One week left until the show opens – get your tickets now!
Meditations: Eva Hesse
September 24-25, 2010
Performances at 8:30 both nights and
3 PM on Saturday the 25th.
Highways Performance Space
1651 18th St.
@ 18th Street Arts Center
1/2 block north of Olympic Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Buy tickets here.
Here is some more stuff from the production:
This one is a sketch of part of the set, working out the layout of the art-wall/incomplete installation that forms part of the back wall of the set. In the foreground was a model of the art-wall, which was been reconfigured as more of a material sample piece instead of an actual model.
Below are a few photos from rehearsal last week:
Shanti Reinhardt and Barry Saltzman discuss.
Tuddy Monteanu documents Eva.
Bianca Gisselle
Bianca Gisselle and Heather Tyler
And some images of the rolling rear projection wall, with a paper screen for testing. We will be putting up the real screen in the space. The shape is a right triangular prism with the top sliced off diagonally – if that makes any sense to you. It came out great, and basically gives us a compact, rolling, moving image. The video projector mount (not shown there) attaches to the outside edge of the vertical post on the back, and drops the image perfectly onto the screen without the need for zooming or any adjustment. Next hurdle – running wires to it from the booth above.
For the past month or so, Michele and I have been working on video and set design for Marcie Begleiter’s play Meditations: Eva Hesse. The piece, a fictionalized account of Eva Hesse’s life and last days, combines theater with elements of sculpture and video installation, and touches on several key moments in Hesse’s life and career. As the video and set design team, we have been working closely with Marcie and director David Watkins to bring the piece to life. Very early on, Marcie had created story-boards visualizing the feel of the performance, combining the essence of Hesse’s work with the reality of her brain cancer until her work and life become merged in the finale.
production design sketch, by Marcie Begleiter
Armed with her early sketches, and following the evolution of the play through the rehearsal and workshopping progress, the set has emerged as a few key elements that loosely define the required settings. One is an installation/studio wall for the actors to work with as the play unfolds. The idea for the installation/studio wall is to create a work in progress, which the actors will build upon, that has the feel and materiality of Hesse’s work, without trying to re-create any of her work in particular. This element references an underlying order layered with organic complexity and rooted in process and materiality. The other major set piece is a rolling, rear-projection video rig – built with an industrial aesthetic so that when it is not carrying video, it will serve as a portion of a wall or part of a space. The steel-angle construction precisely frames the area required for a short-throw projector to create a seven by five foot image, in a compact geometric form.
sketch of rolling rear-projection rig and set wall, by Jeremy J. Quinn
early sketch of the “art wall,” by Jeremy J. Quinn
The video design consists of two main conceptual threads – one channel that fills in set elements and another channel that represents abstractions of Eva’s memories and psychological states, both of which follow the emotional arc of the play. Michele has been shooting and editing at a furious pace, attending most rehearsals and working in the space while watching the rehearsals progress. Rise Industries member Sarah Rushford was also able to shoot some video for us while traveling in Germany, which will be used in a German train station scene in the play.
still from video projection, by Michele Jaquis
Production Crew
Meditations: Eva Hesse is written by Marcie Begleiter, and directed by David Watkins
Michael Vanderbilt : Producer
Michele Jaquis : Video Designer
Jeremy Quinn : Set Designer
Alice Tavener : Costume Designer
R. Christopher Stokes : Lighting Designer
Casey McGann: Stage Manager
Marisa Blankier: Assistant Stage Manager
Rosalyn Myles: Prop Master
Cast
Young Eva-Alexandra Ozeri
Adult Eva-Bianca Gisselle
Dying Eva- Heather Tyler
Tom-Robert Manning Jr.
Mutti/Dr. P/German Curator- Shanti Reinhardt
William/Sol/German Transit Officer-Barry Saltzman
Lucy/Helen/Mariyln-Anne Yatco
Art Worker 1 (Daniel)-Tuddy Monteanu
Art Worker 2 (Jane)-Kimberly Patterson
Performance dates and location:
Highways Performance Space
1651 18th St.
@ 18th Street Arts Center
1/2 block north of Olympic Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90404
Buy tickets here.
September 24-25, 2010
Performances at 8:30 both nights and
3 PM on Saturday the 25th.
Support
Support the production by donating through Kickstarter or Fractured Atlas
Michele and I have been working on set and media design for Caleb Hammond’s experimental theater project Walks Through Walls over the past months, and production is ramping up for the upcoming show:
Walks Through Walls
Highways Performance Space
at 18th Street Arts Center
1651 18th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404
8:30 pm, June 4th and 5th
for tickets, call 310-315-1459
or purchase online at
www.highwaysperformance.org
tickets are $20/$15
Walks Through Walls is written and directed by Caleb Hammond
it features performances by Susan Josephs, Amber Skalski, Tim Ottman, Ceasar F. Barajas and Samantha Gregg
Set, video and sound design by Rise Industries (Jeremy J. Quinn and Michele Jaquis)
Costume Design by Ben Rosenberg
Lighting Design by Christopher Stokes
Director’s Assistants: Nathalie Sanchez, Andrea Dominguez
Production Assistants: Hanna Kovenock, Jonathan Stofenmacher, Alex Becerra
From Caleb:
Walks Through Walls is a transcendent installation/performance piece investigating the human condition as an expressionistic landscape of continually disappearing experiences of agony and ecstasy.
It is a portrait in motion of the ephemerality of memory and desire created by boldly physical actors enmeshed in a canvas of beautiful theatrical imagery and sound.
Performers careen and slide through space, accompanied by a mesmerizing mantra-like fugue of poetic text that is spoken, projected, and heard echoing in the sound design.
Walks Through Walls is part sound and video installation piece, part performance art, part poetry made flesh.
We have developed a minimal set to shape the space and provide depth for movements, which will also provide surfaces for the video projections.
Onto these structures, we will be layering four channels of video and a soundscape that intertwines with the performers’ actions and dialogue.
The central text, a long, multi-voice poem of fragmented narratives, beauty and chaos, is presented throughout the work as projected text, spoken dialogue, audio and video interpretations, and recorded monologues in both video or on the soundtrack.
The result is that the text shifts through the piece, echoing in the many media presented to the audience, fractured and recombined over and over again for the duration of the performance.
Here are some images from the early rehearsals and production:
Tim Ottman, rehearsing in test makeup
Ben Rosenberg applying test makeup to Amber Skalski
Ben Rosenberg applying test makeup to Tim Ottman
Susan Josephs and Amber Skalski at first rehearsal
Caleb Hammond and Tim Ottman confer while Michele Jaquis and Hannah Kovenock look on
Scene tests at first rehearsal
Script reading
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