Comedy
Street Theatre
Category
Many performance traditions have involved parades and displays in streets, towns or village squares, and the majority of these performances have been constructed with this spatial context in mind.
Video
A film following the street performance Anabasis in Peru. It was an itinerant performance, based on exploiting the connections between the actors and the spectators who they encounter on their way.
Video
Battle of the Pyramids was a robotic performance installation featuring reconfigured Elmo toys performing military manoeuvres in rigid choreographed formations. This seminal artwork explored and used sensor and wireless communication to create clusters of entities moving in exact synchronisation in response to a call to arms. The robot's movements emulated the rigid and postured fighting strategies of Napoleonic warfare. These strategies, employed in Napoleon's Egyptian campaign, were particularly idiosyncratic in Egypt where they were persistently performed without consideration of either the desert environment or the fighting strategies of the enemy. The work is a testimony to the tragic consequences of imperialism and the dangers, follies and sadness of a rationale for blind obedience that makes victims out of warriors. The piece was exhibited at Light Industries in Theater of Code curated by Christiane Paul in 2008. It was funded by the Eyebeam Art and Technology Center and Professional Staff Congress CUNY Research Grant.
Video
Camouflage Town is a pioneering telerobotic artwork. Camouflage Town is a decoy town constructed for the practice of military manoeuvres, war, and other scenarios of high drama. The robot, named "Kiru" , lived in the first-floor lobby and gallery of the Whitney Museum. As a telerobot, Kiru allowed remote visitors to communicate with physical visitors in the space. Remote visitors controlled the robot’s locomotion, pan, tilt and zoom of its camera over the web and spoke to museum visitors via text to speech and heard their responses. When autonomous, the robot relayed its history as the Librarian of Juxtapositions in Camouflage Town. This piece was exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art in DATA DYNAMICS curated by Christiane Paul in 2001. It was funded by the National Science Foundation Award, Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art Robotics and Theater, Robotic Renaissance Project and NSF Gateway Engineering Education Coalition at Cooper Union.
Video
Back to Back Theatre creates new forms of contemporary performance imagined
from the minds and experiences of a unique ensemble of actors with disabilities,
giving voice to social and political issues that speak to all people.
Based in the regional centre of Geelong, the company is one of Australia’s
most globally recognised and respected contemporary theatre companies. Seeking
to make a body of work that exists in repertoire across time, the company tours
extensively locally, nationally, and internationally.
Video
The film is a documentary about the life of a female shaman Kim Keum-hwa, who was shunned for being possessed by spirits as a girl and oppressed for following superstitions as an adult. It depicts how she grows to be a great shaman who embraces the pain of all people, and how she comes to be honoured as a national treasure of Korea because of her outstanding artistic talents throughout Korea’s tumultuous history. The film is based on the autobiography “Bidankkob Neom-Se” by Kim Keum-hwa.
Video
NoMad is an Island is an interactive robotic installation from the 1997 Ars Electronica Festival.
Video
Sayonara Diorama is an electronic multimedia performance and original play with robots, live actors, video and remote participants.
Video
A public domain
theatre show,
part voyeuristic meditation, part urban
thriller, it unfolds amidst the high volume
pedestrian traffic of a public
space.
Video
Sistren Theatre Collective concerns itself with women sugar cane workers in and around Hayes Newton "New Sugar Town," Clarendon, Jamaica. After interviewing the women in the fields, the group analyses its findings on conditions in the sugar belt and the scenario for a play emerges. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women -- the least empowered workers, who labour long hours for low wages with no benefits or rights to organize for better conditions. Using role-play and interviews with female cane workers, the collective develops dramatizations which analyze social issues and pinpoint their concerns.
Video
Tableaux Vivant Dans Un Monde Parfait was an interactive robotic installation. The work featured stereotypical “his” and “her” robots, directed by onsite users, which roamed a model home on the site of a factory manufacturing prefabricated homes in Brandenburg, Germany. The work was exhibited at Areale99 in Art in the Industrial Sector in 1999.
Commentary
by Calvert, Dave
Reflections on Ganesh versus the Third Reich by Dave Calvert discusses the
work created by back to back.
Commentary
by Calvert, Dave
Reflections on small metal objects by back to back.
Related Items
Practitioner
Eugenio Barba created Odin Teatret in Norway in 1964, having worked with Jerzy Grotowski for three years in Poland. Now based in Denmark, its members come from a dozen countries and three continents.
Category
Not strictly theatre, these are mass group events or performances that generally take place in public spaces in order to influence public opinion by occupying or exploiting the power of those sites.