A Dialogue with Walter Meierjohann on Theatre, Installation, and Binaural Sound

Abstract

This dialogue explores the possibilities of binaural sound for contemporary theatre making and museum curation, situating sonic modes of practice in relation to particular formal experimentations demanded by the context of pandemic and exemplified by the international touring production of Blindness first staged at the Donmar Warehouse in London in 2020, and directed by Walter Meierjohann. The discussion between Meierjohann and Georgina Guy opens up the potential of sound installation as an apposite form through which to challenge visual-centric cultures of production and stage particular political and theatrical challenges, related to ideas of community and responsibility, and imagination, collaboration, and collective experience.

Keywords:

• Walter Meierjohann
• binaural
• sound
• installation
• syndemic

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Gwyn Donlon, who transcribed the unedited sound recording of this interview.

Notes

1. Donmar Warehouse, ‘Blindness UK Tour and International Transfers’, https://www.donmarwarehouse.com/blindness-transfers/ (accessed April 25, 2023).

2. See Richard Horton, ‘Offline: COVID-19 Is Not a Pandemic’, Lancet 396, no. 10255 (September 26, 2020); Emily Mendenhall, ‘The COVID-19 Syndemic Is Not Global: Context Matters’, Lancet 396, no. 10264 (November 28, 2020); as well as Georgina Guy, ‘Staged Installation, Reported Speech, and Syndemic Images in Blindness and Caretaker (2020)’, in ‘Aural/Oral Dramaturgies’, eds. Duška Radosavljević and Flora Pitrolo, special issue, Critical Stages/Scènes critiques 24 (2021).; and Georgina Guy, ‘Theatre as Installation in the Syndemic Architectures of Rimini Protokoll and Battersea Arts Center’, in ‘Installation’, special issue, Theatre Journal 74, no. 3 (2022): 277–301.

3. Hannah Thompson, and Simon Stephens. ‘Reclaiming Blindness’. Donmar Warehouse, 2020.

4. Guy’s recent research develops a theory of post-syndemic performance that re-stages theatre as installation. See, for example, ‘Staged Installation, Reported Speech, and Syndemic Images’; and ‘Theatre as Installation’, 277–301.

5. Judith Butler, and George Yancy. ‘Interview: Mourning Is a Political Act Amid the Pandemic and Its Disparities (Republication)’. Bioethical Inquiry (2020): 483–87.

6. See Georgina Guy, ‘From Visible Object to Reported Action: The Performance of Verbal Images in Visual Art Museums’, in ‘Theatre and the Museum / Cultures of Display’, special issue, Theatre Journal 69, no. 3 (2017): 339–359 (340).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Georgina Guy

Georgina Guy is Senior Lecturer in Theatre and Performance at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is co-editor of this Special Issue of Contemporary Theatre Review 33.4 on ‘Hear Tell: Describing, Reporting, Narrating’. Her book Theatre, Exhibition, and Curation (2016) was shortlisted for the TaPRA Early Career Research Prize and formed the basis for a research-led evening course at Tate Modern, London exploring theatrical approaches to curation and how performance is collected by art museums. This interview speaks to a larger project about sonic curation and installation across theatre and museum settings.

Walter Meierjohann

Walter Meierjohann is a Director, Lecturer, former Artistic Director (HOME: Manchester, NEUBAU, State Theatre Dresden) and International Associate Director at the Young Vic Theatre, London. Walter has directed over 50 productions in Germany and the UK at theatres including The Young Vic, The Barbican, The Donmar Warehouse, Residenztheater Munich, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Schauspielhaus Graz, The Sophiensaele and Arena, Berlin, for Peter Stein’s Faust Ensemble. In Opera, he worked with the late Klaus-Michael Grüber on his productions of Aida (Nederlands Opera, Amsterdam) and Don Giovanni (Ruhrfestspiele). Walter has written and directed a short film Dear Anna, starring Kathryn Hunter. He is a founding member and Director of AURICLE.