"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,