Theatroforum
Thesis Project
MA Architecture
Royal College of Art, 2019
Project overview
This thesis project imagines an annual theatrical event that takes place in a public square in central Moscow. It explores the immediate and long lasting effects of theatrical structures and interventions placed in one of Moscow's busiest traffic arteries - the Garden Ring. Can we re-imagine a neglected infrastructural space through a new narrative?
The urban transformation was explored and presented through analogue stop frame animation, culminating in a short film.
Statement on the invasion of Ukraine
This academic project was developed during my final year of the MA Architecture programme at the Royal College of Art in 2018-2019. Although Russia had already at that point been responsible for extensive violations of international humanitarian law through aggressions in both Ukraine and Georgia, in 2018 I judged it was possible to explore certain aspects of Russian culture through a critical lens.
Coming from a Russian family, I was compelled to study the country’s history and cultural legacy, specifically researching theatre and set design within the broader Soviet avant-garde movement, some of whose most prominent artists were of Ukrainian, Belarusian and Polish origin. K Malevich, V Tatlin and A Exter were just some of the artists who had a great influence on this project.
Today, the context in which this project is viewed has fundamentally changed. I am deeply distressed by the illegal and deadly military invasion of Ukraine and the devastating violence and war crimes committed against the Ukrainian people since 24 February 2022.
In some ways, the questions raised by this thesis feel more relevant than ever: how can we challenge oppressive power structures through transforming urban spaces? Where mass theatrical events have historically been used to reinforce political power, can radical performance instead become a form of subversive discourse?
I believe it remains important to critically engage with this cultural heritage rather than allow it to become inseparable from the actions of the state. In a repressed Russian society that is trapped in a thick web of lies and terror, I fear for the alienation of culture. This concern, however, cannot be separated from an acknowledgement of the immeasurably greater loss being endured by the people of Ukraine, whose lives, homes and cultural heritage continue to be devastated by this war.
1. the proposal
The project imagines an annual theatrical event that takes place in a public square in central Moscow. More than merely an outdoor theatre, the staging of plays invites people to experience a neglected part of the city through theatre, and acts as a catalyst for a longer-term refiguring of the public realm, at both physical and societal levels.
The site is a spatially confused fragment of what was once the city's verdant Garden Ring. Today it is surrounded by both soviet monuments and their capitalist alterations and is intersected by a twelve lane carriageway. The scale of this road and its traffic is oppressive and divisive, obliterating any sense of human scale for its users.
The event takes place once a year, but the lasting effects on the square are perhaps the most important. Many structures are intentionally left behind as an invitation for re-appropriation. In this sense the design is not fixed, but an ever-evolving collection of urban interventions that activate and revive an alienated piece of infrastructure and hopefully carry potential for a more generous experience of Moscow’s public realm.
Act I - Introduction of the busy everyday routine activities in the square - ceaseless traffic, commuters crowding the nearby Metro entrances. The city as we know it.
Act. II - We see the preparations for the evening show begin. Stages and bridges are built and light, scaffolding-like structure wrap around existing buildings to act as viewing platforms. Exciting new street furniture and public realm elevate the mood.
Act. III - Finally, the play. The stages glow and darken in sudden bursts of light, kinetic set pieces rearrange into different compositions and actors' voices boom out of speakers. Audience, performers and moving traffic come together to create a dynamic theatrical spectacle.
Act. 4 - After the event, temporary structures are removed, but some pieces are designed to stay as an invitation for re-appropriation. Stages, elevated walkways new crossings reinstate the square as a useful public space beyond the annual event.
2. stop frame animation film
The immediate and lasting transformations presented by the event were researched and captured through stop motion film. Analog animation was used as a tool to explore the time based and character forming qualities of the project and became instrumental in presenting the overarching storyline and narrative.
Beyond mere depictions of a proposed idea, the multitude of scaled sets and props transcended the realm of representation and became what T. Brejzek and L. Wallen call 'autonomous models'. The film and its storyline is an embodiments of a new narrative, independent from the physicality of the real spaces it is based on.
3. revolutionary context
Amidst the bloody chaos and political turmoil that swallowed society during the October Revolution, the established social, economic and political models were replaced by entirely new hierarchies and typologies. This was a societal change on a scale unimaginable to us today. Artists across the newly formed USSR found themselves in a position in which political events destructed not only the basic models of society but also the established aesthetic reality.
The radical criticism of the old system resulted in a fundamental shift in understanding the baseline principles of art – what is the notion of author, of artwork and the aesthetic experience as a whole?
Although not nearly as united in their vision as it is convenient to suggest in retrospect, artists of the Russian Avant-garde in a variety of ways attempted to establish a new conceptual framework. A type of coordinate system of meanings, in which new social orders can operate.
As a new artistic ground zero emerged, symbols of the old world, such as figurative representation and themes of the imperial era were forcefully banished. Artists proposed radical new approaches in order to establish new ways of producing and experiencing art.
During a short window between the 1920s to 30s, Russian artists left us with a rich body of work, across the fields of fine art to theatre and architecture. Distrust and fear of the power of abstraction resulted in the introduction of socialist realism as the only state mandated artistic style from 1932, banning any piece of art that deflected from the official aesthetic.
Stage set designs by Alexandra Exter, 1926 - 1928 (source)
4. a history of mass performance
Amidst the bloody chaos and political turmoil that swallowed society during the October Revolution, the established social, economic and political models were replaced by entirely new hierarchies and typologies. This was a societal change on a scale unimaginable to us today. Artists across the newly formed USSR found themselves in a position in which political events destructed not only the basic models of society but also the established aesthetic reality.
The radical criticism of the old system resulted in a fundamental shift in understanding the baseline principles of art – what is the notion of author, of artwork and the aesthetic experience as a whole?
Although not nearly as united in their vision as it is convenient to suggest in retrospect, artists of the Russian Avant-garde in a variety of ways attempted to establish a new conceptual framework. A type of coordinate system of meanings, in which new social orders can operate.
As a new artistic ground zero emerged, symbols of the old world, such as figurative representation and themes of the imperial era were forcefully banished. Artists proposed radical new approaches in order to establish new ways of producing and experiencing art.
During a short window between the 1920s to 30s, Russian artists left us with a rich body of work, across the fields of fine art to theatre and architecture. Distrust and fear of the power of abstraction resulted in the introduction of socialist realism as the only state mandated artistic style from 1932, banning any piece of art that deflected from the official technique.
Studies of the spatial dynamics of Plac Defilad (Warsaw), Red Square and Smolenskaya-Sennaya Square (Moscow)
5. subverting the tradition
The urban typology of the large, open square, ubiquitous in Soviet cities was partly developed to host such choreographed mass scale events as described above.
If we view the flat, open expanse of the square as the stage in which actors, audience and city dwellers all merge to perform the collective drama, it is the streetscape, the soviet monuments and facades that form the backdrop to the scene, and backstage, behind the windows would dwell the extensive and sophisticated surveillance machine, watching over all.
The proposal aims to subvert this tradition by reappropriating the square for performance, participation and collective discourse. A series of stages, platforms and bridges would fill the open spaces acting as infrastructure for the theatre, whilst viewing structures attached to existing facades of housing blocks and the Stalinist tower of the Foreign Ministry Affairs aim to challenge the traditional proscenium to create a permeable and free flowing urban arena.
Filling the square with a myriad of interventions on multiple scales
6. design language
To transform the square from its mundane state to an urban spectacle, the proposal borrows tools from theatre set design, and draws conceptual ideas from the Russian Avant-Garde period both in aesthetic language and methodology – an art form that once filled a vital place is Moscow’s collective culture.
The installations and set design pieces are deliberately disruptive in their scale, form and colour. The design is composed of light weight, filigree structures and solid blocks.
Concept stage set design
7. site
The Garden Ring is a circular road network that encompasses the centre of Moscow. It was radically transformed several times over the centuries, from a verdant row of gardens in the 1820’s through its Soviet transformation to at times 18-lane wide super highway. The scale of this road and its traffic is oppressive and its monumentality is compounded further by Stalin’s unfinished vision of a necklace of imposing soviet buildings. It is a part of the city that obliterated and distorted any sense of legible human scale in the city’s fabric and led to a net of segregated urban blocks.
The event was designed using a narrative that considers and highlights the urban condition of the ring road and its effect on the square. By introducing a series of installations that range between the permanent, semi-permanent and temporary categories, the project attempts to bring back some of the historic uses of the square and to re-establish a human connection with an alienated piece of infrastructure.
The proposed structures act as stages, viewing platforms and pieces of set design in the context of the annual event, and become meaningful parts of the public realm, such as play park, promenade and bus stop, when the play is not shown.
Moscow's Garden Ring, and potential sites explored for this project
8. programme
The choice of plays staged at the event also reflects the notion of subverting existing power structures through performance, echoing a recent trend in Moscow to show plays with politically challenging narratives, albeit often hidden through the use of symbols and metaphors. This allows for the airing and discussion of subversive political views, whilst avoiding explicitly direct action such as protests and demonstrations.
Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector is a satire about the corrupt leadership of a provincial town. It touches on criticism of class systems as well as a local governing council’s fearful relationship with the institutions of central power. The play shown in the film is one of many suitable scripts and serves as an example for a single event.