What is music? What is theatre? What is musical theatre? John Cage’s famous composition, 4’33”, asks what is music? A pianist sits down in front of the piano and for the next 4 minutes and 33 seconds, makes no sound. Through the piece, the audience and the ambiance become instruments. Composed of coughing, uncomfortable movement, whispering, HVAC sound, screeching chairs, and tension, Cage’s performance demands that you hear it all as music. Theatre director Jerzy Grotowski worked to peel away all that was superficial in the theatre to find the core of what theatre is. His work led him to theatre as a meeting between the actor and the spectator. That meeting consisted of silence, sound, and human presence is, ultimately, already musical theatre. As an actor, musician, and director I am following this line of artistic research. Through performance I ask these questions again, inventing my practice and my identity as an artist.
I am Max Allen, a junior theatre student in the BA/MA pathways program. The IDEA Grant is one of the steps I am taking in my research extending from Honors in the Major, practice-as-research, and eventually my masters. This project continues to bring my experience as an actor and musician closer and sees them as a singular practice. Through staging the play Sea Marks by Gardner McKay with the Tallahasse Irish Repatory Theatre, I explore practicing performance as both music and theatre. I will examine the play and ask what it can teach us about these seemingly divided objects of music and theatre. The play will be performed at the annual Bloomsday festival at Goodwood Museum and Gardens. I invite this location to be included in the performance, rather than attempting to hide and cover it. I ask what the play can teach us about these two seemingly disparate places of Tallahassee and the Irish Heads.
This play has moved me deeply, and the way it makes me think, feel, and dream is something I want to infuse into my staging of it. It is a rich text that contends with a menagerie of questions that I extend to my actors, audience, and myself. The festival itself will also include Irish food and musicians, which I aim to fold directly into my performance, refusing to draw a line between the real world outside and the theatre world inside. After the performance, I will be doing reflective post-mortem work on my process as a director. This is my first time directing a full-length play, and ultimately, the lessons I will learn in rehearsals will serve me for my life.
In the future, I want to continue my work while finishing the Pathways program at FSU. Later, I would love to apply to a practice-based PhD program or an avant-garde theatre company. Ultimately I want to be somewhere I can focus on long-term work, composed in-house and staged for the local community. Being in a home surrounded by other artists who want to push boundaries is my dream. Research like this is a critical step in developing my artistic process and will tee up the work I continue for the rest of my life.
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