As in their acclaimed show The Elephant Vanishes, the Complicité team have opted to incorporate video projection into the new show, working with Canadian video designer Francis Laporte, perhaps best known for his work with Cirque du Soleil on their shows Dralion and Varekai. It was Laporte's collaborator, video programmer Luc Lavergne, who suggested that the Hippotizer digital media server might make the ideal video playback tool for the project. As a result, Green Hippo, the Hippotizer's creator, and Scene Change, its distributor, were invited to show Hippotizer to the Complicité team, who were very impressed: "We showed it to Simon McBurney, Complicité's artistic director, Nick Schwartz-Hall, their production manager, and others, and they all loved it," recalls Green Hippo's Sean Westgate.
"What excited them most was Hippotizer's ability to change things on the fly - 'I want that, over there, in green' - which fits really well with their approach to devising their shows through long periods of experimentation. They'd previously used video on their productions of The Noise of Time and The Elephant Vanishes but they had used a number of playback and control systems linked together and they'd found that everything needed to be thought out in advance. Hippotizer changes that!"
Nick Schwartz-Hall explains: "Simon McBurney's creative approach requires maintaining the maximum degree of flexibility in every area of design and staging, in order to thoroughly integrate all the aesthetic elements of the show, which he only does once we are into technical rehearsals. The Hippotizer enables us to make on-the-spot, real-time adjustments in scale, speed, colour, image mapping, length of cue and many other parameters - all of which used to require lengthy video programming and rendering time. Moreover, it enables us to make alterations and 'play' the video live for each performance. For us, the Hippotizer is a revolution."
Following this presentation, Complicité, Francis Laporte and Luc Lavergne opted to use Hippotizer for Strange Poetry, with Green Hippo and Scene Change providing full support to the project. This includes the creation of a customized version of the Hippotizer that will give Francis Laporte the level of direct control, using MIDI keyboards, that he needs for a project that he will be performing live each night along with the orchestra and actors, the video projected onto screens around the orchestra.
Strange Poetry is conceived and directed by Simon McBurney along with artistic and musical collaborator Gerard McBurney. The production's sound design is by Christopher Shutt with Gareth Fry, the lighting design is by Paul Anderson with projection/video design by Francis Laporte.
(Lee Baldock)
