Writing about the design of a theatre for Noˉ2 performances, Japanese architect Kuma Kengo focuses on the thresholds between offstage and onstage areas. In common with other Japanese dramatic traditions, the stage includes additional areas which are in-between the fully offstage and onstage.
Frequently designed as a promenade or narrow pier extending from the stage to an entry point, it is the site of additional performances. In the case of Kabuki, these performances serve as introductions to a character, building anticipation for how they might add to the narrative unfolding, but they also allow for breaking the fourth wall: direct interaction with the audience and subtle undermining of the main stage. This is in essence an architectural
illustration of Turner’s discussion of liminality: the extension of the spaces between backstage and on-stage as a kind of physical interval allows for subsidiary performances to take place:
Ordinarily, a theatre stage is intended to represent the world. The stage space being delimited, rules of perspective are often exploited to create the illusion of depth, so as to better imitate the real world. The baroque stage is a representative example of this type of theatre. The Noˉ stage, by contrast, was originally an open space, with no walls. It was not meant to be a representation of the world, for the world clearly existed on the other side of the stage. (Kuma, 2010:88)
Theatre in the round has a place in the Western tradition of course, but the manner in which the actors arrive on stage is very different: in both Noˉ and Kabuki, there is an interstitial space where actors promenade exaggeratedly before arriving on the main stage. In Noˉ, this is a bridge-like space, and the combination of elements indicates that Noˉ is a reflexive theatrical form: the stage is not a complete substitute reality, but a place within a wider world:
there is action continuing beyond the stage.
This can be discussed in terms of diegetic space, a term common to film theory3. Diegetic space refers to the space of the performance, whilst extra- diegetic space is a territory outside of that action, implied by some cues within the drama. Crucially, extra-diegetic space is essential in some cases to validate the action of the drama by suggesting that it does not take place within a vacuum and that there are other lives and other places intersecting with this one. This is often the case in fantastic narratives where world-building is an essential part of the story. The tale loses authority if the audience cease to believe in the world it is set in, so cues and indications are used to show where other lives and stories might be taking place.
Christian Metz4 was one of the pioneers in bringing semiotic theory to bear on film. The term ‘diegesis’ is used by Metz to mean the narrative content as signified. In cinema, the diegesis is the sum of the denotation of the film – the narration, the fictional space, and time, and the story as it is received by the spectator. As such, the diegesis is an imagined construct based upon the narrative; it is the imagined space outside of that narrative. Diegesis is an implicit system, one which is increasingly implied as the film progresses (with the start of the film requiring establishing shots to sketch the parameters of the narrative space); we can make more assumptions as we know the world of the particular film more.
Diegesis can be further defined in opposition to other terms. The time of diegesis is not necessarily identical to that of the discourse of the film, for example, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey; its diegetic time spans
millennia, whilst its discourse takes place in a couple of hours. The term
‘diegesis’ is useful primarily in terms of avant-garde film, where the dramatic narrative is not necessarily present; where little actually ‘happens’, but where a meaning is posited through diegesis. In this manner, the term is also more relative to architecture, which does not necessarily have a dramatic narrative, only an implied one. Architecture is employed in the activity of ‘world-making’5 as diegetic film is. Architecture can imply an other-worldliness, a sense of realm. The sum total of the architectural experience as it is received by the viewer implies a whole world outside based on or against these principles.
In Metz’s discussion of the autonomous shot, he describes a single shot, distinct from its neighbours. Metz gives a catalogue of such shots which stand apart from the general flow of the film. The non-diegetic insert is an inserted shot which does not contribute or concur with the diegesis of the overall film, such as with Eisenstein’s Montage.6 The subjective insert is a shot within the diegesis, but one which is entirely subjective such as a dream or hallucination. The displaced diegetic insert is a shot which is spatially or temporally displaced from the context. Finally, the explanatory insert is one in which materials such as maps or newspapers are abstracted from the fictional space for the purpose of further explanation.
There are issues with this categorization, which is perhaps too absolute. The limitation of autonomous shots to short insertions is particularly problematic, whereas much larger segments of film may be shot in this way. Diegesis and diegetic space are helpful in constructing ideas of narrative space, however, and form a useful framework for the physical architecture of theatres and other spaces of performance and exhibition.
Erving Goffman’s procedure of frame analysis7 provides a further analysis more specific to theatre, this time of the Kabuki tradition where instead of masks, actors wear striking makeup in stories related to samurai legends.
Writing on the theatrical frame, Goffman notes its complexity in Kabuki theatre, where certain events might break the ‘fourth wall’ convention, bringing the actors into contact with the audience via direct address. Broadly speaking, Goffman’s theory of frames elaborates on the ways in which different constituencies participate in the same event. Performance provides a strong divide between these different groups: between the performers, the audience, and the front-of-house staff, all of whom experience the same place but through alternative filters or lenses.
Theatres are an ideal case study for how events are framed through examination of the various interests and roles of different participants. Whilst it is clearest here, it is a simple operation to extend this argument to other architectural types: domestic, institutional, commercial or religious buildings.
Each is subject to alternative ways of dwelling and being according to the positioning of the building user. Goffman argues that we read our context
through the dominant or primary frames at times: so the visitor to a religious site which belongs to a tradition other than their own might frame or interpret their encounter through their own faith, finding analogues for the kinds of religious practice they engage with. In a similar fashion, a trained architect often tends to frame their appreciation of a religious building through a professional scaffold: the thresholds, decoration, circulation, light, space and atmosphere, all as abstracted architectural qualities. Architecture, as a profession or training, can then be understood as a set of frameworks which might overlap and complement other frames. This dominant frame is the key in Goffman’s terminology, and it becomes the reference point for other frames.
Goffman addresses this by describing the lamination of multiple frames (1974:82): we might apply several forms of understanding simultaneously. The separation of events by frames is, here, on the basis of intent. A rehearsal is different to a performance, even where all of the moves and actions are the same: as they are framed differently – once as a practice run and embedding material in the memory, and second as a performance unique to the audience present at the time.
The Kabuki-za Theatre in Tokyo (Figure 7.1) brings these elements of framing, diegesis and liminality together. The lighting is left up, not dimmed as I would expect of a Western theatre production. Despite the classical nature of the theatre, there is some audience participation in the form of encouragements
FIGURE 7.1 Sketched plan-oblique drawing of the Kabuki-za stage.
shouted out from the crowd. The play is organized as discreet acts, and these are so separated as to allow for the sale of tickets for a single act as well as for the entire performance.
Japanese cultural codes are used as part of the stage setting, so that the act of removing footwear can effectively stand in for the transition from outside to inside without any flats or other scenery required to depict this passage from one place to another. This allows the stage to remain a contingent structure: determined by the actions of the actors rather than over-specified. The suspension of disbelief common to performance is present and correct here: the audience must subscribe to the story world and understand its rules, shortcuts and conveniences. This is most immediately apparent in the form of stagehands (Figure 7.2), dressed head to toe in dark clothing, who rush silently on and off stage with various props and pieces of scenery. They crouch and remain still and silent when required, but there is no darkness for them to recede into, and the audience is simply expected to understand that they are at once a part of the performance, but not a part of the story.
This speaks to the discussion of diegesis earlier and the various elements of narrative theory. The prop hands are part of the overall apparatus of the theatre (Figure 7.3) but are not part of the diegesis: they have no role within the story. This same presence of non-diegetic figures occurs with sound effects and musicians, who occupy a corner of the stage in full view of the audience.
The Kabuki performance exposes its workings, is honest about the elements
FIGURE 7.2 Pictorial notation of the interaction between stagehand and actor.
required to enhance the narrative, and expects the audience to understand who is part of the narrative and who stands outside of it.
The striking makeup and costumes of the characters are accompanied by a deeply affected and artificial way of acting. This is far from naturalistic, with dialogue half sung, half declared; movements are enhanced by the structured fabrics of formal kimono as well as various props and stools which allow more dramatic poses to be taken and maintained, rendering the actors as a kind of detailed diagram of a character.
The performance is, then, operatic in character: elements of dance, drama and music come together in a controlled and carefully separated way:
elements are allowed to stand apart from one another in a manner that recalls the montage theories of filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein. The lead actors use high, warbling vibrato at times; a controlled crack in the voice is part of what Roland Barthes terms the grain8 of this performance.
It is this displacement that I want to outline, not with regard to the whole of music but simply to a part of vocal music (lied or mélodie): the very precise space (genre) of the encounter between a language and a voice. I shall straightaway give a name to this signifier at the level of which, I believe, the temptation of ethos can be liquidated (and thus the adjective banished):
the grain, the grain of the voice when the latter is in a dual posture, a dual production – of language and of music. (Roland Barthes, ‘The Grain of the Voice’ (1977:181))
FIGURE 7.3 Schematic section of the Kabuki-za theatre auditorium.
The space of the stage and auditorium is diegetically sophisticated.
Off-Stage: Drum, Flute, Percussion, and audience participation calls.
On-Stage but non-diegetic: Prop-hands, String Instruments, Narrator On-Stage and diegetic: Sound Effects.
Diegetic Space: Actors on stage.
Interstitial Space: Actors’ promenade into auditorium.
The main diegetic space of the stage is differentiated according to the ground plane. Shoes, cloth and mats are all used to define spaces. The promenade from the stage is a particularly interesting element and has some similarities into the staging of large arena shows by rock bands. The parallel nature of this space allows an actor to attempt to upstage their colleagues by overacting and making a great deal of their entrances and exits from stage via this deck, lending a comedic air to proceedings.
The complexity of the stage in Kabuki is instructive as it exposes many of the hidden workings of other theatrical forms. The same parameters might be at play, but Kabuki uses the stage in a transparent way, simultaneously in our world and that of the narrative. There is a shared conceit between the audience and the performers, that we are able to ignore the presence of stagehands and musicians, that the entrance to a building is indicated only by a place where people remove their outdoor shoes, and that energetic performances can sit between these two spaces in an extended threshold.