coming soon: About p#001 or about a disaster

                           THE IMAGE I ENJOYED THE MOST FROM THAT TEST/PERFORMANCE

About Phase Lapse

After Phase Lapse, I felt like I needed to take my time for a while before I could comment on our work. So now, as it is time for me to put my thoughts about my work and my expectations of my work in order I will face my own critique about the play.

As it is already known, Phase Lapse was a 20 min performance that happened on demand of the MA program and gave us another opportunity to work in groups. What I enjoyed the most as I was working on that was working with my group. Even though we barely new each other, our ideas seemed to have found their way of co-existing and evolving. From the beginning we separated the responsibilities and each one was working separately on her subject and once a week we would meet to discus, present our work and ideas, see if our point of view was approved or disapproved by the others being ready to change, revaluate our thoughts, merge our ideas or even negotiate on a matter and all these having in mind that we wanted to create something that would be harmonic and would make everyone happy as a final result. This was not always easy but in general I believe that being mature, enthusiastic about each other's work and of course supportive in the same time helped as a lot and this could be seen from the outcome.

The final performance in general touched a big percentage of our expectations. Of course, for me it was something that in order to be officially presented somewhere outside of an academic environment, it needed to be more worked. If we had more time, we would be able to perfect it, minimalize it much more. My personal critique about the sound and the movement is that while I wanted it to be more simple, I could not practically do it. The sound was helping Martina's movement. The sound was not minimal at all at many points because there was not enough time for me to rehearse and go through the procedure of cutting the descriptive parts both from the sound and the movement. This is something I have in my mind and I would be very interested in working after this course ends. 

Another moment of the play that I feel that was a bit violated and not totally "finished" was the ending. From the sound's point of view it became too cliché, the hooking of the dress was very time consuming for Martina and it made a gap in the continuity where there should not be. But this again was a matter of time in my opinion and I am really happy that even we could see it and we had the knowledge that something was not working very well. Why we did nothing to prevent it might be the question, but I will repeat myself once again and I will answer time and I am not saying that as an excuse.

Anyway, in general I think it was a nice performance, a balanced one and what made me happier about it was the response of the audience (even though there were not many because of the period the play was on). Most of the people I spoke with felt the atmosphere of a ritual (and this is something one could observe while the performance was taking place by the body language of the people), had their ideas about the mixture of cultures, had serious understanding of the symbolisms we used and the greatest they managed to surprise us by not leaving the place from the door they came in (and they were supposed to go out from) but by crossing the ideal corridor (stage) and passing by the still performer observing her for a bit as if she were some kind of a statue and then leave the place. For me that moment was magnificent because I felt like we did something. We had their interest, we had touched their minds for a bit and this is enough.

p#001 poster

About Dream Play

The Dream Play was the last group performance of the VLP's and happened yesterday, Wednesday the 8th of April at WCA. In general it was a very well set play, a piece of "conventional" theatre. The aspect I found really nice was the set and the use group 3 made of the space. They managed to transform it into what they had in mind and in the same time make it look like a really beautiful theatrical space with chairs for the audience. The line between the audience and the actors was really clear and from that and only I think they managed to set the communicational code.  As I heard from people from the audience about that, it made them feel the comfort and the security of been in a normal and "proper" theatrical space, ready to observe something without the fear of interaction.

The projections on the wall were very nice as well and I think that the context of the animation was very helpful to the understanding of the play but the animation itself (from a technical point of view) was not very clear because of the lights and that was a bit frustrating because I found myself wanting to observe it better.

The costumes of the characters worked good within the play but, because of the meetings we had in the beginning and because of what I was listening then about Agnes's costume, I really was not able to see that divine aspect I listened about. I found it very grounded and (ok, maybe because I am already familiar with the play and I already had an image of Agnes in my head) I found it was making her a creature from the earth, that has suffered the same as humanity and also that she was coming from the past. Of course I don't know the final decisions of the group about that matter but I only mention that because of the impression I had from their first presentations.

Ending, thinking of it as a hole, it was a visually simple and well constructed play.

p#001 ground plan

ground plan of the lecture theatre

p#001 project proposal

Aim:

An exploration of the relationship between human nature and technology. This trial will allow me to experiment with:

-how I will be able to transform the actor's body so that it will look like an android.

-how can the actor's figure disappear in the space using simple optical illusion tricks.

-how I can communicate the idea of artificial Vs natural (when I say natural I mean whatever is not human made and affected by time -decomposes-.

-how the projections look like when the floor connected to the projection wall is made from reflective material (unification of space).

Methods:

I am going to use one actress(Martina) and transform her into an android, using only the basic characteristics of it.

In the space I will create a corridor (linearity/passing of time) made of reflective material. At the starting point of the performer's movement I will create a "shelter" made of the same material to create the optical illusion. At the ending point there will be the projection. The colors of the live performer will be cold/metallic while the colors of the projection will be warm and it will present organic shapes contradicting with the live performance through a digital medium.

Space:

For this project I want to use a neutral rectangular space. Challenging my aesthetics and my feeling of security this time I don;t want to use a black box space but to experiment with white surfaces. Due to these I think the Lecture Theatre of  Wimbledon College of Art is an extremely challenging space as it is mainly white but it also has some really interesting metallic characteristics on the walls. Additionally, the shape is perfect so that I will have the  opportunity to keep the lines of my set straight, severe and linear as I wish. Also, the lecture theatre is already equipped with a sound system and lights which are sufficient for the performance.

When:

27th of April 2009

time: tbc (in the evening as late as I can due to the natural light coming into the space).

Materials:

-1 projector/ extension cable (one already exists in the space so I need to find out if I can use this one or not)

-1 special light or one spotlight (cold color) above the corridor

-1 special light for the wall that I am making at this moment

-sound system (already exists in the space)

-big general lights (already exist in the space)

-ladder for setting up

-possibly technical support for hanging up the lights and placing the projector 

-reflective surface

-silver paint

-2 flats

-actress

-maybe two extra people to help me run the performance