Valhalla, I Would Like You Meet Architecture

For some reason the most amazing work of architecture for the past year or so is not really a building at all : it's a stage design. Now the history of stage designs have been somewhat interesting (enough for me to have written a paper on the subject), but for the most part stage designs have been cheesy.

Of course, there have been some good stage designs in the past. Palladio's Teatro Olympico in Vicenza, which houses a scene designed by Vicenzo Scamozzi that depicts three city streets emerging from an arc de triumph (an effect called pan optico). Scamozzi's design for the stage uses forced perspective. It looks like a really long street, but in actuality the stage is only about 30 feet deep. Essentially, the model buildings get smaller as they go further back. Even Michael Grave's stage designs, done early in his career, were relatively interesting. The thing is that these set designs are all in the realm of the profane. Secular designs are pretty easy : just mock up some buildings. The city is the world stage already; we just need to render a micro-world stage for a good show. But of course, it is still cheesy because we know the entire scene is lightweight and purely superficial.

Some shows are a bit different. How could one properly pull off an opera like Richard Wagner's The Ring Cycle? With it's mythic scenes ranging from underwater realms, fiery pits of Hel, mystical rainbow bridges, and Valhalla itself... it all seems like another matter.

Director Robert Lepage working with designer Carl Fillion pull it off all too well. There are no elaborate scenes with cardboard clouds, poky marine backgrounds, or Neo-Classical pseudo-ruins. Rather 24 steel triangles rotate on a hydraulically lifted axle. On these platforms various scenes are digitally projected, anything from a chthonic underwater worlds, flows of lava on top with glows of Hel under the platforms, grassy glades, ethereal projections of deities, or the ribs of a skeletal serpent.

The really amazing aspect of this configuration is that it allows the imagination to make the scenery far more awesome (literally awe-some) than anything that can be physically depicted. I usually refer to this effect as the Michael Meyers effect. Michael Meyers is terrifying because his naked self is never revealed. All anthropomorphic qualities a human can posses are diminished to a pale mask. The only indication there is a human under that mask and jumpsuit is the visibility of his bare hands. And the fact that the hint of a human being under that suit makes him all the more terrifying.

The imagination is far more potent at creating ethereal scenery, terrific infernos, heavenly majesty, and the deepest human sympathy. A simple structure such as Fillion's design provides the dynamics of clouds, movements of fire, the stereotomic of earth, and pulsations of water. It is a bit like Warhol's plays with no props; just bare walls. Valhalla becomes more alive in our minds than it can be in material reality.

For once the myths of old shine into the tectonic environment of the modern era. "Just take me to Valhalla."

Video of some of the costume designs, stage dynamics, and acrobatics :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3UMM37zwdQ&feature=related