Cathy Nosaty, Philip Strong and Laurel MacDonald • Ableton Live Software Pure Research with Nightswimming In association with the University of Toronto’s Graduate Centre for the Study of Drama December 11, 12, 13, 2006 Project Description by Laurel MacDonald Recently, Philip Strong & I performed a concert of our new compositions for voice and electronics (with instrumental accompaniment). The electronic component of the music was created live onstage, by Phil and myself, using a software package called Ableton Live. The next day, we received an email from our friend and sometime collaborator, theatre composer Cathy Nosaty (excerpted): “I loved that you began the evening when Laurel listened to something in her ear. (I wonder what the audience thought that might be... some kind of secret?) It was so curious and interesting to watch her listen to this small black oval, then sing, then choose to press the pedal, then to look at Philip who was bearing witness, then giving support in some very meaningful but mysterious way... I loved how he would glance at his laptop screen, then give a gentle nod to Laurel before she would proceed with her next vocal sound... It was so theatrical! “…there was something so beautiful about how you used that technology in a what seemed to be a simple way, yet were able to create audio palettes that transported the listeners. It also raised many questions for me about performance expectations and contexts and the interaction of the musical ‘communities’ on stage - the singers, the string quartet, the rhythm section - and about the beautiful way you mixed the ‘formal’ with the communal. “When I heard and watched you last night I realized that the I would really love to have a workshop to experiment with you both and with Ableton Live, and with actors and dancers …” In her proposal to Nightswimming Theatre to conduct a Pure Research workshop, Cathy proposed these questions: “Might actors and dancers use Ableton Live in a different way than might occur to a musician? How can the physical steps required to use the software be extended to physical movement, sound creation and storytelling on stage? How could Ableton Live software be used in a theatrical performance to ‘collect’ voices and sounds from the audience and use them in the performance?” Cathy Nosaty invited Phil Strong and I to participate in the proposal to Nightswimming, to examine Ableton Live as a theatrical tool. We readily agreed, and are working together to develop and organize the 3-day event. Cathy, Phil and I will meet for this Pure Research Workshop at the Glen Morris Studio Theatre at U of T on December 11, 12 and 13, 2006 to explore and examine these questions. We are inviting a small number of collaborators from the dance, theatrical and musical communities to work with us; each individual for one 3-hour session sometime during that 3-day workshop period. -1-
Cathy Nosaty, Philip Strong and Laurel MacDonald • Ableton Live Software Pure Research with Nightswimming The following is an excerpt from an essay written by Brian Quirt, director of Nightswimming, for the Canadian Theatre Review 119, Summer 2004. “Pure Research came out of a conversation I had with former Theatre Centre Artistic Director David Duclos in 1997. At the time, the Theatre Centre operated a program called R & D – research and development – which successfully generated a wide range of innovative new works. But the title was inaccurate. We did a lot of development, but did not really do any research; product was the goal of every process. So I asked how the program could accommodate the sort of research, for example, that a high-tech company conducts, which may or may not result in a new item on the shelves. What would a program dedicated solely to theatre research look like? “Out of that conversation came two years of research workshops at the Theatre Centre (1998–9). One of my favourite sessions was led by Darren O’Donnell, who explored acupuncture as a potential rehearsal tool. Darren and an acupuncture therapist designed treatments to elicit specific emotional responses in their performers and tested the results in scene work. Darren concluded that it was a promising, but powerful, tool – subject to misuse and requiring substantial further testing before it could be used in a rehearsal process. I loved this workshop because it explored a single idea, in depth, within a safe and supportive environment. The idea did not have to work. The opportunity to fail was built into the program, as it must be in any research-driven process. By offering artists a place to explore outlandish or unusual ideas, the research program might, occasionally, reveal something wonderful. In the process, artists could learn about their work, themselves and their craft.” And from the Nightswimming website (www.nightswimmingtheatre.com): There are few places in Canada where in-depth theatrical research can be explored without the pressures of developing and/or performing a new work. Nightswimming’s unique Pure Research program provides opportunities to artists who are pursuing a provocative theatrical question. Now in its third year, Pure Research is designed to foster theatrical experiments which are not production oriented or linked to a particular project (that is what defines them as pure). The intent is to pursue primary, practical studio research into issues of form and performance. Pure Research assists artists to discover what they need to explore in order to further their work. It encourages them to inquire about something they don’t know, and how they might be able to answer their own questions - theatrical questions, posed in terms of an experiment - without the need to find a specific answer or solution. Pure Research explores • • • •
poetic or stylized text in any form or genre integration of sound, movement, technology and text research and development viewed as a long-term process, rather than as a short-cut to production an artistic spirit of inquiry -2-