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DREAM - Transition Design for the English Pocket Opera

Multimedia, Theatre, Film

DREAM

The English Pocket Opera
Dir:
Ian McKenzie-Thurly
Transition Promenade Design : Heidi Ting' & RiaKatrina Pryke
Scene 5 Designer: Libby Todd
Scene 6 Designers: Adithio Noer Raffaele Noviello & Ria Menegatos

" I have always been amazed at the way an ordinary observer lends so much more credence and attaches so much more importance to waking events than to those occuring in dreams ... Man... is above all the plaything of his memory." - Andre Breton

An Promenade Operatic Performance for the English Pocket Opera Company. I was working with RiaKatrina Pryke on the Transitional Experience. The challenge, apart from putting together all the different scenes in the whole promenade performance, is to provide a passage for audience to experience the the surreal, the fairy, the dream in the everyday & non-theatrical space.
What start with several enquiries: (1) What are the everyday appearance, subliminal yet existing, that once through framing/choreographing, becomes a performance of its own (traffic , passersby, the randomly-occuring siren noise, sound of road construction, temperature, box-officer etc). (2) How might one make the theatrical everyday become the Meta-theatre in relational to the other theatrical scene? (3) Since transition is about dealing with between the dream forest & the civilised, what is the politics between Visibility/Invisibility? What IS (not represents) the real & present Authority Patriarchal Control? The Invisible Surveillence around the building to the City (forest), that which folds time & space, is interpreted as fairies in contemporary sense, and composition-wise, our main structural element & connective tissues.(4) Lastly how do we make the passing /passage by the audience a performance in itself without any performers ? Ultimately, It is the Key of Trust that which one needs to hold on to the naughty faceless Puck.
Projection of Puck inviting Audience to come 'Follow me' to interact with Public/Audience.
This is to establish the promenade as a participatory experience.
The door opened by the voluntary audience rather conventionally done by Front-of-House.
Scene 5 & Scene 5 Transition -
Becuase of the top filming angle, an unexpected result occurs when some audience get confused thinking this is a real CCTV footages replayed .
Scene 6
Scene 6-7 Transition:
A Video Sculpture as installation in CCTV configuration (& with CCTV devices) with a mixture of pre-recorded footages & Live CCTV surveillance.
Performance Installation by Puck & Titania at the end of scene 6-7 Transition.
Hand out of Bottom's Bottom is re-edited as Lollipop to hand out in Children mantanee Performances.
Film Still of Last Transition Scene
TV Sculpture Pre-recorded Film Stills