"model love - a lovers' manual" (bodies in flight)

thursday 8th may 2008

"model love - a lovers' manual"
a 4-hour performance-installation
presented by bodies in flight
http://www.bodiesinflight.co.uk/

devised by:
edward dimsdale ~ photography
catherine dyson ~ performer
sara giddens ~ choreography
sam halmarack ~ music
simon jones ~ text
graeme rose ~ performer

with tom wainwright on video, editde by tony judge

part of bac burst

"...somewhere between soundbytes, sonnets and songs, our fifteenth performance work - a dark and surreal exploration of modern dating - begins with a mysterious book of photographs - a lovers’ manual - claiming to record that exact moment when two strangers’ eyes meet and it’s love at first sight. known for our innovative collaborations with sonic and visual artists, we are working with photographer - edward dimsdale whose bespoke photo-books are at the passionate heart of this new work. part investigators, part impersonators, three performers bring to life his unique series of images with our characteristic mix of live music, poetry and high-octane performing..."

"please feel free to move around the room, look at the books & photographs, open the drawers of the small cabinet in the corner.

"please do not touch the electrical equipment or the printing press.

"as this performance-installation lasts four hours, why not return later to see how the material has developed."

programme notes:

raiding dating sites and surfing handy hints on online romance, with live music and performance, "model love" takes you on an intimate journey through mysterious images that claim to record the exact moment when two strangers' eyes met and it was love at first sight.

amongst a sea of lonely-hearts self-portraits, a singer sets their poignat postings to music, whilst a performer gathers up photographs and begins carefyully sewing them, leaf by leaf, into a book. do these images capture the instance of love at first sight? are they perhaps an allegory of the photographic moment itself? in a corner another performer slowly dismantles a book, re-contructing the images into a love-triangle's never-ending narrative: three into two won't go. is this a doomer love affair? or a post-mortem for the photographic image itself?

this show caught me surprise and i wish i had been able to see more of it...

photos hung on lines
a woman in a black dress sewing photos into a book, looking at photos on the line, leaving by a door at the end
a man in black clothes cutting up photos in a book with a scalpel at the same time projecting images of this - photos and cutting onto a screen, sticking parts of photos on to the creen and writing garffiti - "this is not me" and photos onto a wall making a slowly increasing mosaic
both performers mic'ed (altho their text still very hard to hear clearly - him saying "i am lost" i caught but not so much else
both performers dancing in synch but unconnected - jerky repeated moves, arms splicing down to the one outstretched foot, then out crucufixtion-like
the musician making atmospheric sounds and singing sad love songs

a show i would have liked to watch through...

"und" (doris uhlich)

thursday 8th may 2008

"und"

doris uhlich

doris uhlich ~ concept & stage direction
dramaturgy ~ andrea salzmann
production director ~ johanna kienzl
performers: peter fenz, christa himmel-schwarzmuller, pauline haslinger,frederich nedoma-ohnhauser, susanna peterka, otto schodl, ilse urbanek, werner vockenhuber, pia voldet

bac burst festival

engage with the beauty, fragility and strength of old age in this unusual piece of dance. two years ago doris uhlichasked older people on the streets of vienna whether they were interested in working with her. this culminated in a show choreographed through the performers' own gestures and movements. a celebration of older generation that is not often seen on the stage.

programme notes:

two years ago, doris uhlich was roaming vienna searching for older people who would work with her. she met them at the volksgarten (a public park in vienna), on the tram or the tube, in coffee houses or at a senior's fair.

by talking with each individual person, doris uhlich focused on their body and concentrated on their language. the next step was to study the person standing up, sitting upright or lying down. based on these rudimentary movements, sets of body and motion materials were developed for each person, each set with a specific scope.

by zooming into the fragility and the robustness of the body and personal gestures, a field of analysis is opened at the intersection of the everyday-body/everyday-scenarios on the one hand and artistic body/body scenarios on the other.

"today i am everything. i am the twenty-six-year-old, i am the sixty-year-old, i am the eighty-year-old. everything is summed up in the 'here and now'. (frederich nedoma-ohnhauser, eighty-six years old)

an empty space with a line of people sitting in chairs to the left-hand side.

a man gets up and walks around the periphery of the space, hands in pockets, hands behind, hands at side. although the walk in a circle is like a the pace around a prison yard or a cage, it is impossible to read anything about this man and his current attitude, emotions, state. some time later he will skip with a total energy and lightness that will suggest a childlike playfulness and glee.

a woman gets a pen from out of her handbag, looks at what is happening the man walking and us in the audience, and starts to write on a clipboard of paper. she will do this throughout most of the performance until later she will read what she has written. this will turn out to be a=n account of everything she has observed.

"the audience is silent. it is a tense silence. susanna slowly takes her clothes off puts them on the back of the chair. she sits then lies on the floor..."

a chair is placed upstage right.

a woman, smartly dressed in shiny heels, comes and sits on it. she will tell us of her different visits to london, her impressions of our city, the differences between life in london and life in austria. she will remove all her clothes while she tells us this and sit and lie in different positions on the floor and chair. she will do the with an everyday-ness that will disallow any sense of this being novel or unusual in any way.

an ancient fragile little man comes into the centre of the space. slowly he unfolds down an unbelievable way and then slowly folds back up again. later he will come and grin happily at us all with mischievous knowing. and then he will put on tap shoes and tap for us.

a slender woman in slacks comes into the space and performs a series of ballet moves. she is obviously old and not in prime form but she dances the moves nevertheless.

a man in trousers and jacket looking smart comes into the space and looks. at the ballet dancer. at us. at susanna lying naked on the floor. it is impossible to read anything specific from him.

another man comes into the space and looks at us. he then moves to the back and sprints with incredible speed the distance of the back wall. he will repeat this at different times. later he and the smartly dressed man will disco together looking happy.

another woman eventually comes in an paces and mutters. she seems less happy than others and the snatches we catch of what she says seem to be about wanting to be on her own.

eventually all the people will be moving their moves at the same time in a complicated set of patterns that never quite connect or intersect. in a moment of stillness in this another woman will come into the space, lie down on her side, and slowly slowly curl up into the shape of a foetus, then uncurling then get up and go back to her seat.

and sometimes we laughed - sharing the joke with these performers: this was not how any of them should be behaving or who they were supposed to be.

nice piece of work.

"hadley's experiment" (chris johnston, livestock)

wednesday 7th may 2008


"hadley's experiment"

by chris johnston

presented by livestock

CAST

anton maiof ~ sound artist

chris johnston

harry thompson

nicola dane

directed by dale heinen

at the tudor room, old ship hotel

brighton fringe festival

livestock is a theatre and arts organisation exploring themes of mental health and related issues. its next project concerns motherhood.

http://www.livestock.org.uk

based on a true account, this is the story of warren who wakes up one morning to find his life directed by imaginary gangsters that he can see and hear. these 'operators' lead him into a journey across country and into a different kind of life.

using sound and video, the company presents an almost unbelievable story of 'hearing voices' experience.

programme notes

the play is an original piece, however it is inspired by and very loosely based on a book by barbara o'brien entitled "operators and things". this book was published in the u.s. some time ago and recounts an extraordinary 'hearing voices' experience. we have tried to draw the essential discoveries from the book and re-present them in "hadley's experiment".

in our story, the central character, warren, discovers the existence of a previously hidden layer to human existence in which figures called 'operators' are active. 'operators' control human beings.

in the world of 'operators', certain terms are used to describe features of human life:

'stoning' ~ an action performed by one 'operator' on another to disable it

'latticework' ~ the part of the human brain used to record and memorise experience

'cowboys' ~ operators who go about trying to obtain contracts of 'things' illegally

'things' ~ human beings

'operators' ~ invisible agents who control human beings

'flies' ~ 'operators' in pursuit of causing stress to human beings

'operator council' ~ the governing body of operators

'open head' ~ a head opened by trauma or distress therefore visible to passing 'operators'

action cutting from back & forth from t.v. (video footage) and live as warren comes and goes from the car

also used for flashback story telling and to introduce other characters - wife, daughter, angry man and then the run to hide the sugar jar with the burned notebook leading to conway's attempt to get warren to throw himself under a train

suitcase full of things in plastic bags. and sand. and a sealed jar of sugar. and a dress for gwendolyn (blow up doll) and a jar of peanut butter. and a radio.

strong storytelling. reminiscent of matrix movies w'out the hi tech obviously)

great to see chris in action

unfortunately a tiny audience - must have been very hard to perform to.

problem with this for me was inconsistent focus - sometimes directly addressing us in audience sometimes played inside the 4th wall.

the best of it was the story. the less strong was becoming involved anyhow in warren's story or plight.

"norman" (lemieux-pilon 4d art ***

tuesday 6th may 2008

(unfinished posting)

"norman" ~ a tribute to norman mclaren
michael lemieux, victor pilon and peter trosztmer

dancer ~ peter trosztmer
concept, media design, staging and editing ~ michael lemieux, victor pilon
choreography ~ peter trosztmer and thea patterson

WOW WOW WOW
wonderful beautiful funny witty perpetually surprising moving mind altering visually-enormous show

delivered numerous moments of pure spontaneous "ha!" with either the perfection or the wit or the surprise or the beauty

more when i have time

around the corner from the pacific playhouse

"faith" by tom mccrory (dir. stella duffy)

friday 2nd may 2008

"faith"
by tom mccrory
shaky isles theatre
part of southern lights ~ a season of rehearsed play readings from aotearoa - new zealand
http://www.shakyislestheatre.com/main.php

directed by stella duffy

marlene sidaway ~ ruth mooney, mother of james
kane blixley ~ james mooney, partner of sara hurrel
angela bull ~ sara hurrel, partner of james
thomas craig - chris farrel, best friend of james
emma deakin ~ jackie farrel, wife of chris and childhood friend of james
terence bailer ~ bill, old friend of ruth's
vinicius salles ~ anotonio, immigarnt from argentina & co-worker of sara

"enduring parting is an act of faith, only the invisible survives it."
at 15 years old ruth arrives in wellington a refugee from the holocaust, the only survivior in her family.
now 72, ruth guides us on a journey of faith, exploring what survives across the generations.

this was unfeasibly well performed for a show that has had precious little time for rehearsal and that often transcended the constraints of a reading to give us moments of great potency and beauty.

the joy of this show for me came from a coupling of the writing's lyrical flow with an easy warmth and naturalness of the player's performances, punctuated with moments of intense recognition that came from a number of moments of perfectly phrased and focused moments:

+ ... she wouldn't raise you as a jew "because she couldn't trust that it wouldn't happen again ..."

+ ... "when i had my little boy there was another person like me in the world again ..."

+ ... "i looked at my baby son and he smiled and it was my smile. and i thought about my father and wondered where do we get our smiles from? ..."

i also loved that the dead ruth who talked to us was so much more tranquil and warm than i suspect the woman we heard about who had had to be so much more a survivor and a fighter.

(tom mcrcory is also producer for the international tour of "vula")

"vula" (the conch) *** and "moon water" (cloud gate theatre) ***

wednesday 30th april 2008

(unfinished posting)

"vula"

the conch

directed by ~ nina nawalowalo

associate director / co-producer ~ tom mccrory

producer ~ derek simpson

matai - cultural advisor ~ lani tupu snr

composer ~ gareth farr

designer ~ tolis papzoglou

lighting designer ~ stephen blackburn

lighting operator ~ nick janiurek

puppeteer ~ salesi le'ota

cast ~ fiona collins, kasaya manulevu, ngapaki emery and nora aati

supported by creative new zealand

http://www.barbican.org.uk/theatre/event-detail.asp?ID=6487

programme notes:

Performed on a stage flooded with water, Vula (Fijian for ‘moon’) combines magic and illusion with traditional song and dance. With one rich and captivating image flowing into another, it paints an evocative picture of the lives of Pacific Island women and their sensual and spiritual relationship with the sea. As the performers move and dance through the water, they take us on a journey through a Pacific Island day and night. Movement, song and humour intermingle with the glistening water and lighting in a wonderful harmony of elements.

Vula is the first work from groundbreaking Pacific Island company The Conch.

Founded by director Nina Nawalowalo, the company’s work combines the traditional and the contemporary, exploring the potential for marrying the rich performing arts cultures of the Pacific with European theatre styles. Before founding The Conch in New Zealand, Nina Nawalowalo studied mime in London and Paris. For six years she performed and taught all over the world, creating new productions from a unique blend of magic, mask and clowning.

this was a joyful image-and-emotion-rich performance of great beauty, wit, laughter, strength and power and hidden depths. its power came from what this company were able to evoke from the music, movement, occasional mahem & theatre they made in a fabulously lit and shadowed shallow tank of water ...

+ the sound of the surf

+ squeezing the juice from the cava

+ rising out from the sea

+ strong women, low grounded fluid movements reminding me of tai chi (see about cloud gate theatre's "moon water" after this)

+ being underwater with the many (fan)fish

+ the strength and rhythm of rowing

+ sail boats

+ women laughing, singing, playing, washing, teasing, bathing, fooling around, dancing

+ church singers in their white frocks in a delightful sequence that changed the people and what they were wearing with every pass of the sailboat

+ church singers in the rain

+ the women emerging from the cacoons to dance

+ lifting shells and jewels from the sea

+ the horror of hearing and watching sopmething beautiful caught in a net

+ the sounds and splashes and light play and reflection of water

+ a boat returning at night to shore by candlelight

+ the harmonies and rhythms that the sea holds and plays with and lets us hear and imagine with

wonderful wonderful show

wednesday 16 april 2008

"moon water"
cloud gate dance theatre of taiwan

as was this show which i will have to come back to talk about when i next have time ...