#pete brooks

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THEATRE REVIEW: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness

THEATRE REVIEW: Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @marcheteatro @TronTheatre @ace_national @lancasterarts @LancasterUni @tbtlake @ImitatingtheDog #JosephConrad #heartofdarkness

When you see that a rendition of Joseph Conrad’s classic Heart of Darkness is being produced for the stage it’d be difficult to quell your inevitable curiosity. Curiosity that arises from a series of impossible to answer questions. Firstly, how the hell do you plan on producing Heart of Darkness for the stage? Conrad’s magnum opus might sit at a comfy eighty pages or so – at least my copy does –…

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Performance & Design

Pete brooks. Mixing Theatre and Cinema. Cochrane theatre.

  Brooks believes in presenting the audience with fragments of narrative, which allows the viewer to interpret those spaces in between, to make sense of the narrative presented. Since we cannot really ever control the communicated piece and the point of reception, this approach allows the viewer to make his/ her own connections, in a manner that brook refers to as a schizophrenic frame work of visual structure.

Some new words for me: dramaturgy – a structure given to a written piece, story or work in terms of its characters, and poetic structures. sonography- involving sound, dialogue and interaction between characters, through music sound and other modes of psychoanalytical spaces.

I thought him mentioning ‘beauty and the beast, spells, sleep and dream spaces to be quite interesting, since they re perfect spaces to be played with/ around in’. Insinuating things, but not defining, leaving a lot unsaid to the viewer to interpret. In that sense, making the film(cinema) space more interactive as in performance space.

Time is laid out spacially in this sense, and is more open to interpretation. Like in hamlet, where hamlet is an idea, which is dramatized, and the spaces inbetween are defined and perceived by viewers as / according to their own experience.

The style of screen being a small bar or two change the way the film is viewd, and addes to the fact, that this space is only partically seen, and the rest is left to the viewers imagination and cognition (in case of the 2 bars).

I particularly liked the idea of projections (behaving as projecting as seen from the character through the medium of projection) and the relationship between old footage and new footage; all together forming new narratives. moving spaces, projections, walls, and behind the scenes night shot footage.

Recently I watched a film written and directed by kiran rao and aamir khan, based in mumbai, called ‘dhobi ghat’ which was a lot less experimental as compared to brooks films, however had a very strong sense of multiple perspectives (as well) of one city (mumbai). she used a variety of styles from classic well framed cinematography, hand held digital video, night shot, filming television screens, art, photographer shooting artist or photography and in essence viewing the city through the lenses of people viewing the through their lenses others who are viewing others through a hand held camera. 

(photographer- shooting artist, who is viewing and creating through the lense of her art - the life of another through her cam coder.)

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Performance & Theatre

Pete brooks. Mixing Theatre and Cinema. Cochrane theatre.

Brooks believes in presenting the audience with fragments of narrative, which allows the viewer to interpret those spaces in between, to make sense of the narrative presented. Since we cannot really ever control the communicated piece and the point of reception, this approach allows the viewer to make his/ her own connections, in a manner that brook refers to as a schizophrenic frame work of visual structure.

Some new words for me: dramaturgy – a structure given to a written piece, story or work in terms of its characters, and poetic structures. sonography- involving sound, dialogue and interaction between characters, through music sound and other modes of psychoanalytical spaces.

I thought him mentioning ‘beauty and the beast, spells, sleep and dream spaces to be quite interesting, since they re perfect spaces to be played with/ around in’. Insinuating things, but not defining, leaving a lot unsaid to the viewer to interpret. In that sense, making the film(cinema) space more interactive as in performance space.

Time is laid out spacially in this sense, and is more open to interpretation. Like in hamlet, where hamlet is an idea, which is dramatized, and the spaces inbetween are defined and perceived by viewers as / according to their own experience.

The style of screen being a small bar or two change the way the film is viewd, and addes to the fact, that this space is only partically seen, and the rest is left to the viewers imagination and cognition (in case of the 2 bars).

I particularly liked the idea of projections (behaving as projecting as seen from the character through the medium of projection) and the relationship between old footage and new footage; all together forming new narratives. moving spaces, projections, walls, and behind the scenes night shot footage.

i recently watched an a film by kiran rao and aamir khan, based in mumbai, called 'dhobi ghat' which was a lot less experimental as compared to brooks films, however had a very strong sense of multiple perspectives (as well) of one city (mumbai). she used a variety of styles from classic well framed cinematography, hand held digital video, night shot, filming television screens, art, photographer shooting artist or photography and in essence viewing the city through the lenses of people viewing the through their lenses others who are viewing others through a hand held camera. 

(photographer- shooting artist, who is viewing and creating through the lense of her art - the life of another through her cam coder.)

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Performance and design

Pete Brooks     26Jan2011

Pete Brooks is course director of the MA Scenography at our college. His lecture played some part of videos, which were made by him.   He presented about the different feeling of audience between cinematic and theater.  The audience get lost in film, when they were touched by the film, they were cry; but people do not cry in the theatre (live show).  He wants to produce dramatic performance more emotional and thinks how the juxtapositions of cinema and theatre affect audiences?

Hence, in his projects, aim to combine innovative stage designs, new narrative techniques and highly choreographed live action to explore themes of cultural, which are accessible to a wide range of audiences.  Such as the film ‘Kellerman’, the collaboration between imitating the dog and Pete Brooks, about this film, the Guardian was reported “ a company at the forefront of testing the nature of theatre’.  The screen was separated several frame to showing different images, giving a wide range of perspective while foreground actor’s performance combined with moving images, giving more sense of space (multi-level space).

Personally, I like these form of performance. After I watched his creative film, it makes me feel like an entering dream.  Audiences have experienced a surreal visual journey.

At the end the of lecture, he played a film which created by him and his MA students, this is a great team work, I am thinking it would be great if we have a piece of work with our team work which is as good as theirs. 

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Performance & Design

By Pete Brooks 26 Jan 2011    

To be honest, I found this lecture quite difficult to understand at the beginning. Perhaps my personal unrelatedness to the subject was the case, since I haven’t seen many performance or theater show in my life. But after a while Pete showed us some of his work that combines elements of theater and cinema technique together, the subject become more tangible and interesting to me. I’ve usually sees the screen as a projected medium for the movie, while the example he shown is a new way to use the screen as part of the story teller, as important as actors on stage. So this is something new. 

As he has mentioned during the talk, he would like to use digital technology as a tool to tell story. People these days (like me) tend to have distance with theater performance, in which has been perceived as too gentle, poetic or intellectual. It is a matter of generations I believe; 100 years ago it is normal people to scream and cry with the death of Juliet on stage, I wondered who would actually cry out loud at the theater these days. This level of engagement has disappeared during times. On the other hand, we can connect easily with on-screen story such as drama television and cinematic movie. People of this generation are use to perceive narration on ‘Brad Pitt’ level. 

Pete posted an interesting question ‘How can you make narrative on stage with an ability to engage / move the viewer emotionally?’ One of his experiments related to the question is using part cinema and part performance. This way the audience can feel the live energy of the actors while experiencing familiar approach.  

Regardless to the distance between my professional as graphic designer and him as theater artist, Pete's way of work impressed me. He believe in theater performance, even though very few people gets it at his level, he still passionate about 'How' to develop what he love into present context. 'How' to deliver it to the world.

As for me, I love books and I believe in print design, however, the world of digital has been a threat to my area and tend to continue furthermore. Sometime I wonder what my grandchild would say about me being a book designer; classic? out-dated? antique? What Pete has taught me is not to go against the flow, nor to give up on what it used to be, but instead go along with it, because there must be some way new. I think that's what important.

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Performance and Design

Performance and Design Pete Brooks Date: 26 Jan 2011 Pete said performance art does not seek to depict some fictitious characters, nor a formal linear narrative story, but more concern about the interaction between the artist and audience. He played several parts of his production films, like Imitating the Dog - Kellerman, Hotel Methuselah, they transcended the conventional dynamics in reality which the surrealistic and bizarre visuals have given audience an intriguing experience. One of the interesting parts is the framing and the extensive use of projection, besides, the flow of imagery reminds me about a film, ‘The Waves’ devised by Katie Mitchell that using live sound effects and real time video. It’s fragmented and dreamlike, exploring about time’s passing and the desire for harmony. The big difference was, the sceneries of Kellerman were pre-recorded, as Pete would like to emphasize the surprising form of communication so that he merged the direct performance of performers with the pre-recorded images and sound together.

The intersection of spoken words and actions created symbolic visual structure that is quite revolutionary to cinema. I think the whole performance are not only telling stories to us consciously but also stimulating something dedicate and arty to our subconscious mind. The projective mask create different layers of illusion, the psychological framings are very gentle and poetic.

He also showed a filming work created by students from MA Performance Design and Practice; they are playing different slides of projection and sound and to make flexible sequences on stage. The camera was fixed on a moving trolley, so when it was moving on the tracks, the projection and performers keep running and moving the outer frames. What makes ‘performance art’ so revolutionary is the cinematic approach of how they make it to such humanistic piece of work.

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Performance and Design

Pete Brooks 26 Jan 2011

The lecture is about the cinematic performance, which is the combination of the performance on the stage and the cinematic frame. The lecturer said when we go to the theatre we usually expect the pleasure, which is too gentle and poetry, unlike going to the cinema. Personally, I rarely go to the theatre so I have not seen so many performances. Thus, the cinematic performance is very new and interesting style of performance for me.

The lecturer shows us some of his works. He is interested in the emotion narrative and graphic situation. One of his work named ‘Hotel Methuselah’ is interesting. The performance is unlike the normal performance in the theatre, as it looks like the synthetic world with half cinema half performance. On the stage, there is the live performance of real performers without showing their faces. Meanwhile, there are the cinematic strips like the screen in the cinema on the back of the stage showing the close up view of the actor’s faces, which obviously are not the face of the real actors on the stage.

Those cinematic strips on the stage are the reference of the graphic novel, which shows the time in the performance. This kind of performance need to be focused on how to make narrative on stage to create emotion involving which the lecturer said it is very difficult. There are also the interesting visual tricks on the stage as the cinematic strip will move as a background to make it looks like the actors and actresses on the stage were walking in the real location.

Another of his interesting work is the work that he did with a student. There are two camera views, first one is the coloured one that looks like normal performance. Another one is the night camera view that showed the progress behind the scene in the same time like how the backdrops are moving or how the actress move from one scene to another scene. It makes the audience like me feel excited about the exact moving of people who are involved; the camera man, the actresses, the backdrop mover, the light controller. I wonder how many times they need to rehearse before filming and it is really interesting to watch.

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Performance & Design

26.01.11 Pete Brooks

At this Wednesday morning lecture our guest was Pate Brooks and the topic was Performance design. Brooks showed samples of his work and how he explores narratives in his contemporary performance, mainly when it comes to scenery and language: he believes in the return of storytelling to make the audience more emotionally involved.

As a graphic designer, the most attractive example of his work was the performance called Kellerman. While watching it I was thinking: "This performance is theatre, but it could also be cinema, a graphic novel or even a double-page spread on a magazine.” I could even picture in my mind where to place headlines, subtitles and the text. As a matter of fact, Brooks used graphic novels as reference to create Kellerman.

Kellerman - Picture by Ed Waring (http://www.imitatingthedog.co.uk/kellerman/default.asp)

Another interesting example was the performance he did with his MA students, in Italy: during the event, the audience was placed inside a moving box made out of wood, watching the performance through a frame carved in one of its walls.  The whole theatre was the stage and the audience inside the box was taken through different scenarios. This sort of experiment involved playing with frames and audience engagement. In the end of the lecture, he answered some questions about engagement between actors and the public. Should they physically interact during the performance? Brook’s performances do not play with this sort of interaction. The engagement is between the audience, narrative, visual and the ambient. He also uses cinematic language to tell stories in order to engage audiences that are not so familiar with the theatre. I think it is very clever of him because that makes his narratives more attractive to a bigger group, not only people that are used to theatre language.