ABSTRACT
This project began with a feverish body unleashing itself in space; a contaminated body, and body as contaminant, threatening to erupt through the borders of its own skin and refusing to be contained within established forms for housing performance. It was prompted in Germany (March 2001) during Nigel Charnock’s performance piece Fever, staged in the sedate surroundings of Mainz’s Kleines Haus theatre. The agitated body of this extremely physical dancer seemed to seek a more vertiginous experience as it hurled itself around the stage, burst through the proscenium arch and landed convulsing in the arms of the neatly arranged audience. Witnessing this visceral and futile battle with the prescribed passivity of the playhouse highlighted the inherent resistance of the architecture and its lack of porosity. In contaminating his surroundings, Charnock’s feverish body dis-eased the onlooker and unsettled the role played by theatre architecture, a role that was fundamentally rejected by the twentieth century theatrical avant-garde but rarely explored by architects themselves.
