Vital LMTD at the Street Theatre

03 Nov '09

I’ve finished a season of  at the Street Theatre in Canberra with Last Man to Die. We performed five shows from 24th-30th of October and had a great time! Review here.

In this show, Hanna Cormick, Benjamin Forster and myself take the roles of aristocratic scientists (from the future?). As we argue over the definition, meaning and creation of life, we explain our ideas through pieces that combine all of our artforms, creating unexpected interactions and fun experiments into acting, visual art and percussion.

The show featured beautiful projected visualisations by Benjamin, as well as live drawing (mark making?) on an overheard projector; innovative mask theatre and live mask creation by Hanna; and electronic percussion and soundtracks by myself on MalletKat, electronic drumset, Ableton Live, Apple Mainstage, Pure Data and SuperCollider.

For myself and Benjamin, this show was a huge experiment in synchronising gestures and events between the computer based parts of our artforms, our computers were constantly in contact via OSC messages so that we could react to events in the other’s artwork. Many of the props in the show also became controllers through the use of our computer vision surface (running ReacTIVision), a Wiimote and the Arduino Heartbeat Sensor. I’m still slightly amazed that we got through the season without any serious train-wreck errors or other serious mistakes on stage. A lot of credit for this should go to our helpful directors/friends Michael Bailey and David Shaw as well as our friends at Belconnen Arts Centre who provided an excellent deal on a studio for two weeks of intensive development!

• Special thankyou our audience and many new friends who engaged us with great questions!