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With bandage costumes designed and made by Amy Oakes, among flour welded paper screens designed and made by Matthew Crosby, in the crepuscular light cast by actor-operated LED light housings, the six actors of Orpheo Machine constructed their Underworld. Ovid's monochrome version or Eurydice's coloured queendom administered by the oppresive Editor. In Thursday Group's version of the Orphean myth, Eurydice rediscovers her voice, not one that whispers in the ear of poets that they may speak, but one that sings to the universe of her own experience. Over two nights in June 2021, audiences interpreted their narratives of this poor theatre offering.
With bandage costumes designed and made by Amy Oakes, among flour welded paper screens designed and made by Matthew Crosby, in the crepuscular light cast by actor-operated LED light housings, the six actors of Orpheo Machine constructed their Underworld. Ovid's monochrome version or Eurydice's coloured queendom administered by the oppresive Editor. In Thursday Group's version of the Orphean myth, Eurydice rediscovers her voice, not one that whispers in the ear of poets that they may speak, but one that sings to the universe of her own experience. Over two nights in June 2021, audiences interpreted their narratives of this poor theatre offering.
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Orpheo Machine was supported in development by The City of Melbourne.
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What this performance drew audience attention to is the absurdity in some of this - by putting various bodies into sculptural forms - and importantly to give these sculptural forms a sonic element. This meant that the sculpture, which is often understood as a fixed art object (materially solidified in bronze, marble, etc) which often represents the form of a body, was now being understood back through a performing body that was not silent or still. These bodies acted like sculptures in that they held poses but it was a kind of subversive sculpture in its non-fixed stasis.
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It made me think of language and the limits to our ability to understand one another - to make the proper translations and to know what anyone truly means. This was also complicated by the performers memory and how this memory was creating this kind of temporal suspension from the trauma induced by their loss of a lover.—Chelsea Coon 2021
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It made me think of language and the limits to our ability to understand one another - to make the proper translations and to know what anyone truly means. This was also complicated by the performers memory and how this memory was creating this kind of temporal suspension from the trauma induced by their loss of a lover.—Chelsea Coon 2021
Photos: Oscar Socias
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Inspired by Annette Iggulden's study of renaissance nuns who communicated through silence with illuminating manuscripts and Matthew Crosby's study of Lev Vygotsky's notion that the inner thought is completed in its expression, the women of the Underworld, Yuri | Eurydice | Alana Hoggart, Psyche | Ru, Joshinder Kaur Chaggar, Shei | Charon | Tessa Mari Luminati, Pers | Persephone | Lorna McLeod made these watercolor on paper glyphs (2021).
Inspired by Annette Iggulden's study of renaissance nuns who communicated through silence with illuminating manuscripts and Matthew Crosby's study of Lev Vygotsky's notion that the inner thought is completed in its expression, the women of the Underworld, Yuri | Eurydice | Alana Hoggart, Psyche | Ru, Joshinder Kaur Chaggar, Shei | Charon | Tessa Mari Luminati, Pers | Persephone | Lorna McLeod made these watercolor on paper glyphs (2021).
Photos: Rodrigo Calderón and Matthew Crosby
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Screen grabs of early online glyph practice (2020)
Screen grabs of early online glyph practice (2020)
