Provocation: Any scene or moment from The Cherry Orchard. Time. Moments of time. Time is Tempo, Duration, long and short. Time is physical. Time is represented through other mediums. Patience or impatience. Brief or eons/millenia. The photograph in Chekhov’s 3 Sisters is a Theatrical Moment.
Statement: Act 3: If Time is a relationship between two moments, a singular note has no meaning. It ends. But if a second note starts, duration is constructed. The relationship between three notes structures a rhythm, a tempo; a fourth suggests balance, a fifth destabilises, the six returns some order. Sequential repetition creates a time signature, the tempo, or rate that propels us to the end. Time is after all suffering: a beginning always has an end (Carlo Rovelli, The Order of Time). In the most methodical of means, Time seems to suspend in Maurice Ravel’s Bolero, and the crash at the end almost surprising, as if the pull of gravity created by its growing mass causes it to collapse into itself. The family living on borrowed Time dances, a vain attempt to suspend between the lift and drop, before Time collects its ransom.
Sketched for the Theatre of Others Composition Workshop 2021 (conducted via Zoom).
Tan Shou Chen 