MUSE

It is New York City, 1906, with all the wonder and wealth of the new American aristocracy. But beneath the city’s gilded surface simmers a volatile and frenzied world — a world fuelled by raw impulse, obsession, and sensuality. This is a story of fatal love, constructed from the fevered and fragmented images of the imagination; at its centre, the artist’s model and muse, Evelyn Nesbit. She inspires desire in New York’s most famous architect, Stanford White, principal of McKim, Mead and White; the richest man in America, Harry Thaw; and a young artist, John Barrymore. The players in this dangerous game are living sculptures: proto-architecture that reinterprets form by fabricating new realities, in a wilderness that lies not outside the city but inside our own minds.

We are not responsible for the things we come to be.

Memories are Killing / The CabaretThe Model

The Artist’s DreamA Want That Image Satisfies

The Making of DianaNo Regrets

Dimming the Lights

Intermission

If OnlyHarry’s Nightmare

Marry MeMasquerade

BecomingVeiling, Unveiling

Diana on TrialThe Muse

I IIIIIIVVVIVII

Int.VIIIIXXXIXIIXIIIFin.

SCENES

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Executive ProducerDr. Tracey Eve Winton

MUSE is a play presented by the students of the Waterloo School of Architecture, at the former Riverside Silk Mill, in Cambridge, Ontario, July 17-19, 2014. Every summer, the second year class at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture write, direct, produce, build, and perform a play in order to explore themes and motifs introduced in their Cultural History course. MUSE is based on a true story.

The Waterloo School of Architecture’s annual play is one of the school’s richest traditions. The project was originally conceived by the late Professor Larry Cummings, one of the school’s founders, creator of the core cultural history stream which has shaped our program’s unique character. The play’s present form, inspired by R. Murray Schafer’s writings on the ‘Theatre of Confluence,’ imagines our production as a dynamic, evolving 1:1 scale model and space of architectural and environmental investigations and a research into the process of design. We work outside of traditional stages to address site-specific issues, from public space down to the level of detail. Theatre’s complexity challenges the class to think organically, by envisioning architectural objects and embodied knowledge as dynamic ecologies, resilient, performative and productive, rather than as inert.

The students elected co-ordinators, researched and scripted the story, established the site, strategized a business plan, organized publicity, choreographed and acted. Inspired by historical artifacts of every variety, they devised instruments, wrote and performed original soundtracks, design-built sets, sourced and fabricated key props, and crafted costumes, demonstrating how one takes up a creative position with respect to knowledge. We recognize the value of diversity in individual abilities, which allows unique talents and interests to flourish in an atmosphere of collaboration and mutual support, optimizing collective goals, in many ways modelling a real building project.

PREFACE

BACKGROUNDOn the evening of June 25th, 1906, on the rooftop terrace of Madison Square Garden, overlooking the city, the richest man in America shot to death the most famous architect in New York, who also happened to be the architect of the building. The cause of their rivalry: Evelyn Nesbit, the first celebrity model. The cause of their jealousy: a secret architectural playground. The cause of the murder: The first nude statue on a building in America.

Evelyn Nesbit, dancer and photographic model, had been Stanford White’s mistress before she married his rival, millionaire Harry K. Thaw of Pittsburgh. Thaw, who suffered from mental instability, became increasingly obsessed with White, and the premeditated, public murder resulted in what the press called “the trial of the century.” Evelyn was also attached to the young sketch artist John Barrymore, long before his famous acting career, but they could not marry since he had no money. The huntress-goddess Diana, actually sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is on display recently restored and re-gilded at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The architectural theme of the play is founded in the story that the statue of Diana, and by extension, the entire building of Madison Square Garden, was modelled after Evelyn Nesbit, who served both as a muse for Stanford White and his sculptor, and as a sensuous, living model for the architecture. The class researched the interior landscapes of Gilded Age architecture, with its rich textures, luxuriant surfaces, lavish ornamental details, and moody, passion-drenched atmospheres. The challenge was to re-interpret historical artifacts and stories to replenish the present, to find connections, inspirations, and invention by rooting new creations in our cultural history.

All the coordinators were elected by the class at the beginning of the term to facilitate communication within each group and between groups focusing on different aspects of the play. From direction, script-writing, choreography, set design, costume, music and publicity, ideas about what direction the play should take began to surface. Our first full class meeting was one of the most successful brainstorming sessions, and from there, the script, storyboards, costume sketches, and set models were beginning to take shape. Images of precedents from the 1900s, Evelyn Nesbit’s photo shoots, Madison Square Garden photos, were all used to grasp the quality and atmosphere of the era, immerse ourselves in it, and find shared horizons.

DESIGN

CoordinatorsJason McMillan

Shannon KennelleyValerie Nuyanzina

Logan SteeleElla den Elzen

Lara IsaacNicole Ratajczak

Marisa Musing James Clarke-Hicks

Adeline ChumJoanne Lee

Claire LudewigsSymon Tiansay

Emmeily ZhangRui Hu

Rain Maki

Producer:Director:

Art Directors:

Head Writer:Music DirectorChoreography:

Costume:Set Director:

Stage Manager:Lighting:

Budget:Fundraising:

Publicity:Documentation:

Site:

BUILD

As soon as the script was finished, the set, stage and costume teams began the process of producing and crafting the many elements that work together to stage the play. Experimentation with digital and manual fabrication, drawing on all our collective technological and craft skills, and materials such as fabric, metal, cardboard, tension wires, wood, resin, paper, and screens guided the design of the stage and the props.

This production allowed our visual ideas to take shape physically and designs to expand to encompass all the senses. Original soundtracks composed by the music team created a soundscape to enhance and nuance the atmosphere and sense of temporality on stage, while the choreography explored space through the expressive movement and architecture of the body. Publicity and fundraising found ways to create a financial structure that supported the play, as well as designing posters, tickets, playbills, and the website.

During the final days of production, each development, although managed separately, merged together into a harmonious whole. Every rehearsal tied each component together progressively, connecting elements in order to seamlessly portray the sequence of key events.

Tonight’s performance will showcase all our hard work and creative efforts. The true design project aspect of MUSE, gave us the chance to contribute our creative skills and craft. Each prop, costume, and projection displayed tonight, was created or carefully selected by talented members of our class.

We hope you enjoy tonight’s performance.

DEBUT

Isabel Ochoa asEvelyn Nesbit

Rain Maki asDiana

Mackenzie Phillips asStanford White

Charles Kim asCharles McKim

Terry Huang asHarry K Thaw

Victor Tulceanu asWilliam Rutherford Mead

Nikola Miloradovic asJohn Barrymore

Anisha Sankar asMrs. Nesbit

Main Cast

Supporting Cast We Would Like to Thank:Anonymous DonorNadir Ansari & The Grand HouseJTH Construction Company Ltd. Northgate Premier Inc. Monigram Coffee Roasters Inc. Mr. and Mrs. JonesMr. and Mrs. GibsonMr. and Mrs TangMr. and Mrs. TiansayFrank Begley

Rudolph Eickmeyer:Secretary:Chorus Girls:

Gentleman’s Club:

Tomas MasidlauskasHayley SykesAllison JangEden McleodNicole RatajczakEmmeily ZhangAndrea QuinnNadia NahrinAndrew KennyKobi LogendrarajahJonathan Sinn

Producer

Director

Jason MacMillan

Shannon Kennelly

Muse is the moment in our architectural education that pushes back against the homogenization of our talents required for the professional field of architecture. The renaissance in craft taking place across our class is , for me, the most awe-inspiring part of the production. Costume makers, furniture makers, painters, photographers and fabricators emerged from the constraints of the design studio and into the theatre we have created. We have the opportunity to not only make space, but also the lives that play out their hours upon our stage.

Muse is an amazing project of collaboration where for the only time in our architectural education an entire class of 71 individually talent-ed and collectively inspired peers work together towards the spatial realization of an idea. In the fabrication of spaces that create and communicate meaning, we explore the processes of problem solv-ing, shifting designs and perspectives as architectural ideas become tangible, corporeal, and human.

Focusing on people and their experience of space, we have used con-tradictions and layers to stimulate an environment which draws out tension and creates voltage which we use to inspire. Muse is about the the idea of making, exploring the moment of creation, fantasies, self-re-making and the process of turning ideas into reality.

Throughout the play, transformations of characters are not only an-chored in their choices, but also in how different sets of realities fabricate ideas that when projected onto a Muse can become twisted. In the end, we wonder whether the idea of a Muse, or the Muse itself inspires creation and manipulates the events unfolding on the stage. Creating meaning is a choice, and those meanings, created by or for another, evolve as distinct operations to control the outcome of the play.