Posted: November 23rd, 2010 under 300 TAPES.
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In the spirit of 300 TAPES, we’ve posed a series of fun Quick Fire Questions to members of Public Recording Company. We continue today with co-creator Bobby Theodore. Sign up to our RSS feed or join The Theatre Centre’s facebook page to be notified of the next installment of Quick Fire Questions.

Your Name: Bobby Theodore

What is your greatest fear? Not enjoying my freedom

What is your earliest memory? Sliding down the carpeted stairs at my childhood home.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? My inertia.

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Disrespect

Property aside, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought? My tikit – a collapsible bike

What is your most treasured possession? My cast iron frying pan

What would your super power be? Time travel

What is your most unappealing habit? Nose hair yanking

What would you most like to wear to a fancy dress party? My tux

What is your guiltiest pleasure? Internet shopping for cookware

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Making it this far

What keeps you awake at night? I sleep like a baby

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? Don’t worry

Where would you most like to be right now? Running through an artichoke field in Tuscany.

Posted: November 22nd, 2010 under 300 TAPES.
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In the spirit of 300 TAPES, we’ve posed a series of fun Quick Fire Questions to members of Public Recording Company. We continue today with co-creator Ame Henderson. Sign up to our RSS feed or join The Theatre Centre’s facebook page to be notified of the next installment of Quick Fire Questions.

Your Name: AME HENDERSON

What is your greatest fear? People I love dying

What is your earliest memory? The pattern on the carpet in the first house I lived in when I was born

Which living person do you most admire, and why? The dalai lama

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? Perfectionism

What is the trait you most deplore in others? Egotism

Property aside, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought? A video camera

What is your most treasured possession? My silver ice skates

What would your super power be? Flying

What is your most unappealing habit? Double and triple checking that the door is locked

What would you most like to wear to a fancy dress party? Heels

What is your guiltiest pleasure? Spending money on sporting events

What do you consider your greatest achievement? Continued practice

What keeps you awake at night? Worry

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? To worry less

Where would you most like to be right now? In the backyard

Posted: November 16th, 2010 under 300 TAPES.
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(Brendan Gall in 300 TAPES by Public Recordings. Photo by Trevor Schwellnus)

In the spirit of 300 TAPES, we’ve posed a series of fun Quick Fire Questions to members of Public Recordings company, starting off with performer Brendan Gall. Sign up to our RSS feed or join The Theatre Centre’s facebook page to be notified of the next installment of Quick Fire Questions.

Your Name: BRENDAN GALL

What is your greatest fear? GETTING LOST AT THE MALL

What is your earliest memory? GETTING LOST AT THE MALL

Which living person do you most admire, and why? GEORGE STROUMBOULOPOULOS, BECAUSE HE’S ALWAYS EITHER INTERVIEWING SOMEONE OR PREPARING TO INTERVIEW SOMEONE AND YET SOMEHOW HE STILL FINDS THE TIME TO RIDE HIS MOTORBIKE AND SPELL HIS LAST NAME.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? MY FLIPPANT ATTITUDE TOWARDS QUESTIONAIRES

What is the trait you most deplore in others? MURDER

Property aside, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought? A MOVIE I MADE.

What is your most treasured possession? MY TREASURE. I KEEP IT IN A CHEST. BUT I CAN’T TELL YOU WHERE. ALTHOUGH THERE IS A MAP. BUT I CAN’T TELL YOU WHERE THE MAP IS.

What would your super power be? THE ABILITY TO MAKE PEOPLE TRIP AFTER THEY’VE DONE SOMETHING TERRIBLE TO ME AND THEY’RE WALKING AWAY. THAT WAY, I ALWAYS COME OUT ON TOP.

What is your most unappealing habit? PRETENDING TO LISTEN.

What would you most like to wear to a fancy dress party?A FANCY DRESS

What is your guiltiest pleasure? SMOKING

What do you consider your greatest achievement? THAT TIME I WON THE OLYMPICS.

What keeps you awake at night? UPPERS

What is the most important lesson life has taught you? IF YOU PUT YOUR MIND TO IT, YOU CAN DO ALMOST ANYTHING; OTHER THINGS, NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY, YOU’LL NEVER BE ABLE TO DO THEM. LIFE IS THE WORST TEACHER.

Where would you most like to be right now? STANDING BEHIND YOU AS YOU READ THIS… DON’T BOTHER LOOKING, I’m NOT ACTUALLY BEHIND YOU. …OR AM I? NO. NO, I’M NOT. (…OR AM I?)

Posted: November 8th, 2010 under 300 TAPES.
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What was the inspiration behind 300 TAPES?

We met when we were students in Montreal – Bobby at the National Theatre School of Canada in playwriting and Ame at Concordia University in the dance program. We became close friends, but until now, had never worked together. This was not a coincidence. It was due to a disagreement about performance, both in process and product. It was a great source of tension in our relationship so we simply avoided discussing it.

Many years later, having both relocated to Toronto, we decided to make a project together. The spark was an interest in addressing the conflict between us and to explore what that tension could give rise to in a creative process. Throughout the entire process, this playful spirit of risk has inspired the ongoing development of 300 TAPES.

We began the process by talking about our curiosities and how they might overlap. We decided we were interested in how the question of what is true or real, within a theatrical event, can be piqued by both movement and story. Instead of Ame’s choreographic, interests being in conflict with Bobby’s focus on narrative, we began playing with the flux between our points of view. We were both drawn to the play between the highly-constructed and the seemingly authentic. We decided to start with stories, with “real” life. We asked actors to tell personal stories in order to explore both the narrative and the choreographic in storytelling.

300 TAPES was created collaboratively by a group of artists. How important is this collaborative approach to the piece?

Using the structure of Ame’s company Public Recordings and its history of performance creation, we invited a group of collaborators to join us in our investigation and entered the studio. We asked three performers who were fantastic storytellers with strong physicality, as well as a sound artist we were curious about, a designer with whom Ame shared a history of working, and a stage manager we hoped would somehow keep track of it all.

Just as our initial desire was to find the overlaps between our seemingly divergent aesthetics and practices, at its core, this work seeks out the shared language that lies in between (and perhaps in spite of) our more comfortable modes. We have continually bounced off of each other, questioned each other, debated, argued, been rendered speechless and motionless. And, ultimately, we have found a method of working with this material that is unique to this process and that addresses our starting questions in ways that continually challenge our thinking and our art-making.

300 TAPES was created over 2 years as part of The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program. Can you tell us a bit about this development process?

Through several exploratory workshops with the performers, the performance’s structure and content began to arise from an archive of personal stories as told by the performers. With sound artist Anna Friz, we recorded these stories onto tape using microcassette recorders. Each performer now had a personal archive of stories documenting their lives, starting with their first memories and working towards the present. These tapes, in both their content and form, became the material we used to create the performance. As these archives grew, we explored ways to interact and play with this material to engage with the archive.

In performance, the recordings are edited and manipulated as the performers select from the archive and ‘play it back’ using different methods and effects. Similarly, all movement is based on set sequences of pedestrian gesture. On a larger structural level, these actions are recorded, scripted, and re-performed in a series of repetitions. Essentially, the entire space is transformed into a giant conceptual tape recorder in which the audience and performers are immersed. Inside this recorder, 300 TAPES explores the role of the performer as a physical playback vessel, and the interaction with their personal archive as a physical act. These ideas are reflected in every element of the developing production from the design of the space to the treatment of sound, movement, text and light.

During the performance, these recordings become audible to the audience through their live manipulation by Anna Friz, sometimes revealing and sometimes complicating notions of ownership, identity and interpretation.

What can audiences expect from 300 TAPES?

300 TAPES is a visceral theatrical experience that the performers and audience embark on together. The audience is immersed in a heightened sensory environment, watching the relationships between the performers, the material, and each other transform before their eyes and ears. The performers continually select and auto-recite (speaking them aloud as they hear them played on headphones) their stories negotiating with themselves and each other while performing. They select from each others’ archives, presenting the other performers versions of their selves. The audience watches these actions, follows the archives’ content, and witnesses a dynamic current between performer and tape, performer and performer, performer and audience, as all identities shift and change.

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Posted: November 8th, 2010 under 300 TAPES, November 2010 Newsletter.
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Introduce your students to an original piece of Canadian theatre with experimental storytelling, groundbreaking sound design and innovative choreography.

300 TAPES by Public Recordings

Student matinée: Thursday December 9, 11a.m.
Free post-show chat + study guide (click here to download pdf)
Student Groups 10+: $12.
The Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen Street West. (google map).

Imagine recording your life on 100 tapes. Record. Rewind. Play. Listen. Stop.

The three performers – Joe Cobden , Frank Cox-O’Connell and Brendan Gall (East of Berlin – Sterling Award nomination) – recorded their lives onto 100 tapes each. These tapes form the source material for an intimate theatre piece of fact and fiction that explores how memories are shaped (and warped) by time, our own ideas of ourselves and the eyes (and ears) of others.

Merging theatre, sound art, choreography, text and light, 300 TAPES transforms the theatre space into a giant conceptual tape recorder in which the audience and performers are immersed.

300 TAPES will

• introduce students to an original piece of Canadian theatre with experimental storytelling, groundbreaking sound design and innovative choreography.
• showcase new techniques, technologies and staging which communicate and enhance specific aspects of the performance and audience engagement.
• stimulate discussion and thoughts about authenticity, truth and memory. Why do we seek authenticity or truth? How is our identity created by the stories we tell?
• demonstrate to students how to use their own memories/life experiences as the source for role play/performance.

Recommended for Grades 10+.

DATES: December 1-12, 2010. Tuesday – Saturday 8pm, Sunday 2pm.
STUDENT MATINEE THURSDAY DECEMBER 9, 11AM, PLUS A POST-SHOW CONVERSATION WITH COMPANY.
(post-show chat also available on other dates. Please enquire when booking.)
PRICE: STUDENT GROUPS of 10+: TICKETS $12 EACH. For every 12 seats purchased, receive one FREE chaperone ticket. (A $1 credit card transaction fee applies.)
BOOKING: contact Ruth Waters at 416-538-0988 or ruth@theatrecentre.org
LOCATION: The Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen St. West, downtown Toronto. M6J 1H3 (google map)

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Posted: October 25th, 2010 under 300 TAPES.
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Download 300 TAPES Media Kit (pdf) – click here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PLEASE ADD TO LISTINGS THROUGH TO DECEMBER 12, 2010
Media Contact: Ruth Waters, The Theatre Centre, 416-534-9261 ruth@theatrecentre.org

300 TAPES by Public Recordings

Co-produced by Public Recordings with Alberta Theatre Projects and The Theatre Centre
Developed as part of The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program

Opens Wednesday December 1- Sunday 12 December, 2010 at The Theatre Centre

Co-created by Ame Henderson and Bobby Theodore with
Performers Joe Cobden, Frank Cox-O’Connell and Brendan Gall
Sound artist Anna Friz
Scenographer Trevor Schwellnus
Dramaturg Vicki Stroich
Stage manager and archivist Gillian Lewis

Imagine recording your life on 100 tapes. Record. Rewind. Play. Listen. Stop.

Three men recorded their lives onto 100 tapes each for this intimate archive of fact and fiction that explores how our memories and identity are shaped (and warped) by time, our own ideas of ourselves and the eyes (and ears) of others.

With a groundbreaking sound design, a choreography of our everyday twitches and three performers revealing everything, this bold experiment in storytelling thoughtfully and playfully provokes questions about authenticity.

300 TAPES was developed collaboratively over 2 years as part of The Theatre Centre’s Residency Program. The three performers’ recordings of their own personal memories are used as the source material for 300 TAPES.

“It is thrilling to present Public Recordings’ 300 TAPES at The Theatre Centre, in the very space the piece was developed as part of our Residency Program. We’re also delighted to join forces with Alberta Theatre Projects in introducing this groundbreaking new work to audiences in Calgary.” Franco Boni, Artistic Director, The Theatre Centre

The Theatre Centre’s 2-year Residency Program supports independent artists to create new work. Artists are provided with space, funding and mentorship to explore and develop an idea and create new work that is both provocative and innovative.

Public Recordings supports and promotes the works of dancemaker Ame Henderson and her collaborators. It is recognized for its distinctive style that incorporates ideas and aesthetics from other disciplines and questions recognized performance models.

Following the premiere of 300 TAPES at The Theatre Centre, it will premiere at the 25th Annual Enbridge playRites Festival of new Canadian Plays, Alberta Theatre Projects, Calgary, in February 2011. www.ATPlive.com.

LISTING INFORMATION: 300 TAPES by Public Recordings at The Theatre Centre
Co-produced by Public Recordings with Alberta Theatre Projects and The Theatre Centre
DATES: 1-12 December, 2010. Tuesday – Saturday, 8pm. Sunday 2pm.
LOCATION: The Theatre Centre, 1087 Queen Street West, Toronto ON M6J 1H3
TICKETS: $22. Student/Senior/Artworker discounts $15. Groups 10+ $12
BOX OFFICE: 416-538-0988
MORE INFO: www.theatrecentre.org
Supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, The Ontario Arts Council. The Toronto Arts Council, George C Metcalf Foundation, The Ontario Trillium Foundation.

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Posted: October 22nd, 2010 under 300 TAPES, Press Releases 2010-2011.
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