Off the charts 03/11/2011
 Here is a graph of WAKE LESS, as of three weeks ago. It may or may not contain spoilers. Add Comment The audience should work harder. 06/09/2011
Back in Berlin. After 5 days I realised that none of the "theatre" I'd participated in as a spectator had any actors in it (nor was it in a theatre). I had to make it happen myself. -Fiona At your service 30/08/2011
Doing pre-show for Wearable Arts, crowd work, silly stuff. Having fun. Inevitably, behind me, between sips of sparkly pinot gris, nice and loud so I can hear; "I wonder how much he's being paid". A reminder that these are the same people who's latte cups I washed this afternoon in my hospo job. A reminder that this is, after all, a service industry... Theatre getting amongst it 21/07/2011
 Not many people will know, or remember, that Binge Culture's first performance out of uni, and second performance ever was at Canaan Downs New Years Festival. Now as we contemplate the possiblity of performing at Splore 2012, I just stumbled across this article, which puts forward the argument for more theatre at this unorthodox kind of venue: http://www.guardian.co.uk/culture/theatreblog/2011/jul/21/theatre-music-festival-latitude -Joel Too true 30/05/2011
Jenny Holzer: Truisms As list-art goes, this is pretty top of the list. I saw these on five of those stock market scrolling things in the Tate Modern, blue and vertical and moving really fast. Mesmerising. Lists, checks and balances 25/11/2010
Two really cool devised theatre videos form Youtube- one is a clip from Kate McIntosh's "Dark Matter", which Fiona saw in Munich and wrote about earlier this year. The other one is a great recent video about process from Forced Entertainment. You wouldn't steal a handbag... 10/11/2010
Don't know if you spotted this in the Dom Post the other day, I couldn't find it online so I've had to type it out: 7/11/2010 Theatre managers around New Zealand are "dismayed" by pirated copies of their performances appearing on the streets- often before the work has even premiered. "They must sneak into the $15 previews," one representative of a Wellington theatre said, "and so outside on the footpath there are these cheap knock-offs for sale which are inferior in every way. Its dismaying." The "ripped" performances undermine legitimate theatre's profits by drastically undercutting ticket prices. However, as the plays are performed entirely from the memory of one performance, the quality is markedly inferior. One bystander, who asked not to be named, described a "rip" of Circa's My First Time: "they got the intonations and general blocking right, but heaps of the lines had been learned wrong, bits were missing- and the motivations were shakey." However, having paid a mere $2.50 for the experience, he admitted he wouldn't fork out for the theatrical version; "what would be the point? I feel sorry for the actors if they lose money, but frankly I don't have the spare cash to be scrupulous at the moment." He added that he never pirated New Zealand plays. In spite of the threat posed by performance piracy, theatre owners are confident the superior quality of plays performed in theatres will keep punters coming back for the real thing. "We've got lighting, seating and protection from the elements, which is more than you’ll get on some dirty footpath. There's no substitute for actually being there. Sooner or later, people are going to realise what they're missing out on." Test Your Buzzers! 28/10/2010
Clips from our Elimination Rounds Tour, 2010. Dr Buller, you champion! 16/10/2010
 In the days before "pelican eats pigeon", there was "eel eats seagull". And it happened here. Some musings on light and play 07/10/2010
It's a bold choice to put people in the dark. When you light your audience, as has been the norm for most of the theatre's history, you provide the space for a real time negotiation with them. You signal your openness to their engagement, boredom, puzzlement, or anything. Shared light counters the voyeurism of most theatrical performances by setting up an atmosphere of openness and respect. This is especially true when audience members can see one another as well as the performers. We say: yes, you can look wherever you like, and in return we want to know where you are looking and how. We want the right to see if you are with us or examining the lighting grid, because looking at the lighting grid is a truthful reponse to a performance. It is a scary idea for the performer, because its hard to relax into what worked in rehearsal when you can see that more people are looking at their shoes than at your blood-stained hands. Or that most people are doing that grimacing thing. Shared light reminds us that we are making the performance for this audience, not for ourselves, or the abstract idea of an audience. It allows them be a gathering of individuals rather than a unified bunch whose reponse we can summarise in the green room with theories that they "liked" or "didn't understand" what we did. When the audience is lit, a commitment is made that the performance is going to happen in the here and now of play, rather than the there and then of presentation and masterpiece. If we find this instinctively uncomfortable, maybe its because we're confused about the difference between the theatrical experience and the online experience, where you can be elsewhere from the action and in your underwear, while eating cereal. Come on; be here, with us. | ScrapbookA place for putting links, writing, odds and sods, and for taking things to extremes. ArchivesApril 2012 CategoriesAll © 2011 Binge Culture Collective All rights reserved |
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