Hal Eagar : #6 What was your favorite show/moment/effect?

DPI:

What was your favorite show/moment/effect? Why?

I love spectacle really, and stuff that either just barely makes sense, or is just so spectacular that you don't give a dam if it makes sense. I don't think that's the kind of theater that I tend to make myself, but that's what I like to go see. Sxip Shirey [2] is all that in a totally non-video way, spectacular and surprising, and maybe for me the no video thing is a bonus too. His show "Blood is the Only Good Adhesive in Heaven" may be my favorite theatrical experience.

The first Richard Foreman [3] piece I saw probably triggered some similar moments of wow spectacle being in audience, but that's burned off after a few of his shows.

The start of "All Wear Bowlers" [4] were possibly my favorite 'video' moments, when the two silent film clowns walk in and out of the film. It really brings the video actors into one cohesive place. And even though you might say it's an old trick, it's still great spectacle, and clowning is all old tricks, it's just about doing them well.

As far as effects, well in Troika Ranches' 16 [R]evolutions [5] the vision tracking of the dancers, and the use of the projection as the light source was great. There is a lot of stuff done with the tracking in the show, the most impressive is the drawing 3d calligraphy with the dancers motions, but the effect I liked the most was just the white lines or white box tracking on the dancers body as they moved on stage. This is one of those things I mean about spectacle over sense; I'm not good at interpreting dance, and I don't expect I understood 16 [R]evolutions (if I was meant to?) but I did feel that in those moments it got right to the core of what projection is, it's a "living" light source, that has a meaning itself. It hit the key points that I think make for the best use of media on stage, it was not video, and it was not on a screen, and it would not work by itself, it did not distract from the action on stage. I don't know, maybe it was not even Media, but it was a really good effect.