rhodri Davies (harp). In this project the central focus is on resonance in both a musical and wider socio-cultural sense. Finding the term closely correlated to the construction of gender, I direct my inner ear to the hidden background noises of the organisation of society. As a woman and composer, I perceive aural patterns of individual and political significance. In this work my aim is to to deconstruct engrained structures of resonance and assumptions of gender, and redefine them from a personal perspective as the basis for a new compositional identity. In this article, I identify my political perspective as an artist, and describe how this affects and stimulates my creative process. I discuss the compositional approach taken in the two compositions making up ‘GIB SIE WIEDER’ and their public performances in 2014

Spartan Daily, October 20, 1938

Volume 27, Issue 21https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/2811/thumbnail.jp

Spartan Daily, November 23, 1970

Volume 58, Issue 42https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/spartandaily/5409/thumbnail.jp

Knowledge-yielding communication

A satisfactory theory of linguistic communication must explain how it is that, through the interpersonal exchange of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, the communicative preconditions for the acquisition of testimonial knowledge regularly come to be satisfied. Without an account of knowledge-yielding communication this success condition for linguistic theorizing is left opaque, and we are left with an incomplete understanding of testimony, and communication more generally, as a source of knowledge. This paper argues that knowledge-yielding communication should be modelled on knowledge itself. It is argued that knowledge-yielding communication occurs iff interlocutors coordinate on truth values in a non-lucky and non-deviant way. This account is able to do significant explanatory work: it sheds light on the nature of referential communication, and it allows us to capture, in an informative way, the sense in which interlocutors must entertain similar propositions in order to communicate successfully