Antenna Theater
Collaborative, Original Productions for Transformative Experiences
What’s Happening at Antenna these days
Is Chris Hardman sabotaging the American theater or is he saving it?
– STEVE ERICKSON, ESQUIRE
Introduction to Antenna
The first professional job I landed was rehabbing the Dragon Cave Funhouse in Coney Island. And at the same time I became aware of a sideshow illusion called Pepper’s Ghost. Watching audiences rock through the ghostly maze, then jump in fear at the inexplicable appearance of Peppers Ghost, cause me to become forever intrigues by what odd ball events could be called theater and what theater could be.
My career has been spent creating new forms of theatrical experiences. This website will tell of the various forms invented throughout the years such as Walkmanology …but wait I’m getting ahead of our story…
Reinventing Theater Since 1980
Original productions blending technology and art.
Receive
We invite diverse voices to tell their stories.
Transform
We reimagine the form to create collaborative, original experiences.
Transmit
We share our art via innovative forms.
“We chose ‘Antenna Theater’ as a name because we were interested in creating experiences that would foster active collaboration with our audience and the world. We were interested in creating productions that would act like an Antenna, that is Receive, Transform, and Transmit.”
– Founder and Artistic Director Chris Hardman
Created in 1980, the Antenna experience can take the shape of a carnival, an immersive maze, a performance piece, a radio program, a mystery tour, a sideshow or a giant walk-through sculpture. Antenna uses them all to put the audience member, or “audient”, into the middle of the action.
Antenna Theater is a 501c3 nonprofit organization.
New Theater Forms
The Invention of Walkmanology.
The name Antenna was chosen because we were not only interested in creating theater but finding a way to have an active collaboration with our audience- thus Antenna, which I took to mean; To Receive (like an antenna does) To Receive input, To Transform it, and then To Transmit it back.
Vacuum was the first show Antenna ever produced and for Vacuum we interviewed a multitude of vacuum cleaner salesmen and housewives and then cut their voices into the tape we used for the performance- they became co-collaborators. It was 1980 and Antenna Theater had just produced its first show called Vacuum and the show was a big success and among other thing it was invited to go to Europe.
Chris Hardman, ANTENNA Artistic Director:
…now I’ve always found airplanes to be claustrophobic, there is always a kid crying in the back and you forgot the book you intended to read so you realized that you’re stuck there for hours with nothing productive to do. Then this new fangled bizarre device came out on the market called a Walkman and I decided to get one.
So just as the airplane was about to lift off. I turned on the Walkman and just as the airplane lifted into the sky The Ride of the Valkyries began to play.
Suddenly I realized that there was this amazing theatrical event happening and it was called Syncronicity! The visual and the audio were working in sync and furthermore instead of watching from afar I was literally inside the event.
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Meet our leadership
Chris Hardman
Artistic Director and President
Internationally recognized for his innovative artistic productions from Alcatraz Walkmanology to Magic Bus, Antenna has produced more than 30 of Hardman’s original interdisciplinary pieces. His vision for Antenna is to foster active collaboration among the audience and the world through reimagined theater.
Chris Hardman is internationally recognized for his authentic audio tour of Alcatraz as well as the use of the portable audio player as an actual performance tool. Antenna has produced more than 30 of Hardman’s original interdisciplinary pieces. Antenna’s “audients” have found themselves inside immersive mazes, carnival-like environments, interactive installations, site-specific performances, radio programs, guided tours, and giant walk-through sculptures. Past works have combined cutting edge audio technology with interview-driven sound designs, puppetry, masked movement, 3-D projections, sensor-tripped animation, sculptural objects, features of the natural landscape, and prefabricated environments.
Hardman’s Antenna has also transformed the audio tour into an artistic medium by applying experiential theater principles to museum exhibitions and historic sites. Nearly all large museums world-wide and most prominent historic sites use Antenna Audio for their sound interpretation. This former division of Antenna is now owned by Antenna International.
Hardman grew up in Los Angeles and went to Goddard College in Stowe, Vermont. There, he worked with Bread and Puppet Theater, creating giant masks for street performances. His first commission was in 1970, re-designing and fabricating the fun house on Coney Island, New York. He then moved back to Los Angeles and then to Sausalito, California where he co-founded Snake Theater in the mid-’70s. Snake Theater, a pre-cursor to Antenna Theater, was one of the pioneers in the Bay Area of site-specific performance with productions such as Auto, Her Building, and Somewhere in the Pacific. At Snake, he also produced stage plays such as Ride Hard Die Fast and 24th Hour Café.
Annette Rose
Managing Director
Annette Rose, the former mayor of Sausalito, California, also serves on the board of the Sausalito Foundation and the Marin County Civic Center Frank Lloyd Wright Conservancy. Annette is a former three-term member of the Marin County Board of Supervisors.
The somewhat sadish story of the Antenna Website
Learning to live with websites and social media
ANTENNA has been around ages before Computers became personal and to communicate with our audience in those days -we sent postcards!
Then Computers came and people talked of websites which sounded like a giant energy sink and to be avoided at all costs so…. every time we were lucky enough to have young savvy energy-ball offer their efforts we would have them work on the website. Needless to say the site had many starts and fits.
But now that a website and “social” media are a necessary to communicate, it’s time I get control of this communication system that has replaced the book and replaced the painting and touch and smell and taste.
So our focus has turned to the website as a necessary part of the ANTENNA oeuvre. Return as often as you wish, we will be constantly be adding new material, plans for the future and projects from the past. Should be intriguingly and scrappy adventure.
Chris
