Last weekend we watched the footage of the Ghosts previews we performed and took things up a notch. Now we are preparing for our first rehearsal in our performance space at Galatos. The set is about to be constructed. I don't want to ruin anything, but this involves suspending things from ceilings and collecting vast amounts of lamps.
Each show is going to be slightly different, the content the same, but with such vastly different venues, the set and lighting must adapt.
The chapel show is going to be more intimate, with the smaller venue. The building itself, being historical in vibe, will become part of the scene; though the show itself has almost no religious content, I can't help but wonder how the building itself could change the lens people view the poetry through. This will be interesting to observe. While we have full sound capabilities at the chapel show, the lighting side of things has required some inventiveness, with what we think will be beautiful results. It's just not the kind of thing you could achieve in a big venue, with a stage like Galatos.
But at Galatos we get to present the result of a three-week series of workshops with moving image artists from the moving image centre as a prelude to the main event. At Galatos, you'll be further away from the poets, but there's capacity for full lighting and more room to move around in.
We've all been rehearsing with our music hard out, and will start rehearsing with our sound tech on the 4th. After so long with these poems, you better believe it feels good when you finally start to get your music cues bang on every time!
Sabrina and Christian just left after an hour or so of extra rehearsing - our multiple person pieces have become so much more complex, and cooler. We've been doing this since 2007 now, and it's great to be at a point where we can now start experimenting a bit more. Daniel and Christian have THE most awesome duet where the product of Jung's mind is pitted against that of Voltaire's. I love it. NIN's music is freaking awesome, travels us everywhere, it is amazing that they made this kind of project possible. I wonder if they ever got our emails saying we were doing it. We did run it by some official representative in Auckland, so it got a 'go ahead.' But I wonder if Trent Resnor himself knows. It would be cool if he did.
Last night Christian, Dan, Shane, Murray Haddow, Anna Kaye and I, trooped into Poetry Live to check out the guest appearance of Gus Simonovic and his new group Printable Reality. The name is highly misleading, because they're actually a brand spanking new performance poetry group. We are pretty stoked because on their website they proudly state that they combine theatre, poetry, music. We think it is about time that another group of people come out and try their hands at it. I'm especially pleased to see that they haven't just taken to reciting poetry over music and thinking that they've made it - but that they've also tried their hands at the theatre component of what we've been doing too. Totally jealous that Siri is Gus's girlfriend and not mine though - a beautiful dancer - oh we've been planning on working dance in since forever, Haddow and Shane did it out at Lopdell a while back, and there was that awesome collaboration that ummm, damn I forget the artists, they presented photos of it at Winter Warmers at the art gallery in 2009, was great. Anyway, awesome to see that in action. Pissed we didn't get to it first!
Anyway, it's time that someone else has come along and stoked the revolution in word again, it was needing it. With us off workshopping for a year, there hasn't been a whole lot happening in spoken word in Auckland aside from Freaky Meat, which has continued to churn out the jewels. It's be great for us to have another group of peeps making stuff along the lines of what we do, great things can only come of it, there will be some local people to respond to, instead of having to turn only to other countries for connection with other people doing what we do, (not that we're about to stop doing that).
They've got a real collection going on, including resident visual artists, and of course Siri Embla, the dancer - who brings other dancers too. So I expect they are going to produce some cool stuff.
Last night I caught their guitarist, and then Gus performing with the guitarist, while Siri danced. One dance was a bizzare thing involving a chair that I won't go into. It was emotive to say the least. They projected images onto a white-clothed dancing body and I thought it was amazing. We think they're going to do some really good things together. If you get a chance, check them out sometime.
Here's to performance poetry though, may it live long and prosper!
