A play for one live and three virtual actors, this project is a collaboration between director/writer Jeff McMahon, media/lighting designer Stan Pressner, and composer Eyvind Kang, charting the complicated and contradictory thoughts of a single man obsessed with a male couple, one to whom his relationship is not immediately clear. The piece presents an unreliable narrator, yet the relationship among the three of them (or is it four?) slowly reveals itself. This script is an exploration into multiple voices and identities, as some information is available through interactive devices; video and effects cued by the performers, others by the audience, exploring the interactive possibilities of these devices and their effect on narrative.
The piece was originally produced as a work-in-progress by the Institute for Studies in the Arts, Arizona State University,in April 2003. A lower-tech version of the piece is currently being developed by the collaborators.
Collaborating
Artists:
Jeff McMahon, Writer/director
David Schweizer: Dramaturg/directorial consultant
Stan Pressner: Multi media design, optics. and lighting
Eyvind Kang: music and sound composition/design
Collaborating
ISA technologists:
Patricia Clark, David Lorig, Kelly Phillips, Assegid Kidane
Performers: (live) Steven Mastroieni, (virtual) Steven Reker, Anthony Harlan, and Miriam Grill. Steven, Anthony, and Miriam are currently theatre students at ASU.
STAN
PRESSNER has worked with such artists as Laurie Anderson, Ralph
Lemon, Blue Man Group, John Kelly, and with Jeff McMahon since 1985.
Recent work includes See Through Knot for Mikhael Baryshnikov’s
White Oak Project, Giant Empty for Frankfurt Ballet, and Fort Blossom
for John Jasperse. Stan received a 1988 New York Dance and Performance
Award ("Bessie") for cumulative achievement, a 1997 Cable
Ace and a 1988, 1991 and 1994 American Theatre Wing Design Award nomination.
stanp@aol.com
EYVIND
KANG worked with Jeff McMahon and and Brian Webb on their 1997-1999
Project Desire: the mountains and the plains. He has contributed to
numerous film soundtracks, including Finding Forrester (dir. Gus Van
Sant), Skins (dir. Chris Eyre), and Tales from the Far Side 1 &
2 (dir. Gary Larson). His composition "Virginal Co-ordinates",for
chamber orchestra, voice, and electronic processing premiered at the
Angelica Festival in Bologna. As a violinist, he has performed and/or
recorded with Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, Arto Lindsay, Sun City
Girls, Secret Chiefs, Beck, Mexican band El Gran Silencio, Portuguese
guitarist Antonio Chainho, and Persian tar virtuoso Amir Koushkani.
He has five CD’s out, most recently on the Tzadik label. eyvindk@hotmail.com
DAVID SCHWEIZER recently directed the Obie Award winning And God Created Great Whales, and is known for his explorations of multi media theater and peformance, often with such solo performers as John Fleck and Ann Magnuson, and playwrights Chuck Mee, Austin Pendleton, and Sandra Tsing Loh. He has won three awards for “Production of the Year” from the LA Weekly. schnitzelbrain@earthlink.net
STEVEN MASTROIENI has appeared in leading roles and character parts, in stage, film and television, here and abroad. He is a member of Actors Equity Association, Screen Actors Guild, and The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. He Studied at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, The Drama Studio London at Berkley, and Arizona State University. He has appeared in more than fifty productions for various theaters: in the Phoenix area, they include, among others, No Exit, Seascape, Night of the Iguana, Whose Life Is It Anyway, and Romeo & Juliet for Phoenix Theater, Outcry, A Delicate Balance, Exit the King, and Little Murders for In Mixed Company. He has also appeared as a guest artist in the ASU productions of The Relapse, Hot House, We Won't Pay, We Won't Pay, and The Adding Machine, and for Actors Theater Phoenix in productions of Accomplice and Orphans, aswell as "actor participant" in their Writers Circle. He appeared in the Principle Role of Nic, in Desert Bloom a film produced by Sundance Institute/Columbia Pictures. His resume includes international stage credit for Seven parables of Barsiesa Abed, produced in Tehran, Iran and Rome, Italy for Kargahe Namayesh.
