Nautilus

Research question

How can a literary work become a contemporary stage experience without being illustrated or explained?

Nautilus investigates how different non-verbal forms can share responsibility for a work’s narrative.

Starting point

The research approaches Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas as a world from which structures, ideas, tensions and emotional states can be drawn and reinterpreted.

The aim is to distinguish the events of the plot from the deeper core that remains relevant today.

Lines of enquiry

The process is organised around several questions:

• which elements of the novel remain relevant today;
• how to portray Nemo without turning him into a conventional theatrical character;
• how to represent the ocean without illustrating it;
• how music and image can share narrative roles;
• how to use silence and the absence of words;
• how to create transition, tension, depth and transformation through sound and space;
• how to give visuals a role beyond decoration;
• how to create an experience that can be read at different levels without prior knowledge of the novel.

Method

The research combines analysis of the original text, the development of its own dramaturgy, musical composition, sound experimentation and visual development.

The project seeks to establish structural relationships between these disciplines from the outset. Visual material may change musical decisions; a sound texture may determine lighting or stage rhythm; a narrative transformation may emerge simultaneously through several forms.

Each discipline contributes to shaping the work on equal terms.

Narrative without words

The absence of verbal narration shifts responsibility for storytelling towards other media.

The project explores how a sequence of sounds, images, silences, lighting changes and spatial transformations can create a recognisable narrative experience without telling the audience exactly how to interpret it.

The story develops through association, evolution and contrast, leaving room for each person to complete what remains open.

Outcome

The research gives rise to Nautilus, an audiovisual experience in which music, electronics, sound design, image, lighting and staging form part of a shared dramaturgy.

Connections

Nautilus Research connects with a recurring concern in Héctor Muñoz’s practice: translating the emotional content of a narrative into sound.

While other projects begin with personal experiences or explore authorship, performance and process, Nautilus turns towards an external literary source. It asks how a story can become a sensory experience while retaining its capacity to move, suggest and narrate.