Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman Duo

Dec. 23 2014- Jan. 5 2015

3B Development Series

IN RESIDENCE:December 23 2014- January 5 2015

“ELEGANT COMPLEXITY: toward a systems way of seeing” is the working title of a piece inspired by the work of systems scientists over the past century. In this timely trans-disciplinary theatre piece, salve critical, buy cialis playful and elegant principals of whole systems design are elucidated. Pressing global concerns and mundane daily life merge in a web of interdependence. The work is devised, directed and performed by co-artistic directors Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman.  In Elegant Complexity we continue our 25-year investigation into movement-based theatre. This project brings together principles of systems theory with theatre composition.

We develop and implement performance and composition techniques that make a contribution to the vocabulary of gesture and speech in the field of live theatre; onstage, this becomes novel embodied forms of human behavior and social interaction. Intentionally unmediated by current digital technologies, Elegant Complexity draws on digital cultural references. Because digitization gives new urgency to the analogue aspects of theatre, this work is small, analogue and acoustic – best seen in intimate settings where the seeming impossibilities are undeniably live. Fine and precise – comparable to animation – exact composition of each ‘frame’ is needed for the whole to work as a phenomenon of theatrical experience.

We are known for applying complex composed structures to ordinary daily human behavior. These structures form invented systems for organizing movement and speech in theatre, similarly to how new systems for organizing sound have been invented for composing music. As with some music composition, the realization of this theatre requires the development of an intermediary working notation capable of handling the complexity of compositional techniques for the performance. Primary to our working process is the development and mastery of new physical performance techniques required to embody these compositional ideas. Real-time, live and physically unmediated, these embodied movement techniques include orchestrated instant shifts of time and place that we call “pivot-montage”; “cinematic reverse” of movement/gravity/time; “audible/visible speech contradiction”; “uncanny coordination” and other “counter-natural behaviors.”

“…achieved dazzling sophistication…The effect was merely surreal at first, but as coincidences between the plots multiplied, I began to suspect (though I can’t swear) that the performers were intercutting between scenes locatable on a single stage: a couple of theater janitors, the actors rehearsing a play, and the play itself. The piece then became an anatomy of power relationships…I’ve seen a lot of theater fail to reach this virtuoso level of characterization.” Kyle Gann, VillageVoice