"Let there be quiet and play well

From the beginning 

Strike up together …

Here you can speed up 

Don’t leave any gaps

There, now all together

No sentimentality

Just play the notes ” 


(from Day for Night by François Truffaut)




PROGRAM CREDITS 

Blurb for website. 

STRANGE JOY : Set on an indoor film set, the story follows the director and the team in the process of making a film. Taking the audience through the landscape of the movie set, we glimpse into the spectrum of desires, following the team both on and off the screen. The film crew becomes increasingly deranged as the days go by in his search for perfection, while they desperately try to find their way out of the obsessive loop, take after take and finish the film they set out to make.

Blurring the lines between installation, film, dance and theater, and taking inspiration from Day for Night / Le Nuit American by François Truffaut and documentaries of film set environments of legendary film directors, STRANGE JOY explores the behind-the-scenes of making a film.


Program Note

In loving memory of James Phair 

For my daughter : Marlowe Wilder McMahon


STRANGE JOY : Set on an indoor film set, the story follows the director and the team in the process of making a film. Taking the audience through the landscape of the movie set, we glimpse into the spectrum of desires, following the team both on and off the screen. The film crew becomes increasingly deranged as the days go by in his search for perfection, while they desperately try to find their way out of the obsessive loop, take after take and finish the film they set out to make.

Blurring the lines between installation, film, dance and theater, and taking inspiration from Day for Night / Le Nuit American by François Truffaut and documentaries of film set environments of legendary film directors, STRANGE JOY explores the behind-the-scenes of making a film. In Truffaut’s Day for Night, the landscape of creating a film is extremely theatrical and absurd to the point that the behind-the-scenes action rivals the actual film being created. The life behind-the-scenes of a creation is rarely experienced by an audience, and this project opens up that reality to the spectator, revealing accidents, affairs, personal breakdowns, tragedy, laughter, love, rage while questioning the male gaze and the pure absurdity found in this landscape of making. STRANGE JOY presents the collision of two realities to the audience: the story that the filmmakers are portraying and the story of the artist creating the film.

High above the film set, the audience observes the editing room, a projection of the meta-cinema, where the audience will navigate between live documentation, live filming and pre-recorded footage simultaneously as the action unfolds on stage. By actively placing the behind-the-scenes action center stage, the audience and the performer will take a deep dive into what is off and on stage, what is real and what is fabricated, ultimately questioning where lies the frame for truth? The live play between the language of cinema and the liveness of performance provokes a complex choreography and volley of ‘passing the point-of-view to the audience’ as Wim Wenders has described in a technique used in film, ‘It creates a strange distance all of sudden, turning the point-of-view from character back to the audience who become the new point-of-view.’


In collaboration with...

Director / Writer / Concept : Erika Latta

Assistant Director: Montserrat Videla Samper 

Video Designer : Irfan Brkovic

Assistant Video Designer : Colleen Bayati

Video Operator : Tadeo Ríos Dávila

Video Assistant: Carlo Marchet

Stage Manager: Joy Wu

Camera Operator: Documentary  Crew Live:  Jillian Jarin

Camera Operator Film Crew Live: Emma Ciprian 

Video Supervisor : Wlad Rodriguez

Lighting Design  : Darryl Strohan  (GCAPES) 

Assistant Lighting Designer: Irene Weng

Set Design : Erika Latta + Daniel Philips 

Set Construction : Daniel Philips, Erika Latta, Lachlan  Harris-Fiesel, Eve Middleton-Meyer, Calla Roberts, Lauren Han, Czarina Agustines, Saskia Cseh, Sean Bray, Clare Noble, Maximus McLarnon, Jillian Jarin, Terris J. Tan, Jae Gonzales, Marissa Capron, Emmanuel (Will) Zorzos

Original Sound Design  : Stefan Smulovitz 

Sound Mixer: Jean Routhier

Technical Director / Production Manager :   Miles Lavkulich (Director of  GCAPES )

Movement Coach: Kevin Jesuino 

Translation: Athena Chan

Styling by : Erika Latta and cast

Sewing by : Calla Roberts and Jae Gonzales 

Props: by :  the ensemble 

Vector Drawings:  Alex Caprara 


Filming Credits
Director: Erika Latta / Irfan Brkovic
Cinematographer: Tadeo Ríos Dávila

Assistant Director / Swing: Colleen Bayati
Camera Assistant: Carlo Marchet
Actors: Zoë Braithwaite, Eve Middleton-Meyer, Rosemary Morrison, Clare Noble,  Liam Wilkins



Collaborators / Performers 


Czarina Agustines

Breanne Birk

Zoë Braithwaite

Sean Bray

Marissa Capron

Athena Chan 

Emma Ciprian 

Saskia Cseh 

Katie Gherasim 

Jae Gonzales 

Lauren Han 

Lachlan Harris-Fiesel 

Jillian Jarin 

Kevin Jesuino

Ruby Maher 

Maximus McLarnon

Eve Middleton-Meyer

Rosemary Morrison

Clare Noble 

Calla Roberts 

Mavrik Yi Tong Sun

Terris J. Tan 

Aisha Wewala 

Liam Wilkins 

Ruby Wu

Emmanuel (Will) Zorzos 


THANK YOU : Elspeth Pratt,  Daniel Philips, Montserrat Videla,  Kevin, Jesuino, Miles Lavkulich, the entire GCAPES Team, Irfan Brkovic,  Colleen Bayati, Tadeo Ríos Dávila, Carlo Marchet,  Brady Cranfield, Jordyn Wood, Ryan Tacata and Rob Kitsos. 

Thank you to the entire ensemble for their detailed work, energy, rigor and devotion to this project. 


Original Workshop participants included from New York City: Carmel Amit, Ben Thys, April Sweeney, Jun Kim, Jordan Stanley, Melody Bates , Ean Sheehy, Carlo Marks, Kestrel Leah, Raymond Brahmi, Michael Sugarman, Marla Phalen, Lucky Gretzinger, Reneé Gerardo, Cat DeAngelis Olson, Jon Burklund, Gillian Chadsey, Gabriella Hiatt and Natalie Thomas. 


Text Fragments credits : The Producers speech on Einstein was developed and written by Raymond Brahmi with Erika Latta. All performers in the original workshop held in New York City helped to shape and inspire the original text. The script was then expanded from nineteen actors in the original workshop to twenty-seven performers for the SCA  students in a span of three weeks over Christmas break by Erika Latta. Text fragments inspired from the film Day for Night are peppered throughout the text score. The last speech by Claude Jade was adapted from an interview on François Truffaut's way of working as a director. Each performer in this version of the script contributed and added to the existing text in areas or in part. Lastly, the second monologue from the 


Additional Sound: 

Sweet Roseanne_ Bright Light Quartet (Alan Lomax Collection), Chaise Loungue by Wet Lag,