How involving should theatre be?

Those who know me know that I was looking for skeleton model builders last week.

That’s builders of skeleton models and not model builders who are skeletons.

But why was I looking for such people?

And – I hear you cry – obviously for something theatre related, get to the specifics!

We are currently in the final part of a focus on an american choreographer based in Germany who has moved from his classic roots into exploring the fringes of contemporary dance.

And while the pieces being performed off-site include thousands of balloons, hundreds of pendulums and a little video  trickery, the onsite pieces were also a little different.

These included two video based works; one filming passers-by and employing a little morphing, the other testing senses of perpective.

The piece on the main stage was just that.

It was all on the main stage, or over it, including the audience.

With German precision, the audience was let in exactly at the time on the ticket and were escorted through a darkened auditorium to the stage where they were clustered into small groups and accompanied by one of our model builders.

The view of the stage was blocked by a angled screen with projected vague images from a ‘beamer’ in the auditorium – about the only element not on the stage.

Onstage were over a dozen tables with model skeletons assembled on them – only these models were contructed randomly from skeleton model parts, in no obviously recognisable shapes, held up by rods attached to the table tops. The audience were invited to add more parts to the weird and strange ‘models of grief’.

A script began to pan slowly across the screen as the audience set to with cardboard and split pins. Where shadows from the models fell across blank paper sheets laid out underneath, people were invited to sketch along those lines.

These paper sketches were then used by the trio of dancers who infiltrated onto the stage and began to dance expressions of grief. The sketches were vocalised and radio mics picked up the vocalisations and were amplified and went through all manner of funky sound changing effects.

Each performance lasted 52 minutes, leaving just 8 minutes to reset before the doors were opened once more for the next audience.

It’s not a piece that anyone could say they ‘enjoyed’ but it was fascinating to be a part of, being extremely involving – as much as for watching the reactions of people as they realised that this wasn’t a ’standard’ dance piece they had come to watch but something much more personal.

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For those interested in the technical side of things, 2k fresnals overhead provided a downlight washed in sections across the stage and two profiles per table lit the models.

These were controlled by subs from an onstage lighting board manually operated to follow the movements of the dancers, just about the only way to follow the actions and react to the requirements of the choreographer who was onstage for every performance, gauging the reactions of the participants.

Sound was next to lighting and had DPA lavaliers on Sennheiser radio transmitters which came into the M7CL controlling the sound and then went off into all sorts of MaxMSP madness. A G5 which dual screens, a Mac Powerbook and a midi keyboard were among the controlling sources and all three expansion slots on the M7CL were filled with ADAT and optical ins and outs to external pre-amps.

Max users may be able to make sense of what was going on – I’ve never used the program so I had little idea. It was a program for pitch shifting, ring modulating, delaying and generally effecting what the mics picked up during the perfromance, including breathes and taps.

Sound was played through Meyer UPA-1p hanging from overhead in a rough 5.0 set-up with a sixth acting as a reference speaker for the operator who was off to one side.

Two Meyer 650-P subs  in opposite corners provided the low end.

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I also have no idea how it ended – the last four minutes for me were spent moving into the foyer to get ready to open the doors for the turn around. I did get see the faces of the audience after the event though and there was a whole gamut of utterly bemused to slightly shell-shocked and absolutely captivated.

It does seem as though the majority of all the audiences came expecting to watch a piece, and not be in the middle of one – certainly the one or two ladies in their fine frocks and high heels missed any pre-show blurb.

The piece definitely worked on it’s own terms – and necessarily so – I just wonder what impression of ‘theatre’ and ‘dance’ the audience left with …