Joern Utzon's summation of his philosophical approach to building design.

This is an extract from an exhibition, held in Denmark, featuring the work of that country's most celebrated contemporary architect. He is most widely known as the creator of the Sydney Opera House, possibly the last building to truly excite the world.

Although finished as long ago as 1973, it's siting , individuation, elegance, simplicity and legibility (by that I mean it's source (form) and purpose (function) are very apparent) mark it as a building that has not been apparently surpassed in all the years following.

It may well be the following philosophical approach that aided in the creation of the SOH, and certainly as far as the work of FRANK THEATRE is concerned, there are many congruencies in that the Frank Suzuki Performance Aesthetics places great emphasis on 'accumulation' as a method for 'building' an actor.

Utzon writes:

A consistent utilization of industrially produced building components can only be achieved if these components can be added to the building without having to be cut to measure or adapted in any way. Such a pure ADDITIVE principle results in a new architectural form, a new architectural expression with the same attributes and the same effects as are obtained, e.g. from adding more trees to a forest (et al); it all depends on how many different components are added in this game. Like a glove fits the hand, this game matches the demands of our age for some freedom in the design of buildings and the strong desire for getting away from the box type house, where the box has a given size and is by partitions in the traditional way.

When working with the ADDITIVE PRINCIPLE, one is able, without difficulty, to respect and honour all the demands made on design and layout as well as all the requirements for extensions and modifications. This is just because the architecture -or perhaps the character - of the building is that of the SUM of the components, and not that of a composition or that dictated by the facades.

Again, when working with the ADDITIVE PRINCIPLE, one is able to avoid sinning against the RIGHT OF EXISTENCE of the individual components, THEY ALL MANAGE TO FIND EXPRESSION.

The tenet of functionalism, which is after all the essential background to true architecture, is respected. ARKITEKTURE No 1, 1970



There are significant parallels with the approach taken by FRANK THEATRE in that we see acting training as essentially accumulative. By that I mean that we placing primacy in the actor to be constantly developing elements such as: strength, sublety, softness, receptivity, control of voice and body, emotional and psychological connectedness, heightened sensibility, self definition, awareness of fellow performers, ownership of the space, connection with the audience, connection with the text, ability to take direction during an exercise, groundedness, presence, focus and inspiration.

Whilst many if not all other acting styles and approaches have the same goals, we at FRANK differ in that we are preparing our actors to achieve all of these individually crucial elements, WITHOUT sacrificing any of the others.

It is extremely difficult to achieve an aggregate of all these demanding aspects of the actor's craft. Most actors can achieve some of these elements some of the time, but inevitably it is at the expense of most of the others. For most actors, especially those that don’t train, this effectively means that there is always an ongoing sense of SUBSTITUTION, which results in a situation of robbing peter(e.g. inspiration) to pay paul(e.g. groundedness).

The FRANK training posits the vision that actors, through rigorous and acute training, can achieve these elements over time by experiencing the process as ACCUMULATION. For this the actor approaches the work not in terms of trying to achieve the elements at the same time, but in terms of holisticly ADDING or MULTIPLYING the elements upon themselves. We also believe that substitutive processes are psychicly neutral as there is no net gain and that the ACCUMULATIVE principle is much more positive as an educational process.

The ADDITIVE process of Joern Utzon enabled him to arrive at design solutions that harnessed all the crucial elements of architecture such as inspiration, cost, feasibility, engineering practicality, site empathy and usefulness amongst many others. These elements have their equivalents in the performing world and FRANK likewise is using similar philosophical approaches to achieve it's vision.

Author: John Nobbs, August, 2004

SUZUKI TADASHI: "True excellence on stage is born of having to concentrate on many things at once"