Rehearsal began february 3rd and my first task was to get the hardware right. I had hoped to get that done in january already, but [the web] took much more time and energy than expected. I hate it when these technical things become tangled up with the artistic process in the rehearsals. Of course I do enjoy handling this stuff, but I often feel as if it stimulates the wrong side of my brain and distracts me from the content part. Also, (german) theater actors usually are very shy when they have to deal with video and other “modern” stuff, so its best to have them get used to it from the beginning and not change to much of the setup. Explanations can be tiring.

Fortunately the actors for Smilla are puppet actors. When I was working on “Alice Adventures Underground” I already observed that they are much easier to work with when it comes to video. They are used to treat inanimate objects such as a camera or a video screen like living things. Having to handle puppets with sometimes quite complicated mechanics they are less afraid of using the cameras I handed them. I favor using cheap chip cams for these tasks because they are the easiest to handle, the only problem being the lack of a finder.

(Andreas Hillger, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung 24.01.06)

In Felix Ensslin and Brock Enrights production of Friedrich Schillers “The Robbers” the camera displays the subconciousness of the characters and the person in whose dream all things on stage happen. In the first part of the play, the screen is, partly explicit and partly on an abstract level,  stage for inner conflicts and phantasies.

Apart from doing the live camera on stage, I supported the directors in the conception of the video and by designing video scenes on and behind stage. I emphasized on giving the live video individual aesthetics far from common home video.

To work intuitively I modified my Panasinoc MV-GS400 with a cusom made handle, dimmable light and custom batterie pack.

Excerpts of “The Robbers” by Schiller, Thomas Mann and Nietsche were read by actors accompanied by noise music and videos by Brock Enright. In the last third of the performance a woman “kidnapped” by Enright was tortured and filmed within her own staging of a kidnapping.

The pictures of my camera were projected on a big screen fron stage. I filmed in extreme close-up so the details sometimes blurred into undefinable textures giving way for the imagination of the audience. The audience was tricked into wanting to see more of what it believed was an act of violence it actually rejected to see. Finally, the woman was dragged into the projection by her “kidnappers”, together producing a shadow sculpture within their own image.

Director: Hartmut Wickert