Ahh, the glory days of the video store. How wonderful they were.
re:group performance collective, a group of artists inspired by the highs and lows of pop culture in their work, will present a unique experience at Redland Performing Arts Centre. 'Coil' combines real-time filmmaking and theatre, and is set in a '90s video store, paying tribute to video stores and the communities within them.
It's a technological feat – a film recorded before the audience's eyes, and then screened at the end of the performance. A single performer plays every character in the cinematic scene.
Ahead of 'Coil' at Redland Performing Arts Centre, re:group's Steve Wilson-Alexander who is the Co-Creator and Lead Performer in 'Coil', flips the script, listing five films which feature a play, or have a 'theatrical quality'.
One
'12 Angry Men' (1954). Between the original play version by Reginald Rose in 1954 and the revered 1957 film adaptation by Sidney Lumet, '12 Angry Men' was shot and broadcast live on air for television in 1954. 'Coil' entails Steve playing all the characters in the movie we shoot on stage in 'Coil', via automated video DJing technology developed by Solomon, and an early idea was to use the technology for Steve to play every character in our take on '12 Angry Men'. Our idea didn’t last, but the live television broadcast of the play does, especially considering it was made in the 1950s.Two
'Opening Night' (1977). Gena Rowlands' performance of the nervous breakdown her character faces in preparing for the premiere of the Broadway play in John Cassavetes’ 'Opening Night' is great. Indeed, it inspired a number of theatre adaptations in turn, including Ivo van Hove’s 'Opening Night' and Nat Randall and Anna Breckon’s 'The Second Woman', which use cinema techniques to capture and re-imagine the play with the movie live on stage, bringing the source material full circle in wonderfully inventive and profound ways.Three
'Dogville' (2003). Lars Von Trier’s 'Dogville' was shot entirely on a large sound stage, empty except for minimalist signifiers of the small American town of the same name. The setting of the sound stage and acting style of Nicole Kidman and co makes it feel like a (still) live play.Four
'Timecode' (2000). Directed by Mike Figgis, 'Timecode' involves four continuous largely improvised single takes edited into a 'Brady Bunch'-like quadrant for the viewer, depicting preparations for shooting a movie in Los Angeles. The way each of the shots unfolds feels wonderfully theatrical, given the manner in which only a single take of each is possible, and the movie inspired live art collective Gob Squad’s 'Super Night Shot', which in turn inspired our practice of live cinema, and another early iteration of 'Coil' involved Steve playing every character in a similarly 'Brady Bunch'-like grid. That idea didn’t last either.Five
'Russian Arc' (2002). Another single-take movie, which once again provides a wonderfully theatrical quality to the movie, charging it with a rich sense of tightly choreographed ‘liveness’, even though it is all caught on film for continual re-watching.'Coil' plays Redland Performing Arts Centre (Queensland) 18-19 August.
