Who is; 6; Sean Kenny

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. . . . . . . . . . Sean Kenny left Dublin in 1950 to sail across the Atlantic with two friends in a fishing boat. In America, he studied architecture with Frank Lloyd Wright. Later, he went to Pan Gold and Arizona and lived with a tribe of Navajo Indians. Back in England, his iconic classic attitude

to established architectural tradition made it impossible for him to practice his profession or to be accepted by it. Instead, he turned to the stage and built his first sets for Brendan Bien and Joan Littlewood. In the subsequent series of spectacular designs for Oliver, the flying Dutchman and Maggie May, he moved toward even larger, more mobile or mechanical sets. In each, he made a constant effort to involve the audience. Finally, in Lionel Barrett's musical Blitz, he succeeded in almost engulfing them. The gyro tron is the logical consequence, the most expensive machine ever built for fun. A machine -aged theater where the stage has become the play and the audience re -ball has passed the mechanical actors. . . That's the new one, isn't it? What is that that's right to the top?

That should pass by. The other one is what? The other one is what? The other one is... . . . Judy Huckstable, an actress, has been married to Kenny for two years. In Montreal for the last month before the opening, she was often alone while Kenny worked 18 hours a day on the side.

Kenny's blend of fanciful mysticism and engineering genius. Kenny is so spoken, stocky and calm, with his short legs planned to preserve on the ground. Possessed are probably the most untrammeled and resourceful imagination of any living architect. The second, smaller pyramid of the gyro tron, contains a reconstructed volcano and an audience eating monster. . The lighting is all important, a thing like this. It's supposed to try to create a volcano, though one has these fibers and things, and without lighting

it would be impossible to do it. . One just thinks of a ride, being an ordinary ride, that he's made something beautiful out of what is something mundane. I think everything he does, I can't pick out anything, it's the best thing he's done, but certainly because it's standing there for the world to see rather than a moving, shifting thing like scenery or something he's done for a share. . He

never seems to get perturbed by anything, nothing worries him, you know. It's sort of zero while, when everybody's pulling their hair out. Sean, it seems, you know, knows exactly what he's doing, what direction he's going and his very kind of calm about it. I don't think anybody will ever get very close to him, you know. What he does, he does alone. I guess I'm involved with people's behaviour. And how we can, in the future now, begin to have places and spaces for people to be free and to be more dramatic. It's a kind of freeing, more than doing any particular thing. At the moment it seems to be breaking out rather than creating new ideas or new places or pointing your finger and saying that's the answer. It is more now breaking out and destroying, destroying what exists. It's just simply knocking it down. To have

that kind of strength is also a tremendous stubborn individual thing. So people, I know, his fight against, rebel against, you know. What the hell do you think you're doing or all you are, you know? But it doesn't lie to him. So the same people come back again and draw out of it. You know,

I've got a few other jobs here. Roger, you finished with the scissors. Yes. The whole future of us must lie somewhere in exciting places to live, forms that belong more to us as human beings, rather than forms that belong to an architect's drawing board. Expose own attempt at a new formula for living is habitat. I don't see anything revolutionary about habitat. It is basically back in square one, back in the box. It's an attempt to break the monolithic rigidity of the standard apartment block by using a complex of prefabricated units. It fits into the stamping of people, the identification cards, the cataloging of movement of

situation of marriage, birth and death. The living units are still square but have been rearranged to resemble a Greek island village. The box is part of it. The box is the units of habitation. It also has a number. Then the thing now is that it's not necessary any more to build boxes, not necessary to build square walls and windows and doors like we have, because of new materials, because of different ways of doing things. Because we can build spaces in any shape or form, the materials we have are fantastic. The American Fuller Dome and the German Pavilion and the Jairtron are probably three structures that are involved in the new technology.

Architecture and its excitement rather than architecture as a world fair gimmick. When Sean Kenny is not traveling, he lives in London and works from his design studios in Soho. With him are six assistants, all them young and none with a conventional background. There's a dissatisfaction in us to satisfy with what is and how can we do something better and how can we get more fun out of work for ourselves. It's terrific

for initial ideas, you get fantastic ideas, but he just opens the gate and there's the great big field and you can just run around and jump all over the place. The idea of people acting on the stage and acting things out and pretending that it's real life and so on, I think that's a bit false right now. I think it's any place now world for the theatre. I'm certainly not the old fashioned idea of the theatre that goes on today. It's semi -precious sort of commodity for a semi -precious audience, talking about semi -precious ideas of life. I don't think it's got anything to say. At the moment it hasn't. It should be possible for a playwright and a group of actors to go to any place, any place and tell a story, to any house or building or suitable kind of environment and tell a story. I don't think that this stage of the seats all jammed together in front of it is the answer to theatre.

Just like a circus walks in a tent, there's no reason why theatre shouldn't. Most of all it should be free to be able to, you should be able to knock holes in it and pull it down and change the shape of it. That's the main thing. You should be able to alter it to the particular stories or ideas. The trouble with national theatres and provincial theatres and rapidry theatres and so on is that you can't do anything. You can knock holes if you do, take the walls away, they're awful fault of. It's as simple as that. You should be able to take the walls away. The National Theatre Wales is planned as a mobile assembly of parts constructed on the principle of an umbrella. It can be mounted in a matter of hours, then collapsed into enormous trucks ready to move to a new location. Who

was that? Was that close to the moment? That was the other revolve. Sean will be in that zone next month for the underwater job. Kenny's office is usually engaged on a number of projects at the same time. There are plans for a new West End Theatre, three musical productions, industrial exhibition, the Christmas show in Las Vegas, and he multimillion dollar underwater resort complex in the Bahamas. Just to make sure you're covering it, that's all. You know, you needn't be too accurate. Just make sure we're covered and then we'll send it off to jump. What did the way you see is that you see double, you see this one here, and you see through this cage, we're different to it. Why did just now, so you get more background here, I just wondered, whatever we did here, what do we plan to do? You see if that's a mirror, if the floor that's a mirror, you'll be looking into something which is reflected, but that one doesn't move on.

No, but if that was a mirror, this would reflect on that. Kenny and his assistants work freely with a lot of enthusiasm and spend most of their time together. Lunch in the office is prepared every day by their own cook. It's a modest number in the booth like it's about the Irish wake. Chicken kind of Tory. So you must remember nothing next to me. Well, you know, it's up to you now, but from the 12th and

3th plus, whatever you like. From my point of view, that's fine, you would be adequate to do with that. No, plus 3 for the costumes, there's no outside figure. Yeah, yeah. Okay, alright. Fine. Great. Bye, bye. Tell me about ten. I think anything is ready made. I think that the idea of a Woolworth supermarket culture idea, or you can shop for it and buy it and packages is all wrong. I don't think it's possible, if it was possible, then it can't be very good. It's sort of difficult to understand things anywhere and to explore things. And I guess

the better the thing is that you're exploring the more difficult it is. This is with painting and music. I think the sort of difficulty or awkwardness is part of the enjoyment or surprise of finding something good. Is that you discover it and that it's not given to you and you are not shoveled onto your front garden by some culture. Sell her. Sean Kenny's exploration is not confined to work, even his parties become experiments with people. Ready.

I have a kind of melancholy about myself

and about my nature, which is sort of a very Irish thing. There comes out in people, especially in the Irish world, that there's an idea of death involved all the time in life. I mean, death is an idea. Death is something that is got to do with living. It's not just ending, but living. It has to begin with children. It can't begin with middle -aged

people. Because it's too late and it's too late to stop any architect designing or building a building. It's too late to stop a painter painting a picture. What has to happen is that tomorrow in the schools and Monday morning the schools are all demolished and that we have to find materials to give children to build. And from this building of the children will begin a new idea. Not a architecture of building or even technical ideas, but begin a new arrangement. A new disorganized idea has to begin. That's why everything has to be broken before. The ground has to be cleared before we can begin again. This is the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world.

It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the

first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. It's the first time we've ever seen a new building of the Irish world. This is NET, the National

Educational Television Network. Thank you.