Project Outline

Information about the project from the original Live Performance Commissions proposal:

STORY:
Two men are being held by an authoritarian state for an unspecified reason. Locked in a projectionist’s box with reels of film they have been told they must piece together, they set to work arranging the events into a narrative. However, it soon becomes apparent that the film mirrors their own predicament. As they struggle to find a conclusion that will satisfy their captors, they become acutely aware that they are not only making a film, but determining their own destinies.

AIMS / CONCEPT:
We want to explore the potential of animation within live performance. By ‘animation’ we mean it in its broadest sense; from drawn-image to stop-motion, collage to constructed sets and puppets. We are not talking about ‘cartoons’; this is not for children. Nor do we want to just project onto a flat screen – we’re interested in exploring how animation, drawing, puppetry and moving images can be fused within a live performance. These visuals will always be intrinsic to the piece, not superfluous visual ‘tricks’; they will support the narrative and progress the story.
Possibilities: A man sprouts wings and flies away; puppets from stop-motion projections enter the performance space and interact with characters; gauze screens obscure the ‘real’ world and reveal animated imaginings; shadow puppetry on a huge scale to create epic monsters; manipulation of performers as puppets – as the two men argue they take to forcibly animating each other to get their own way; drawing on stage to create forms/shadows; sparklers used to create fleeting moments of drawn imagery: a door, a bar, the moon; projections across the floor depicting maps which are then animated – a needle weaves across the space sewing two countries together, a performer picks up the needle, it becomes a gun, he is protecting himself…