In the Lab

Alongside the Runaway Camp rehearsals, I have been working with Paul Montone and Devin Lucid as the scientist and wild child in rehearsals for the Lab. Whereas the runaways play games, these are a series of "tests"... slow exchanges of voice in demonstration and imitation. The correction of body posture, the marking of lines on a chalkboard, focused and careful. There’s something beautifully simple about these humanist exchanges – the intensity of duos and solos.

Yesterday we tried working with recursive structures - video within video - using last week's rehearsal as the instigator for further chains of mimicry. I hadn’t previously thought of including a television in this section (it’s not exactly period accurate for Jacques Itard circa 1805) but I've always been a fan of the "Droste effect" and I like the stripped down, "video art" feeling of simple black and white footage playing on a television monitor. These chains will instigate additional actions among the live performers.

We recently visited the maple tree where the runaway camp will occur. Dicky Dahl brought his camera and we taped material for the opening credit sequence.
Here is the music for that opening section, which makes it like a kind of "theme". This will be one of the few places where fully-composed recorded sound is matched to moving image.

Blade2 by Seth Nehil