COMBINED ARTS

The combined arts refer to events that combine a variety of media or materials which can be both seen and heard,
and which exist in both space and time. They include dance, poetry, theatre, improvised scenes, music, musical plays
and events, cinema and performances such as rituals and cultural events including street carnivals, fiestas and
parades, among others, that require human beings to demonstrate certain skills as performance. They may have
content drawn from traditional tales or myths, contemporary events or any human experience.
Theatre as a combined arts may put together literature or drama, music, actors on stages where scenery, props and
lighting are arranged, plus other media to complete a production. The recent theatre work of the Anino Shadow Play
Collective recorded an actual shadow play adaptation of Francisco Balagtass Florante at Laura. In the process, it
combined a variety of materials and elements coming not only from traditional puppetry and shadow play, but also
cinema, drawing, literature, music, painting and video. In the same manner, a musical event may include sound,
spectacular impressions and video. Cinema may creatively integrate elements of photography, video, film, music and
literature and other materials in its production. Indio Nacional, a film directed by Raya Martin is a good example. It
creatively combines pictorial units, historical excerpts or texts, sound, and even a live musical piano accompaniment.
For the intent and purposes of this book, this section will focus on the overarching components (herein clustered into
Spatio-Temporal Frame and Structure) that hold together Music, Theatre, and Cinema as forms of Combined Arts.
The next part of the chapter will highlight their unique traits and analyse their distinct component parts, namely, their
specific elements, principles of organization, techniques and conventions as thy apply in selected productions.

SPATIO-TEMPORAL FRAMES IN THE COMBINED ARTS

Unlike the visual arts, the combined arts are transitory in nature since they are events that occur in time. This quality
sets them apart from painting, sculpture or architecture, which are otherwise valued for their tangible and
unchangeable qualities. We can always go back again and again to Von Goghs Starry Night painting and marvel at
the expressive lines and colors which have remained the same through the years, or experience the same majestic
stance of the Greek Winged Victory sculpture as it was first beheld thousands of years ago. In music, however, the
notes in the melody of Beethovens Symphony No. 5 cannot be held forever. Its timbre, pitch and volume can only
register when they move through time. Its music can only be heard through a continuous shift of notes, through
repetition, variation, and an accumulation of effects in time. Similarly, the cumulative series of sights, sounds and
impressions in Theatre and Cinema can only manifest in time.
Another element that is common among the combined arts is the locus the specific space in which Music, Film and
Theatre and other Combined Arts occur. This unique spatial quality not only served as a physical or tangible
receptacle that enables these arts to manifest as they move in time but also gives them a definite shape. Adolphe
Apphia, one of the 20th century major theoreticians of Theatre, in Action, Space, Light, Painting, illustrates this point
in reference to the theatre space. He says that space must conform to the plastic feature of the actor or the actress,
and that it must work to serve his or her moving, alive and three-dimensional character. Space, in this sense, not only
locates the actor or actress in three-dimensional space but also defines his/her performances dynamic shape.
Ones experience of the combined arts may also be affected by the kind of spaces in which these arts are held. The
audiences experience of a play performed in a traditional theatre building complete with an arena, thrust, or
proscenium stage will be different form that performed in an alternative space. Juan Ekis, director-playwright of the
Palanca award winning play 20 Questions makes use of a converted space a nook in a resto-bar to create a
cramped but snug and intimate bedroom space where actors interact. This specific theatre space not only conforms
to the demands of performance, but also affects or alters the audiences reception and experience of the play.