Impromptu Performing Art Centre

An Unexpected and Informal Street Performances

I was influenced by my sister in exposing into the knowledge and beauty of the music. Since then, my world is different. I am amazed how music brings my life to the fullest, the memories of practise and perform with my orchestra wind band mates still vividly keep in my mind, becoming my most nostalgia and unique feeling. Music inspires me, Music gives my life a special emotion. No lie.

Back to my secondary school life, I remember the moment when I hold my Trombone, practise and perform in my school corner. The space of practising is informal. No formal practise room and auditorium just utilised the outdoor corner space such as the corridor with wooden seating, staircases and landing, a small pavilion, a simple and small covered outdoor event space. Such an informal space but a fun corner. Although the outdoor space is poor in acoustic, one of the reasons we still enjoying in the informal practise atmosphere is visual connectivity and flexibility. Sometimes, I imagine what if my school provide a space with lush greenery, perform an improvisation at the corner to inspire all the students who do not have art and music background to participate and enjoy in the performance by informal learning.

A brief for the community in performing art

This hunch stays with me until the introduction of my b.sc arch final semester brief: to construct a performing art centre. As I read throughout the brief, it's a debatable requirement that students should provide roughly 30% of the spaces related to formal theatre and practise hall and room to cater to the community, especially the primary and secondary school children, and college university students in the vicinity of the site.

By Richard Pilbrow definition, performing art centres are “a place nurtures people’s passion, creativity and teaches them communication skills, a magical space of expression for drama, ballet, opera, musical, popular entertainers, or rich mix of entertainment and culture. An audience did not passively sit, look, and listen, it participated in the performance- the experience was shared with actors and audiences interacting together.” He emphasized that performing art is meant not only for performer, but performer and audience. Audience can be part of the performer. However, the evolution of performing art has slowly become an informal performance, believed to be the convenient access to performance, most casual users of performing spaces (especially the youths, playing TikTok, filming, live broadcasting)

Speculative Proposal: The Impromptu Performing Art Centre

The proposal for my final project in b.sc revolves around an evolution of performing art but with a different trajectory of how it’s being used. It acknowledges the positive public appeal for spaces promoting classes for learnings to become an important node of the city's youth development. However, the relationship between its users to performing art is a participative learning process instead of a reactive one. Instead of the professional performer to teach with the users' learning, each of them will be having a tablet that can be access to the internet to begin at the centre registration counters. After that the users will be free to roam around the building of its distinctive unexpected architectural environment, performing their experience of the spaces with the same passion of peers and the dedicated programs in each 'chamber' to their own tablet. The tablet will ultimately serve as 'recreate their own performing art' of the users, its content growing in proportional to each unique experience from visits to the proposed performing art centre. Throughout time, the PAC will be a place to instil people in their own unique way of performing art. Instead of performers, the Impromptu PAC is a product of the city's art and culture to their future.