Friday, May 18, 2007

collaborating and writing

the rehearsals for 'the old hotel' are getting very exciting, although at the moment we are still devising rather than really rehearsing. We have decided to have just one actor in the site, telling stories one-on-one to audience members, whilst the performers online act as ghosts or memories for those stories. We are focussing one story in particular which was devised by Jonny during the perforamnce at 'Sitelines210407', which was about a relationship which focussed around visits to seedy old hotels and eventually deteriorated. jonny made the story really interesting by talking about the hotel rooms as if they were a character - perhaps his lover - in the story.

suzon has been producing some fantastic graphics which allow us to do some really exciting stuff wth the webcam, with the 'subject' in different positions in relation to the camera, coming up close, moving further away disappearing behind 'walls' and re-appearing in windows. During the performance, the camera will be on the actor and he (and the on-site audience) will be able to respond to the online performance as it will be projected onto a wall in the site. We need to work out how what the actor is saying will be fed into upstage, as there is no sound element with the webcam bit.

my paper is well underway, a couple of thousand words to go. I feel like it is a bit muddled and less coherent than last time, so am looking forward to getting to the end so i can go back through and organise it better. Although I felt very restricted by last time's 5000 word limit - and even make a habit of compaining that 10,000 is too short (what a geek) - am finding it tough to expand without waffling, having packed what i felt were my most important ideas into the smaller word count for last time. Have tried re-structuring and hope when i read back through it will be ok... hmmm...

1 comment:

Amitesh Grover said...

absolutely mind blowing cherry! really exciting work you are developing...hi, amitesh here. how are you doing? i am developing a performance on similar lines titled 't/here' based on body and mindscapes. the idea is to use 2 performers - one in a crowded marketplace and another back in a room with audience. the first one is placed in a crowded street with a laptop whose webcam relays the live images back to a room, where the second one builds stories and performs around the images relayed. the central theme of the piece being searching for the right address!
i though i will write in coz it seemed to me that there is a possibility of collaborating with your work. lemme know if you think my performance can be a part of your project. a simultaneous show here in delhi, what say?