Theatre and Culture from Scotland, starring The List's Theatre Editor, his performance persona and occasional guest stars. Experimental writings, cod-academic critiques and all his opinions, stolen or original.
Showing posts with label manipulate 2016. Show all posts
Showing posts with label manipulate 2016. Show all posts
Definitions are a right pain in the hoop. Every year, when I attend manipulate, I work hard to try to explain visual theatre, and fail. My favourite attempt to make the distinction between dance and physical theatre - as part of a conversation that was trying to resolve the problem - is not mine: a practitioner grandly announced that it was simple. "One is abstract," he said, and paused. "The other isn't."
is this a theatrical space?
Sadly, he didn't tell me which was which. Other intellectual quests for clarity (including 'what is art?') had met with similar failure. So, this year, I am going to go backwards. I'll look at the various performances from manipulate, see what they share, and conclude that visual theatre is simply 'theatre that gets programmed at manipulate'. Before diving into the maelstrom, a few notes on how awkward definitions can be. 'Mighty Marvin' Carlson, the remarkably busy American academic is usually a good source for quotations, and in his book about Performance (2004), he explores the rise of performance art, mostly in the USA, and ties together some key themes. On page 110, he notes that performance art features 'an interest in developing the expressive qualities of the body, especially in opposition to logical and discursive thought and speech.' I'll be damned if this doesn't describe the choreography of Editta Braun, who presented Close Up on the first night of the festival. Her dancers didn't even face the audience, becoming strange creatures of multiple limbs and hunched spines.
how about this?
He goes on to list a variety of 'body artists' - from Yves Klein and his writhing naked women in paint, to Nitsch and the Aktionists' 'Dionysian rituals'. And if Akhe's Gobo. Digital Glossary lacks Dionysian abandon, I'll happily buy Carlson a pint. In 1975, a panel discussion about performance art added that the space for performance 'is more often like a workspace than a formal theatrical setting'. Again, Gobo's stage looked like an abandoned laboratory, as Russia's answer to The Chuckle Brothers moved between props and scenery for a series of wild routines.
dance - or physical theatre?
It's not that Carlson fails to describe performance art, it's that his descriptions fit elegantly with the aesthetics of manipulate. I'll use his book to suggest that there is some kind of genealogy of visual theatre, even as I am aware that he intended no such comparison. But that a description of one art-form can be so easily applied to another brings me back to the problem of definitions. Where they are supposed to supply boundaries to limit considerations of art, they usually just make it worse...
What will it become? An intimate and stunning chamber piece of animated theatre created with a sheet of brown paper, found objects, shadows and a box of sand. A show about transformation, loneliness, and the urge to fly, Birdheart holds a mirror up to humanity. Through a series of animated images built in front of the audiences’ eyes Birdheart creates something achingly beautiful from the humblest of beginnings. Birdheart was commissioned by VisionIntoArt and National Sawdust’s Curator in Residence programme – part of the New Victory Labworks Artist Residency and Watermill Artist Residency, with additional support from the St Anne’s Warehouse Puppet Lab and the Henson Foundation.
What was the inspiration for this performance? How did you go about gathering the team for it? We had been working together in London on another devised show
at the Barbican, The Devil and Mister Punch, and decided we wanted to create a piece that was light on its feet, something that could grow organically and have the ability to perform in both conventional and unconventional spaces, including places that didn't have easy access to theater. In thinking about what this show might be, we were drawn to the extraordinary photographs of Chris Jordan which document the tragedy of the Albatross birds of the Midway Atoll. His images show the remains of young birds, who've starved to death while being fed lethal quantities of plastic by their parents, who mistake floating trash for food as they forage over the vast polluted Pacific Ocean. Looking at these images is like looking into a macabre mirror that reflects both ourselves, and our impact on the world. From this initial springboard, our piece has grown gently over a long period of time, finding its own themes from within, principally identity and solitude and the urge to fly.
How did you become interested in making performance - in particular with puppetry? The onstage creation of something from nothing is at the very heart of the piece. We wanted the show to be magical but to simultaneously declare the magic by the utilization of ordinary recognizable materials. Puppetry seemed like the ultimate art form to achieve this. Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance?
No. Each show tends to tell you how it needs to be made. This is how this one wanted to be made. What do you hope that the audience will experience? Obviously we want the audience to be entertained and to be effected emotionally by what they see and the story we tell. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? By predominantly using paper as opposed to pre-made puppets, we are inviting the audience to become an active part in the creative act. In asking them to help us complete something, our hope is that the story will leave with them at the end of the night. Do you see your work within any particular tradition? We see Birdheart as live animation rather than a puppet show per se. We use a variety of techniques, but it’s not consciously drawn from any one tradition.
Currently represented on Broadway with his Tony-nominated scenic design for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the world-renowned theatre designer, director and puppet-maker Julian Crouch has also wowed audiences with Satyagraha (2008 – Metropolitan Opera, New York, USA) the devilishly delightful Shockheaded Peter (1999 – London and internationally) and Wolves in the Walls (2007 – New Victory Theatre, New York, USA). With her band The Lascivious Biddies the multi-talented Saskia Lane has appeared with artists as diverse as Jay-Z and Beyonce, Marc Ribot and the Kronos Quartet. Together, Julian and Saskia, who have collaborated on several international productions, team up to create their first project as duo puppeteers and performers.
Previously at Manipulate... Editta Braun Company presented the first two shows in their trilogy (Luvos and Planet Luvos). Braun's signature choreography stretches the human body into apparently impossible shapes, inverting the expected limitations of movement and conjuring other-worldly creatures and stories. Meanwhile at The Vile Arts... I have become obsessed with epistemology. I now think I know what it means: the theory of knowledge. And I think I know what that means too... I'm imagining a pair of teachers. One of them cannot move, the other cannot speak. They both have a single piece of information to pass onto their student. Because of their limitations, however, they have to find different ways to communicate.
This isn't the whole story, but it suggests one aspect of epistemology. The silent teacher will most likely use some form of physical process to communicate. The immobile teacher will use words. Both of methods will communicate the same information, but filter it in different ways. Braun's choreography operates in a disruptive manner. The contortions of her dancers don't just challenge the every-day possibilities of movement: they challenge the standard physical presentation of the human body. The climax of Planet Luvos saw the arrival of what one of my students described as penis bum monsters. That really ought to attract an audience. But this description does not quite grapple with the emotional experience of seeing Luvos. Okay, the trickery and acrobatics are cool, but something else happens. I think it is to do with muscle memory. There is an epistemology of dance - as Fleur Darkin off Scottish Dance Theatre said in an interview with The List, dance can express feelings in a unique manner. It gets inside the body. Watching dance causes a different reaction to watching a play.
stone images of the old temples... a rather degenerate form of a god... the last echo of some noble and beautiful art... it will not compete with life - it will go beyond it. Craig sounds rather pompous and melodramatic here - but everyone was writing like that in 1907. His rejection of the 'emotionalism' of actors suggests that, unlike Wordsworth, who said something about art being the recollection of emotion in tranquility, Craig was not interested in art that reflected on the human, but a spiritual art that transcends the physical. Unsurprisingly, he dedicated his collection of writings to Blake. He was a romantic, but one who flew on the wings of imagination to invent metaphysical entities. Craig would claim that he wasn't literally trying to replace actors with bits of wood, and that he was describing a method of performance - a return to an abstract theatre that refuses to get bogged down in the reality of the actors' experiences on stage, but rejects the trappings of ornamentation for a theatre that pointed to deeper truths. Yeah, then Brecht said the same sort of thing - all that 'fourth wall' and revealing the mechanics of performance. He used to do puppet shows when he was a kid, too.
I'm not that interested in a cull of actors, or emotions, in theatre: Craig only recognises the passionate qualities of the human, and forgets about the ability to, like, contemplate... or that emotion can communicate, too. But his idea that there used to be this amazing marionette somewhere in India, and some women ripped off its routine, and invented theatre as a commercial proposition, does offer something intriguing. There is something special about a puppet or a doll. I always compare it to that time Johnny Woo did a striptease while dressed up as a gorilla. As he dropped his clothes, Woo did a little dance that usually involved him slipping on a banana skin, and looking up at the audience, as if hurt by their reaction. Despite the complete lack of change in the gorilla mask expression, each time Woo looked at the crowd, the expression seemed to be saying something different.
It's the same with puppets - well, the ones with faces. I was watching a very long video about bunraku - the fashionable Japanese form that controls the puppet with sticks. The expression on the face never changes - everything is done with the arms and the legs and the torso - but the emotional range is huge. Is it the absence of emotion on the face that allows the audience to impose meaning onto the blank face? Craig hoped that 'acting' would be rejected by future generations, and replaced with 'symbolic movements'. Lecoq came along and developed that kind of approach. Kantor based his theatre of death manifesto on Craig's thoughts.
So Craig says, in his Uber-marionette, that actors are a degenerate version of really impressive ancient automated statues. I'm not sure about that, or his criticism that humans, being all emotional, make 'useless' material for art, but I like his idea that massive puppets are the next step in performance. Craig was writing around a century ago, so he gets to look cool in sepia prints and mutton-chops, and, since he was before Dada, performance art and Beckett, his meditations on theatre are focused on the naturalism of the late Victorian period. He's against emotional outbursts ('art is the exact antithesis of pandemonium'), has essentialist views on human nature that I wouldn't dare ('the whole nature of man tends towards freedom'), but he influenced that Polish fellow Kantor and suggests an escape route from the romantic ideal of art. So I am listening...
Sita Pieraccini in association with Feral presents
Bird
Inventive physical theatre and mime are enriched by a subtle live soundscape in this nature inspired, timeless tale of friendship, courage, magic and madness
PART OF MADE IN SCOTLAND 2016
Directed and Performed by Sita Pieraccini
Dancebase, Studio 1, 5 - 28 August (Mondays off) 16:30 (17:10) 12+
Set in a post-apocalyptic world and within an imaginary wilderness, this tender one-woman show mixes a delicate, live soundscape and a highly physical performance to look at hunger, loss and man-kind’s catastrophic and misguided interference with nature. This imaginative and compelling performance charts the epic journey of a lone human figure in a hostile landscape who forms a touching relationship with a little passing songbird.
A post-apocalyptic world. One lone, feral
creature, starved of both food and friendship. With only a patch of soil to call her own, she must be ready to seize every small opportunity that might fly by… Created through inventive clowning, mime and visceral physicality, and enriched by a detailed and subtle soundscape which is performed live, Bird is a timeless tale of friendship, courage, magic and madness, set in a vast and desolate world. Sita Pieraccini is an actor and theatre maker with a background in visual art and music. After completing her degree in Sculpture at Edinburgh College of Art, Sita went on to study acting and physical theatre at the Physical Theatre Practice Course in Glasgow. Bird is performed with live foley collaborator and musician David Pollock.
What was the inspiration for this performance? During rehearsals for the graduation show for the physical theatre course at The Arches in 2009, we were looking for incidental performance pieces to occur in between each persons showcase piece. Al Seed, our tutor at the time, asked if any of us had any 'tricks' we could share. I originally learned how to do an uncanny bird tweet impression from my dad. His ability to do this always captured my imagination as a child, and naturally, I wanted to be able to do it too - I finally figured it out. I hesitantly shared my bird impression with the group. The act was directed so as I mimed a bird sitting on my finger whilst I did the sound effect. It was quite sweet and charming but also completely ridiculous. It never got used in the showcase but I was inspired then by the potential for a whole story to develop about a character and her relationship with this tiny, flightish creature. I was inspired to explore this character more and what things might be revealed in her attempts at befriending a bird. When an opportunity through Conflux came up to develop a piece of solo work under mentorship from director, Hilary Westlake, I revisited this image and created a short, three minute sketch with musician and sound artist, David Pollock. I was inspired to use live sound effects for Bird because it gave more focus to the subtle actions and reactions of the character. It was also a playful and light way of enhancing the world of Bird. My experience developing my skit with Hilary helped inform a more down to earth and more realistic way of performing the material. In short, she helped me take the work a bit more seriously, allowing the implications of situation along with the subtle emotional complexities of the character to shine through a bit more.
It was clear to me, after this initial outing, that I'd tapped into something which was entertaining but also posed questions about the complexities, or indeed, simplicities, of human behaviour somehow. Every time I went back to work on it, the world and story of Bird became more defined. I never applied too much pressure to find a finishing point as such, deciding to focus mainly on the development of the central character and her world. The search for a story or narrative arc did come in to the process later on however. David and I share a similar sense of humour and we enjoyed putting the character through certain situations to see how she would react. We seemed to both be enthusiastic about the piece in similar ways and in this way it was really easy to keep working together. I'm a keen Studio Ghibli fan and admire their attention to detail when it comes to their quirky characters and fantastical narratives. I feel influenced by them and other animations in the creation of Bird and I often try to channel Stitch from 'Lilo and Stitch' a bit in my performance. How did you go about gathering the team for it? I asked people who are close to me to help with the development and the performance of Bird. It was my first solo performance project and I deliberately worked with those I could trust and have fun with. David and I worked together at the CCA for a few years before we started working together creatively on Bird for the first presentation at Pitch. We'd been friends for a long time before then and working on Bird would be the first time we would have collaborated on a theatre piece together. I had seen David and his band perform as part of a theatre show called Bluey at The Arches a few years before this, and had always been inspired to use local artists and musicians in live performance.
It was great working with David because we have a similar sense of humour and enjoyed talking about the story of Bird, empathising with the character and what her story brings up on different levels and chatting in depth and how it could also be made into a film. We kept exploring the world of Bird further in each period of development. This led to a natural development in our technique as performer/author and foley artist respectively. As the show started to grow in length we enlisted the help of David's best friend, Ronnie Phipps who was a lighting technician at The Arches. Ronnie became an integral part of the team for the two Arches presentations we did for Arches Live 2011 and then for Surge in 2012.
How did you become interested in making performance. I became interested in making performance whilst studying on the Physical Theatre Course. I had been inspired throughout the course by how artists from different disciplines would combine their skills and outlooks to create really original and exciting work. I realised that this collaborative, performance focus was something I'd really missed at Art School. I was inspired by other people's work in the group and gradually by more companies such as Theatre Ad Infinitum, Kneehigh Theatre, The Wrong Crowd, Told by an Idiot, Vox Motus, Vanishing Point - most of whom have a speciality for physical storytelling and some of whom are graduates from The Jacques le Coq school in Paris. After graduating I had no class ensemble to work with any more
and after a year or so, I decided to focus on what I could create as a solo performer. I continued to train by way of master classes and residencies but craved to be cast by others in their feeling as though this was the best place for me to strengthen my abilities, whilst working on projects. Since 2011, I've assisted Angela De Castro on her annual, two week intensive Clown Workshop – How to be A Stupid, as part of London International Mime Festival. Through this role, I have been exposed to rare and advanced training in clown including Clown in Tragic Theatre and Advanced Clown Technique. This experience has also made me more interested in both the performance and creation of theatre. Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? Bird developed intuitively and in line with my own development as a performer and as I learned more about clown and physical comedy. My process in creating Bird was informed by my training in physical theatre as well as the urge to create a piece of performance which allows for a close up look at one character for an extended period of time. What do you hope that the audience will experience? I hope the audience will enjoy their experience of seeing Bird in that I hope they are entertained but also feel touched and perhaps a little tortured by the central characters journey in some way. The main character in Bird is not asking to be liked, hated or empathised with as such. I'm interested in presenting quite a neutral, mundane being whilst also inviting audiences to maybe get caught up a bit in her predicament so as to feel as though their own thoughts or thinking towards the piece might actually influence the outcome of her situation. I'd like the piece to function in a way so as to almost make the audience aware of their own involvement in this strange yet familiar world of Bird. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? The piece is performed in relation to or in recognition of the audience on some level. In this way it is quite clown-like, but I don't reference or address the audience directly at any point. Since the girl in the piece is supposed to be the only living creature left in her world, when she looks out, there is an openness to her state which audiences can read into or reflect on or see themselves in. Very deliberately, she is void of any back story. I aimed to create a character and setting where she is concerned only with her current situation.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition? I see Bird as a piece of contemporary clown in some ways. The story and ideas behind Bird have informed the style in which it is performed as opposed to m setting out to make a clown show. It's physical storytelling and mime with a tiny bit of puppetry and it is detailed with a subtle sound scape which is performed live. As well as creating her own work, Sita’s recent credits include A Bench on the Road (Charioteer Theatre) and Skewered Snails (Iron-Oxide). Sita is also a singer and bassist as part of Glasgow band, Teencanteen. Lighting Design Consultation by Alberto Santos Bellido and Ronnie Phipps
Produced by FERAL (Jill Smith & Kathryn Boyle – formerly of The Arches Arts Team) Development support from CONFLUX and The Actors Space (Barcelona)
Life…is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing… A stark and stylised performance of this most familiar of tales, of boundless ambition and greed and the destruction it ultimately wreaks. Visual technologies – video-mapping projections and animation – accompanied by a dynamic DJ set and darkly brooding sound world, transform Shakespeare’s words and narrative into a visual language of potent and symbolic movement and imagery. This dramatic canvas of images also draws upon the theories of Bertolt Brecht and silent era film aesthetics, creating an intriguingly alternative interpretation of Macbeth’s rapid rise to power and even more precipitous fall.
Ludens Ensemble is an Edinburgh-based theatre group which works with live music, masks, puppets, projections and animation, creating performances that ebb and flow between the aesthetics of critical distance and immersive experience. In 2017 Macbeth: Without Words will be performed in Cyprus as part of Pafos’ European Capital of Culture 2017 celebrations. What was the inspiration for this
performance? The initial plan was to create a performance using only movements and gestures inspired by the silent movies. Macbeth is funded by the European Capital of Culture Pafos 2017 along with our forthcoming performance of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, to be followed by a project called Forbidden Stories where we will be staging stories relating to the divide of Cyprus in non linear fashion. The first project we decided to do was Ubu Roi but that was for 2016 so we were then looking for a play that would precede it but also be connected to it. Ubu Roi uses many of Shakespeare’s plays as a source for parody and especially Macbeth. Both plays are treatments of the element of power, the one is part of the European canon and the other a precursor of the historical avant garde. One is a tragedy, the other an absurd comedy. So you can say that our work along with thinking about the nature of a performance is also an attempt to speak about the workings of power from different angles. Our take on Macbeth is influenced by Ubu’sludic qualities but obviously the atmosphere is much more brooding.
How did you go about gathering the team for it? We followed the usual procedure. We announced an audition. Actually it was a workshop.
How did you become interested in making performance? Philippos: The real story was that I was fascinated about theatre since I was 10 years old when we did a performance at the school and I had the lead role. It was the Hippolytus by Euripides. I got obsessed with theatre and finally when I became 20 years old I decided to get into a drama school in Athens. Before I finished the drama school I won a directing competition at the National Theatre of Greece. From that point I believed that I belong to the backstage of the theatre. Since then I am directing. Vangelis: My background is film theory yet due to the nature of my PhD research on the filmmaker Theo Angelopoulos who has a strong theatrical style, I came to study theater and especially Brecht. But as many people from my generation I had a strong interest in theater from quite early on. In relation to this particular performance Philippos wanted it to be accompanied by a DJ set. And basically this is what I do with silent films. I happen to be a DJ and I also curate and perform DJ soundtracks.
Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? Philippos: No. Usually I am starting by reading the play with the team. This time we started working from movements that could evoke particular concepts and sensations. Then we divided the play into different parts and we worked with the visuals and the music. It was a long process because we had a lot of work to do after and before the rehearsals. We were videotaping each rehearsal and then we had to sit down and examine and take of closer look of the whole process. What was common with previous performances is that I give space to the actors for improvisation. Also working with Vangelis was a new experience for me. We were discussing things at great lengths and this dialogical process benefited the performance. For Vangelis it was his first step at directing.
What do you hope that the audience will experience? We are open to any interpretation. During the performances at the Hidden Door Festival we gave some feedback forms to the audience. The forms were full of compliments and excellent reviews about the play. We were slightly worried if the audience will be able to follow the plot all the way through but everybody seemed to get a clear sense of the story.
By answering this question we risk leading the audience towards particular reactions. Nevertheless we could say that we want to evoke the sensation of a dream or a nightmare and to show that dreams and therefore a performance is part of shaping our reality not merely representing it. We decided that we wanted to focus on a nightmarish quality for Macbeth. Our intention was to evoke the sensation of a dream on stage using minimal resources. Pierrot faces, video projections instead of real sets, expressionist lighting, morgue like cellophanes and a haunting soundtrack became an accompaniment to Macbeth’s murder of sleep. We believe that in a dream the image acquires a more primary importance in relation to speech. Removing the spoken dialogue has allowed us to bring the actor’s body and gestures to the foreground and to deliver an acting style that has receded with the advent of naturalism. We basically love the acting in silent films. It is a different language. Gestures without words can acquire a strong sense of ambiguity. Our three actors come to impersonate all the characters in the play yet it is somehow as if the witches are constantly there. Who are they? Are they in Macbeth’s head or are they external agents orchestrating his downfall and why? We want to raise questions without giving particular answers. Having an actor playing different characters while also commenting on them creates an ambiguity concerning their identity. Expressionism seems best to deliver this sensation while evoking a dream state. Bodies incorporate the movement of the puppet. Their status is suspended between the mechanical and the animate. We believe that this ambiguity retains its unsettledness today like it did over a hundred years ago. These are themes that are evoked in a quite subtle way. The attitude of the play is immersive yet there are breaks and this is where Brecht comes in. The actors then comment on their characters. For example we are commenting on the domesticity of women at the time when the play was written. Lady Macbeth seems to be breaking away from this state of affairs. So you see that the dream is not a means to escape a social reality but rather to comment on it more freely What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? We think that the answer lies in what we have already discussed
above. Combining expressionism with Brecht. Creating intensity through an ensemble of bodies, lighting, animation and music on stage and then breaking the flow.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition? We do not see ourselves working strictly within a particular tradition yet our performances carry layers from the theater’s past and present. Although we rely on the use of technologies on stage we avoid at being overwhelmed by it. We always bear in mind that an actor with just one chair one a bare stage is enough to evoke an image of a stage-coach in motion. Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy for you in your work? To be or not to be, that is the question (laughter).
The virtuoso concert pianist AyseDeniz performs hers and Thierry Zaboitzeffs compositions at the grand piano in in her peculiar, idiosyncratic way, inspired by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. Four dancers - bodies in concert - enter the stage, creating a physical dialogue with AyseDeniz's performance, thus embodying and externalising the interior sounds and texture of the music. Lemur-like creatures, distorted, constricted and oppressed, invade the concert pianist’s perfectly harmonic world. As if even the artificially encapsulated high culture, where the pursuit of perfection often doesn’t leave any room for doubts, could not escape from human thoughts and every day’s worries. Nightmarish realities and fears, but also a foreshadow of the desire for free moving appear as incarnated thoughts and feelings.
Fantastical lemur-like creatures - distorted, constricted and oppressed - invade the concert pianist’s perfect harmonic world, so that even the artificially encapsulated world of high culture, where the pursuit of perfection doesn’t leave any room for doubts, cannot escape from the tension of everyday cares and worries. Nightmarish realities and fears, but also a shadow of the desire for freedom, appear as incarnated thoughts and feelings. The five dancers’ moving bodies - sometimes individually, sometimes in pairs, sometimes a seemingly inextricable agglomeration of extremities - constitute and articulate the physicality and motivations of strange, otherworldly creatures. Are they the pianist’s alter egos or dark suppressed aspects of her soul? While she is playing, these beings become her fellow antagonists and collaborators. They are suffused by the dense, mighty live music and then are driven or tortured, hunted or released, by the sounds around them. They resist – and they react.
What was the inspiration for this performance? Very simple: I heard the pianist in the frame of a music-festival in Portugal and had images of a dance-piece happing around a grand piano, representing somehow the inner world of the pianist. Creatures enter her bubble, her closed world of classical music and cause some disorder ... How did you go about gathering the team for it? I work with the composer Thierry Zaboitzeff and the dancers since many years - so I had just to convince AyseDeniz. And she was curious enough to dare the adventure. How did you become interested in making performance? I guess, something pushes me since I can stand on my legs, means, since my childhood.
Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? Yes. I always work with improvisation as starting point. But for CLOSE UP we had a special magic experience: After three days only we did an improvisation of 45 minutes, guided by me from outside, and not only the dancers improvised, but also AyseDeniz on themes of Thierry Zaboitzeff. This is very rare for a classical pianist. What do you hope that the audience will experience? To get connected with own feelings, own memories, own phantasies, own ideas - triggered by our performance. Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy for you in your work? Just let yourself go
Humorous and imaginative, intimate and gripping, this visual theatre work invites the viewer into one woman’s inner world. Weaving physical theatre with kinetic art and an original piano score, Torn explores the delicate balance of our sanity when affected by deep loss. Accompanying Foley artist Barney Strachan creates a richly inventive soundtrack to this touching and sensual evocation of attachment. Beautifully designed and compellingly performed by one of Scotland’s most exciting new visual theatre companies.
What was the inspiration for this performance? Francisca Morton: I wanted to allow the piece to find itself. And to be genuinely born out of discovery. We explored the theatrical potential of a physical material, rather than using the structure of narrative or script. We used paper - it is malleable and adaptable, strong, delicate, opaque, translucent, smooth, textured, loud, quiet. Through much playing we came up with ideas. We collated those. Killed many and nurtured a few. The result is Torn. How did you go about gathering the team for it? If you want interesting, sensual lighting effects with a hand-made touch - go find Laura Hawkins. If you want an excellent musician and composer who doesn't mind
getting up on stage and is at the same time easy on the eye - contact Barney Strachan. If you want a focused, creative playmate willing to wing-it and try out ideas boldly with minimal shame - call Melanie Jordan. How did you become interested in making performance? I used to spend summer holidays making shows as a kid with my sister and cousins. Our family were an enforced audience. We were very insulted once when they paid us in silver foil bottle tops rather than 5ps! But making performance is something I've always done. I studied my degree in Performing Arts and Dance at De Montford University and later Dance and Performance at the New Dance Academy in Arnhem Netherlands Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? I usually have a few visual snapshots in mind which guide the beginning of the process but if you truly improvise around ideas and allow scenes and ideas to emerge, it's always more interesting than trying to think it up yourself.
What do you hope that the audience will experience? I hope they will be intrigued and amused and immersed in this surreal world we've created, as if they are touring round the protagonist's brainscape. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? Don't offer the obvious, but don't get TOO weird. Do you see your work within any particular tradition?
Yes, visual theatre. Faux Theatre makes striking, visual theatre for children and adults. As well as Torn, which toured nationally and internationally in 2015, the company has also created Celeste’s Circus, a successful production for children which has been presented at venues throughout Scotland, and at the Tallinn Treff Festival 2013, in Estonia.
Torn has been developed by the company over the past three years with financial support from Puppet Animation Scotland’s Creative Fund and Creative Scotland.
Not long until Manipulate 2016 now, meaning that I am getting all excited. It's a festival of visual theatre, which roughly means 'the kind of theatre that I really really like'. It also means that I make an annual half-baked attempt to explain what is meant by visual art. This year, I thought I'd get in the visual spirit by making this slap-dash chart featuring loads of stuff that I looked up on Wikipedia.
Apart from dividing the world into two - which is probably border-line racist - there's an incoherent chronology, loads of things missing and plenty of performance that I know absolutely nothing about! However, I think all of these art forms need to be considered when anyone else talks about visual theatre, or I'll accuse them of not knowing their history.
The performers envelop you into their otherworldly environment where gravity is more a suggestion than a law. LoopsEnd features Paper Doll Militia’s most edgy and dynamic short form works to date, retaining the dark and magical quality the company is most known for. Appealing to audiences of all ages and languages, the show has its foundations in universal human concepts, told with enticing visuals and non-verbal unfolding narrative. With a diverse use of mediums and aerial apparatus, the stage is continuously transformed. A true journey of the human spirit, LoopsEnd shows us a mirror of our own experiences reminding us of our collective grit and strength.
Interview Questions answered collectively by Sarah Bebe Holmes and Rain Anya What was the inspiration for this performance? LoopsEnd is a journey told in three parts, one of them, Unchained, was performed at last year’s Manipulate. This year we present to you the other two pieces; Unhinged XY and Ashes. Each was conceived in different ways.
Ashes was born out of the rubble, literally. Outside our old training space in Portobello, the buildings, one by one were being torn down as the industrial estate was being repurposed. Ours was the last standing and as we went in to work on aerial everyday we passed by piles of rubble. The rubble represented what was, what is, what everything becomes, just a pile of Ashes. We were inspired to explore our relationship to our impermanent physical world. Society can become obsessed, or fearful, of the physical things around us, our possessions. The characters in the piece carry out these relationships with their aerial apparatus, ropes with bags of rubble and ash attached. We flung this rubble around our lone building in the exploration of what happens when you give weight to aerial. Unhinged XY has had a very long life. This was originally a choreographic inquiry. Parts of the choreography date back to Paper Doll Militia’s first show Rara Avis. Over a decade of working together we keep re-investigating this piece. Digging deeper into the characters and the story that lay inherently in the choreography. If you saw us at Manipulate 2014 you may recognize a few things. For this current instalment, we are working with the integration of movement, aerials, and animation.
Over a cup of coffee and a book of poetry by Tim Burton, Paper Doll Militia was born. The child of four artists in Santa Fe, Paper Doll Militia has roots in circus, original music, puppetry, and dreamy, whimsical, dark storytelling. Read The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and think of us in a cafe in the desert dreaming of circus with a story. That's who we were, that's who we are.
“Listen, my love… Listen, my child… Listen to the river…” There once was a Mountain-Woman, white as snow, who washed away the woes of the world in the waters of a wide river. One spring day, she heard the cry of wild horses and the noise of chains forced into their noble mouths. The next day, amidst horrible sounds of metal and fire, the War-Ogre climbed her flanks. A tale of sound and fury, but of great love
and humanity. Seen through the unusual complicity between a mother and her daughter, this is the story of that spark of life that continues to pulsate its heart beating despite all the horrors endured by a broken land. A mythological tale that is on the side of life…
Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? Yes, but I always get surprised ! I always start by a research with a theme and some matter. For Threads, I wanted to work on a duet with Nadine (Walsh) . We worked with boxes, sand and a violin. The musician works with us from the very first day. It is very inspiring. This work, confronted with the news of the world, revealed the theme of the show. What do you hope that the audience will experience? A moment out of time, a tale of courage and love told in a surreal way. Beauty against war. What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience? Using a scenic approach that proposes a fragmented dramaturgy.
Moses. A cantankerous three man operated puppet with a cardboard head. He lives on a table. Tonight he wants to tell you an epic story about God and Moses, life and death, and puppetry…on a table. But Moses gets easily distracted… A cross between Tommy Cooper and Eddie Izzard, this table-top philosopher and comedian is the funniest piece of cardboard you will ever meet… on a table.
What was the inspiration for this performance? Mark Down: Two things – one the idea of Moses – a puppet – and his “staff” – puppeteers – and two the idea of doing a show with a single puppet on a table for one hour and nothing else.
How did you go about gathering the team for it? We rang everyone who had written letters to us and invited them in to meet us and play over a period of two weeks in the rehearsal room. At the end we kept the keenest two! And the other two were me and Nick.
How did you become interested in making performance? I saw Jess Conrad in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat when I was about 12 and I thought “I want to do that”. I realised I couldn't do that (I can’t sing or dance) so I would have to make something that I could do. I met Nick Barnes after I left drama school 20 years later. He made these amazing puppets.
Was your process typical of the way that you make a performance? In a way yes – everything we do is an experiment, the show builds on ideas that have been around for a while – in this case the beginnings of The Table came from our warm up exercises we did with the little boy in Madam Butterfly, we work by trying stuff and trying it again.
In this case there was a difference – we decided to make it like a stand up comedian – making first twenty minutes, then thirty, then forty – learning, from the audiences, how to keep their attention and developing material as we got better and needed more.
What do you hope that the audience will experience? I hope they will re-examine their relationship with belief.
What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?
We use comedy to relax the audience. We begin by acknowledging that it is a puppet show. The elephant in the room. That relaxes everyone. Then we go on saying it again and again, all the way to the end.
Do you see your work within any particular tradition? Bunraku puppetry.
Are there any other questions that might help me to understand the meaning of dramaturgy for you in your work? My main concern is why are we using a puppet? What is the puppet trying to say that is unique to a puppet? That cannot be said without a puppet. Blind Summit Theatre – the makers of Low Life, Madam Butterfly, A Dog’s Heart, 1984, and puppet directors for the London 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony – appear at manipulate for the first time with this internationally acclaimed, multi award-winning show.
Founded in 1997 by Mark Down & Nick Barnes, Blind Summit aims to pioneer new methods of performing with puppets, in new places, in new ways, reinventing puppetry for new, modern adult audiences.
