The People – SF Tableaux #2, Terrorism and Democracy Interview Videos

Below is the second Tableaux built by the phenomenal preformance community in San Francisco followed by the final 4 interview videos on Terrorism and Democracy.

4 Channel Tableaux screened during the Iphigenia’s Monologue of The People – SF. Made by local SF performers during the workshop Hybrid Bodies the week before the performance. Participants included Atosa Babaoff, Ben Randle, Beth Grossman, brian gibbs, christine marie, DIA vergados / DIAmanda Kallas, Ernesto Sopprani, Evan Johnson, Honey McMoney, Justin Morrison, Kate Elswit, Kevin O’Connor, Laura Arrington, Malinda Trimble, maryam rostami, Mica Sigourney, Minna Harri, Nina Otis Haft, Rachael Dichter, Sara Kraft

Terrorism Interviews:

Democracy Interviews:

Hybrid Bodies Workshop Tableaux For The People – SF

Photo: Jared Mezzocchi

 

As part of Big Art Group’s creation residency for The People – SF, Caden Manson lead a week long workshop in the company’s practice called Hybrid Bodies/Simultaneous Presence. The final two days were spent creating 4 tableaux that were incorporated into the live performance of The People – SF inside and on a 200 foot portion of the building facade. Below are the first two without sound. Origianlly played during the messenger monologue (included below)

(Text Excerpt form THE PEOPLE – SF)

Messenger

I admit, I lost myself on the way homeward. It wasn’t that the open ocean, arms flung wide, had no landmarks to lead us back to our home. We lost a sense of purpose, we lost our resolution.

What we feared most of all— us the amputees, the gravel-faced, the lettuce-skinned and prosthetic-emotioned— what we dreaded with apprehension now stitched up inside of us, this dread…

We feared– We knew something about ourselves that was irrevocable. We had stepped lightly over a threshold, and now, with regret, cast a glance back.

Where is your queen, your empress? She set the trip wires of the fire, the chain that would rush across mountains and tell you we were coming home, this cursed signal. That was apt, that flame after flame would signal our approach, now from Polverigi, from Halle, watch Salzburg burning, set fire if you don’t mind, to the whole valley floor, and let the summer fill with smoke, let them choke on it, through the intervening space and landscape and you think you can control these things but how easily a spark and cinder escapes and starts its own tyranny, and I watched the fires in Cairo, I watched the fires in Kuwait, I watched the fires in LA and Oakland, I saw the buildings ablaze downtown and felt them singe and called the pyroclast my herald to let them know that we are coming home from the great purpose of our lives we are coming home in clouds and smolders and we are bearing down like wildfire on our homeland—

The People – SF Time Lapse and Justice Interviews

As promised, here is the second set of interviews from the American premiere of THE PEOPLE – San Francisco with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts & Z Space with residency support by Headlands Center For The Arts. Over the next two weeks we will upload each of the four sections (Greek Chorus) created for the performance at Z Space on September 16 & 17, 2011.

Also Here is a short 1 minute time lapse of the show by David Szlasa from Z Space. (Thanks David!)

Justice Interviews:

The People – San Francisco (Video Interviews – War Greek Chorus)

We just finished up our creation and American premiere of THE PEOPLE – San Francisco with Yerba Buena Center for the Arts & Z Space with residency support by Headlands Center For The Arts. Over the next two weeks we will upload each of the four sections (Greek Chorus) created for the performance at Z Space on September 16 & 17, 2011. Thank you again to all the local Bay Area people that took time out to take part in the interview process.

WAR:

Backstage at THE PEOPLE – SF

Here are is a video and some photos taken by Big Art Performer, David Commander, on our final tech before we opened the piece last night.

 

YBCA and Z Space welcome New York-based performance troupe Big Art Group back to the Bay Area with their new work, The People: San Francisco, a site specific, outdoor extravaganza that combines live theater with large scale, real time video projection. The narrative, constructed from interviews with members of the local community who voice their thoughts about democracy, war, terrorism and justice as it relates to their personal histories, loosely recreates the story of Aeschylus’ Oresteia. Live theatrical reenactments are intercut with earlier, taped interviews, projected via large scale video onto the side of a building where the live play and video are viewed by the audience at street level. Perceived as a kind of “living television,” The People repurposes commonly used media strategies such as video clips, interviews and re-enactments, to explore extraordinary forces reshaping contemporary government. It then sculpts these developments into a performative action that takes as its inspiration the foundational idea of community dialogue and the birth of democracy as theatrically embodied in the Oresteia. By inverting the established relationship between “mass-media” and private exchange, it transforms the “town square” into a public performance in which both performers and audience act out crucial roles in the construction of self-government.

The People: San Francisco is part of a larger cross-cultural work in which the video choruses from each location will be combined to create a window into the cultural understanding and variation of democratic public expression. To date, three productions in the series have been presented: The People—Italy, which took place in Polverigi, Italy with the participation and support of Inteatro Polverigi in 2007, The People—Germany, at Theatre der Welt 2008 in Halle, Germany, and The People—Austria at Szene Salzburg in 2010.

Some out takes from the preparation for tonights THE PEOPLE – SF

Video Stills From The War Speech:

Video Still From The 5 Channel Tableaux Made With The People From The SF Contemporary Performance Scene:

Here Are Some Links To Prepress:
Robert Avila’s preview for The Guardian
Nirmala Nataraj’s preview for the SF Gate

More Info:
http://www.ybca.org/big-art-group

Some Of The Interviews Used As Wall Paper For The Sitcom Set: