sounds like Wagner's original scheme for the auditorium at Bayreuth --
each viewer isolated within a bathtub-on-its-end shaped wicker enclosure,
on a hard uncushioned seat, able to see only forward into the
Gesamtkunstwerk flourishing before her eyes.
Curiously, when Jonas Mekas and P.Adams Sitney were designing the small
auditorium at Anthology Film Archives ( major NYC venue for
experimental films). they came up with a similar array -- all to banish us
from one another and focus us up front.
Personally (if I were a person, I mean), I prefer seeing everybody
hearing. I love to watch people listening -- I learn a lot about my work
and other people's by watching audiences --subtle or naive-- react/
respond/ reject/ light up in answer to the Stimulus of Voice.
So I'm not too big on this Up Front business. A reading is not just the
inscription of the poem into empty space. It is a triangulation from the
page to the audience by way of.... well, by way of my luvverly voice and
your luvverlier ears and the espresso machine and the traffic outside and
the dogs -- dogs are very common in American poetry venues -- and the
jukebox and (in staid academic environments) the skateboarders outside the
window. I hate all that, but love it too.
Poetry is what gets through.
Robert
On Fri, 18 Jun 1999, Richard Caddel wrote:
> On Fri, 18 Jun 1999 00:46:47 +0100, Lawrence wrote:
>
> > I do
> >wonder why people come to readings sometimes ...
>
> Ann's opinion is that poetry audiences should be sat in high-sided
> chairs, a cross between confessionals and those single-seater tables
> in older pubs off the Leith Walk in Edinburgh - so that they could
> neither see or be seen by other members of the audience. Readings
> should take place in as-close-to-total-darkness as possible, though
> the poet may be allowed, say, a 40-watt bulb or a small maglite if,
> for some inexplicable reason, they've been unable to memorise their
> own work.
>
> Generally, as close to full sensory deprivation as can be achieved
> within the bounds of international anti-torture legislation. This
> still wouldn't deal with the mobile user, but it would reduce
> distractions... yet I know of no organisation which has had the vision
> to introduce this radical arrangement...
>
> RC
>
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