Theatre Noise - an international conference

Theatre Noise addres­ses sound design and ‘unde­si­gned’ noi­ses, music for per­for­mance and per­for­mance that is both ‘musi­cal’ and ‘unmu­si­cal’, voice pro­duc­tion and vocal utte­rance (spea­king, shou­ting, sin­ging, mut­te­ring). It pro­po­ses that thea­tre is that which is heard as well as that which is wat­ched - that the thea­tron is a lis­te­ning place as well as a seeing place.

Theatre Noise consi­ders aura­lity. It asks how hea­ring and lis­te­ning shape our expe­rience and per­cep­tion of an event. It concen­tra­tes on thea­tre as a sub­jec­tive per­cep­tual encoun­ter. It addres­ses ways in which the noise of thea­tre works on our sen­ses, and how it posi­tions us within a vis­ce­ral sphere of acous­tic energy.

Theatre Noise is also inte­res­ted in the inhe­rent noise of the mate­rials of thea­tre and per­for­mance : the ras­ping of its voi­ces, the sounds in its envi­ron­ment, the inter­fe­ring cons­cious­ness of ‘aural’ cor­po­real pre­sence within the noisy arena of thea­tre as a place.