ForwardsBackwards
Forwards/Backwards is a lecture designed to display and emphasize the impressive vocal and performative capabilities of our cast. Each of our lectures require vocalists to deliver text in very difficult, highly-rehearsed ways; this piece seeks to make the spectacle of the their competence as impressive as possible.
The lecture is imagined as such. A small ensemble of musicians are situated on stage behind a small tv/vcr combo sitting atop a stool. The vocalist walks on stage holding a vhs cassette, inserts the tape into the vcr, hits play, then steps behind the television. With the vocalist behind the television, unable to see the image, the tape begins to play. The instrumentalists and vocalist begin and on the tape, the visuals are simple. They are verbatim. The video plays the text, displays visuals, word-by-word, at the exact pace the vocalist delivers them.
The typical convention of an essay is that that presenter (vocalist) is and expert. They own what they’re presenting on by virtue of their total ownership and comprehension of the material. Here the same thing happens in a different way. The vocalist, by being able to perform at an exact memorized rate exhibits a total comprehension and ownership.
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Things are moving forward with Forwards\Backwards and boys from ArpLine, but mostly the show is still super-top secret at this point. What we can say however is the gents’ album is this close to dropping. Having heard each and every track, we can say with confidence you would be remiss like whoa to not grab yourself a copy when its released in Feb. Consider it preparation for the mind-blowing experience Fwds\Bkwds is gonna be.
We’re in the middle of developing - and hopefully will soon begin executing - our plan for 2010. We had a really successful 2009 and we owe that to the literally hundreds of people who came out to see our shows at 3rd Ward, Judson Memorial Church, and NYU just to name a few. We never imagined shows about Hannah Montana and pictures of cats from the internet would draw enough of a crowd that we’d have standing room only in a 200+ seat auditorium, so as performers and performance-makers we’re thrilled for all the support.
So on that note, if 2009 was our year to perform as much as we possibly could, we’re going to be spending 2010 making as much as we can. Which means you’re probably going to be seeing less of us IRL over the next 9 to 12 months, but we’ll be making frequent updates here and hopefully producing a wealth of online / media only content.
In the works right now we have:
- • Further updates to Loan Words
- • Further publications of textual works based on YouTube comments
- • Two audio only works which look like they might exceed 5hrs in length
- • A Memerelated video series (sans-lab coats, of course).
Not to mention three performances ranging from smallish to … Gimantis™. We’ll make further updates as they are worth making but, the rundown looks something like this:
- • MemeFactory: Memebrids NYU - Feb 19th (not yet sure if this is open to the public).
- • MemeFactory: Memebrids ROFLCon - Get your tickets!
- • Forwards\Backwards - Sometime in August at a currently undisclosed location.
And as always it’s possible things might change, and we’re all doing a fair bit of traveling and have a fair number of non-wwksf projects in the works as well. But between now and further updates, Happy 2010 and thanks again for your continued and most awesome support.
So it looks like we got super lucky, and will be awarded a Swing Space grant by the LMCC. So that means Forwards\Backwards is going to be going into development really soon. We’re pretty excited. We hope you are too.
The Hannah Complex is premiering on Monday night, April 27th as part of Movement Research’s Spring 2009 Roll Call Festival. Admission is free and we’re sharing the bill with two other great acts. Come out on Monday night and help us help you help us figure out the whole Reality thing.
Starring Eric Grundhauser and Kate Reilly.
Costumes and styling by Karen Lanyi
Visuals, Music and Text by Patrick Davison and Mike Rugnetta.
After doing some research I found an interesting tidbit about Magellan’s travels around the globe. Turns out that when his 18-remaining crew members returned to Spain, they had experienced one fewer night than they had expected to. Their calendars were a day behind. This discovery lead directly to the need for an international date line.
Magellan and his men: the first official time travelers!
Patrick and I are going to be applying for the Spring Solo Show @ 3rd Ward. If we get it, we’ll be producing and performing two original works and putting all the finishing touches on Hannah. We’d also put together a few video woks and use the shop to build some podiums and forms to project onto. We think we’re a solidly awesome fit, but its up to the judges.
Part of me thinks alot of Forward / Backwards might be modelled on Magellan’s failure to
actually circumnavigate the globe. Did you know he died before his crew actually made it? Really almost
none of his crew made it. Only four of his original crewmen returned, and along the journey almost 250 sailors from all around the world died of starvation, disease, in war and were even abandoned.
Brutal.
