You’ll Never Walk Alone:
A Journey Into the Abyss
Year: 2022
Studio: 3B (B.DesArch) - Ungergraduate Graduating Semester
Studio Theme: Floating Theatre on Sydney Harbour
Co-ordinator: Ross Anderson
Tutor: CC Williams
The Gap, a site plagued with tragedy and constant turbulence - historic shipwrecks and one of the most frequented suicide locations in Australia. A juxtaposed duality of Sydney presents itself, on one side of the cliff a view toward Sydney Harbour, the other side, the theatrics of the ocean. The site’s dramatic cliff is a natural amphitheatre itself, in interlude.
Reflecting on site, the theatre is a conceptual withdrawl from realities and city – deconstructing the lineage of theatre conventions and typologies through metaphoric and catharsis monumental forms. Abstracting theatrics, the architecture seeks to evoke a dialogue between spectator and performer, discursive and digressive, to discover new perspectives, emotions, unfamiliarity, and diffuse suicidal ambitions. The monolithic theatres dramatically submerge the site monumentally as its promenade sits above its intensities. They form a dialogue between heaviness and lightness - monument and ruin. From Melodramas, to Shakespearean tragedies, the theatre focusses on emotional performance - the plot has freedom to be deconstructed, adapted and exaggerated through two juxtaposed theatres and their architecture.
Two metaphorical journeys thread through two distinct deconstructed theatre experiences. They are a theatrical journey into the abyss – both via entry from The Gap cliff. Anonymous ticketing preludes the relationship between spectator and theatre that unfolds itself throughout the journeys. The journeys slow down to the turbulence of the site, staged through dramatic geography, and are theatrically elongated through the architecture and emotion - time is obsolete. No experience is the same. Journeys are immersed in a series of transformative thresholds – presenting intimacy, dramatic intensity, and otherness. Along this, traces of remnants curate throughout the architecture.
The journeys are theatrically guided through the origins of Ancient Greek Theatre, an imbalance is metaphoric through two monumental theatres, where each reinterpret the theatre typology. Performance is deconstructed between the two. Materiality, function, form and experience are juxtaposed between the two theatres, though both emotionally intimate.
Theatre 1 (Tragedy), metaphoric of tragedy, takes on a traditional performance typology. It slows down to the site’s turbulence, exaggerated in sensational heaviness, emotion and intensity, pondering toward performance. It sits intimate and rigid with the intensity and dramatic flashback of site, facing the most frequented cliff face of suicide, and the location of the Dunbar historic shipwreck. Spectators are infront of the narrative. And Theatre 2 (Comedic), metaphoric of comedy, is theatrically abstracted. It is architecturally looser and lighter. It is a deconstructed immersive theatre, beyond typical conventions, comedically embracing common elements, disparity, and pondering one to question whether theatre or ship, or ruin... Intimate spaces and intrusive architectural elements forge interaction and spectators finding themselves within a multiplicity of performance outcomes and perspectives of site and horizon. Spectators are inverted within narrative, as performers immersively adapt to circumstance, with moral ambiguity. It sits within the shadow of Theatre 1 (Tragedy), reflecting on itself and into the horizon. With reference to MC Escher, the arch is a portal glimpse into the unknown, a light at the end of the tunnel.
The Tunnels of Locks curates and give spectators scope to leave a remnant behind, but also take a remnant of someone or something unknown with them, respecting site stigma. Each metaphoric journey has a different experience, drawn closer to the intensities of site to reflect upon self and transform toward the boundless possibility of the horizon, departing realities of the site by sea…There is light at the end of the tunnel...Into The Abyss.....
