Task 2 - How can we use Multimedia effectively in performances
'Multimedia in performance' means that the performance doesn't just contain acting. It uses other mediums such as video, sound, art such as paint and light.
Review of 'The Waves' in the Natrional Theatre by The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2006/dec/04/wavessetsahighwatermarkfo
Katie Mitchell's extraordinary production of Virginia Woolf's experimental novel The Waves at the National Theatre is that rarely sighted beast, a performance where theatre and video come together so seamlessly and complement each other so exquisitely it is as if Mitchell, her actors and video artist Leo Warner have created an entirely new art form.
Just as Woolf in her 1931 modernist novel was attempting an experiment in form
and struggling to bring the novel into the 20th century, so Mitchell - the radical force beating in the heart of the National Theatre - is pushing theatre kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Waves is about the very act of creativity itself, the tools we use to make art and the self we sacrifice to do it, and if it is sometimes painful - well, birth is seldom easy.
Theatre is a medium that - from the introduction of limelight onwards - has often treated any new technology with some suspicion. Today no theatre could operate without its computer assisted light and sound boards, and even the scenery is as likely to be moved by the push of a button as by stage hands - hence the farcical cancellation mid-interval of a performance of Peter Stein's Troilus and Cressida in Edinburgh this summer when the technology broke down and the back wall refused to budge.
But if theatre has embraced technology in all its technical
applications, it has often been less successful in finding a creative
application. In particular when theatre has tried to incorporate film
and video into live performance it often gets it horribly wrong,
behaving like some giddy old maiden aunt got up in footless tights and a
mini skirt who think she is being awfully daring.
With a few exceptions such as Stationhouse Opera's Roadmetal, Sweetbread, Complicite's The Elephant Vanishes or John Tiffany's Black Watch, multimedia is a word I've come to dread in the theatre. There was period around five years ago when you could hardly step inside a theatre to see a new play without encountering a bank of video monitors, and I have endured far too many theatre productions which throw the baby out with the bathwater by mistakenly trying to pander to those Professor Higgins-style whiners who regularly demand to know: "Why can't theatre be more like a film?"
In
any event, too often video in the theatre is a mere distraction, like
trying to hold an intimate conversation in a room where the television
is blaring loudly. Your eye is always drawn to the screen rather than to
the person talking and everything else swims in and out of focus.
Mitchell, however, makes a virtue of this, operating in Waves entirely
in the gaps between the live action and the close up, so that you not
only see the filmic zoom-in but also actually see how the effect is
being created or staged.
It is akin to having an out of body experience. You feel as if you've mistakenly wandered into someone else's head and are drowning in an internal monologue in which the whispered banality of the everyday knocks hard against the deepest unarticulated desires, and the conscious and the unconscious can be simultaneously seen and heard clamouring for attention. A split second later you are in yet another person's head as the multi-stranded, non-linear, non-narrative stream of consciousness unfolds with the fluidity of running water. It feels shockingly intimate and oddly dispassionate, and neither film nor live action alone could come anywhere close to achieving this curious and disconcerting split sensation.
Together, Mitchell and her virtuoso video artist Leo Warner from Fifty Nine Ltd offer a glimpse of how theatre and film can work together in an equal partnership, rather than being rivals for our attention. Until Waves I didn't know that this room was even in theatre's house; Mitchell's achievement is to have made it all her own.
'Multimedia in performance' means that the performance doesn't just contain acting. It uses other mediums such as video, sound, art such as paint and light.
TYPE OF MEDIA
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EXAMPLE OF USE IN PERFORMANCE
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POSITIVES OF USING IT…
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NEGATIVES OF USING IT…
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VIDEO CAMERA
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Projecting ready made videos onto a screen within the performance.
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You can incorporate different locations that you wouldn't be able to create in the theatre space.
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Technical faults are possible both on the night of the performance and during the filming process. Certain skills are needed to do this process.
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SOUND
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Sound effects
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It create an effective atmosphere that can give the audience a closer emotional connection to the play
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The sound could drown out or take away from the acting and the message that is trying to be put across by the actors.
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LIGHT
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Torch light can be used when held by the actors , like in East End Tales.
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It gives the play a 'stunning' quality and helps to create certain effects that/or emphasise emotions.
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You must be aware of the amount of light your using as too little will mean the audience won't be able to see anything and too much could 'blind' the audience or lose the effect.
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PHOTOGRAPHS
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Photos could be held by performers or be littered around the stage.
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Photos of people or events help to represent deeper messages within the play or show the connection between characters that don't have a physical presence on the stage.
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Photographs could be too small to see by the audience so the size must be taken into account. However, this then bring another issue of the clarity of the image as most photos decrease in clarity the larger you make them.
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Examples of multimedia being used in performance
What type of multimedia was used? Did it enhance the performance? How and why
Recently I saw Antigone in The Theatre Royal Stratford East. This was a modernised version of Antigone where the Greek script had been translated into modern day 'slang'. This made the play extremley funny and interesting to watch. It also inculded multimedia in the form of live projections (live feed) of what was going on on stage onto the back wall. I though that the projections were very effective in enhancing the performance it as it enabled you to view the performance from another angle and therefore change the perspective. There was also a moment where the stage was dimley lit and a monolougue was delived from Antigone. Yet, her face was facing down, making it extremely hard to see. Live feed was then used so you were able to view what was going on on her face but still keeping the effect of the darkness and her positioning on stage. This made that monolougue VERY effective. Although apart from the instance I didn't really understand the point of the live feed when it was used on other occassions. It did make the performance interesting, in terms of how it relates to Antigone I thought that they maybe they just used it for the sake of making the play look nice. In my opinion their was so symbolic meaning or depth as to why it was used, although there may have been yet I didn't pick up on it.
What type of multimedia was used? Did it enhance the performance? How and why
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| Example of Multimedia in preformance |
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| Example of Multimedia in preformance |
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| Programme from Antigone |
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| Example of Multimedia in preformance |
Katie Mitchell's extraordinary production of Virginia Woolf's experimental novel The Waves at the National Theatre is that rarely sighted beast, a performance where theatre and video come together so seamlessly and complement each other so exquisitely it is as if Mitchell, her actors and video artist Leo Warner have created an entirely new art form.
Just as Woolf in her 1931 modernist novel was attempting an experiment in form
 |
| Image from 'The Waves' |
and struggling to bring the novel into the 20th century, so Mitchell - the radical force beating in the heart of the National Theatre - is pushing theatre kicking and screaming into the 21st century. Waves is about the very act of creativity itself, the tools we use to make art and the self we sacrifice to do it, and if it is sometimes painful - well, birth is seldom easy.
Theatre is a medium that - from the introduction of limelight onwards - has often treated any new technology with some suspicion. Today no theatre could operate without its computer assisted light and sound boards, and even the scenery is as likely to be moved by the push of a button as by stage hands - hence the farcical cancellation mid-interval of a performance of Peter Stein's Troilus and Cressida in Edinburgh this summer when the technology broke down and the back wall refused to budge.
 |
| Image from 'The Waves' |
With a few exceptions such as Stationhouse Opera's Roadmetal, Sweetbread, Complicite's The Elephant Vanishes or John Tiffany's Black Watch, multimedia is a word I've come to dread in the theatre. There was period around five years ago when you could hardly step inside a theatre to see a new play without encountering a bank of video monitors, and I have endured far too many theatre productions which throw the baby out with the bathwater by mistakenly trying to pander to those Professor Higgins-style whiners who regularly demand to know: "Why can't theatre be more like a film?"
It is akin to having an out of body experience. You feel as if you've mistakenly wandered into someone else's head and are drowning in an internal monologue in which the whispered banality of the everyday knocks hard against the deepest unarticulated desires, and the conscious and the unconscious can be simultaneously seen and heard clamouring for attention. A split second later you are in yet another person's head as the multi-stranded, non-linear, non-narrative stream of consciousness unfolds with the fluidity of running water. It feels shockingly intimate and oddly dispassionate, and neither film nor live action alone could come anywhere close to achieving this curious and disconcerting split sensation.
Together, Mitchell and her virtuoso video artist Leo Warner from Fifty Nine Ltd offer a glimpse of how theatre and film can work together in an equal partnership, rather than being rivals for our attention. Until Waves I didn't know that this room was even in theatre's house; Mitchell's achievement is to have made it all her own.
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