First Rehearsal for our New Project

A sneak-peek at the first rehearsal for our new project. Stay tuned for more information on the development of the piece this summer!

The Orpheus Variations Rehearsal Shot

Adam J. Thompson during a rehearsal for The Orpheus Variations.
Photo Credit: Mitch Dean

The Orpheus Variations on Tumblr

Last weekend I attended The Deconstuctive Theatre Project’s The Orpheus Variations presentation at IRT. It’s a very cool project, combining live film and theatre with the Orpheus myth. Look forward to watching this develop.

Click the image below to view more photos via my full Tumblr post.

Video Footage from The School of Making Thinking, Summer 2011

The School of Making Thinking

We had a wonderful, breath-ful, creative escape to The School of Making Thinking in Delhi, New York this summer, where we continued work on The Orpheus Variations.  Enjoy these photos from the residency.

Painting for the Orpheus Variations

I’ve been doing a series of paintings inspired by our current project “Orpheus Variations”.  This one is inspired by our attempt to create Persephone in the Underworld during workshop.  We saw Persephone as towering, elegant, and able to see memories by touching and smelling old photographs.

To see more of my work inspired by “The Orpheus Variations”, click here.

Liz Duffy, Core Artist

The Orpheus Variations First Workshop Teaser

Color

We’ve been integrating a healthy dose of talk about color schemes lately, including an exploration of the invention of color TV, and a specific 1950s technicolor palette juxtaposed with black and white imagery.  Here are some inspirational materials of which we’ve taken note:

I have a preoccupation with the use of drenched and saturated color-schemes,
especially as used in early television broadcasts. The documentary “Radio Bikini” is a good example of this.

Jenn was drawn to the reds and blues in the above two images.

Photo Call

A couple of photos from today’s rehearsal:

Jenn Dees as a Nevada Woman and Gabe Levey as John C. Clark,
in a theatrical moment entitled “Morning Coffee”

Jenn Dees, in a theatrical moment entitled “Street Walker”

Triptych

Our rehearsals are birthing material faster than I anticipated. We come together with more research each session, and the greatest challenge will eventually become distilling it all into cohesive context. Earlier last week, I began to fear that a speedy commencement would lead to a burn-out, but my wariness of this has since been squelched as the pile of inspirational material grows ever higher.

Drew shared some great research with the group this week, leading us to begin focusing on a triptych-based structure of interweaving narrative devices. This is exciting for me because it will encourage us to explore ways in which the sequenced narratives can “touch” one another in theatrical ways. What will begin to happen when simultaneously unrelated and interrelated lines permeate, bisect, and influence one another? I think we are on the path to creating a very exciting way of navigating this piece, without falling into the always dangerously-lurking threat of a naturalistic play – “sofa theatre”, a term I love, which Jenn coined.

We continue to return to a potentially beautiful design scheme focusing on saturation v. desolation. I am looking forward to delving into this further as I spend the next week immersing myself in visual art that speaks to the feeling we are looking for this piece to emanate. One of my favorite characteristicsof collective creation – of writing in space instead of on paper – is the way in which design becomes immediately interwoven into the process from the beginning. Instead of imposing design – set, lighting, costume, sound, etc. – on an already completed textual piece, the elements inform one another, creating a tightly woven entity. Following suit, we’ve also been playing with miniatures, and ideas of macro vs. micro – placing worlds inside of one another and watching what happens when the micro and macro coexist in one space.

A couple of photos to enjoy from the rehearsal room this week, featuring Jenn Dees and Gabe Levey:

More to come.