What Happened to the Tyrant

I was approached by theatre company Cafila Aeterna to collaborate on a production at the Camden People’s Theatre. One member of the company became pregnant and would have been unable to perform during the run. In keeping with the piece’s concept as an archive preserving “the tyrant”, the objective was to preserve this performer’s current work and make it accessible to the audience.

During rehearsals, we locked onto the idea of Difference and Repetition (Deleuze, 1968) — the performer repeating the same scene each time looking for something new, performing it as if for the first time yet with the knowledge of the last. Asked the performer to perform the same sequence seven times, each documentation capturing a unique perspective: a body part, body segment, or particular distance from the action.

The outcome was a site-specific video installation projected onto the floor of the promenade space, allowing the audience to walk around and create their own perspectives. Rehearsal footage shown on a grid with shots often in parallel played with the differences within the performer’s repetitions. The result is both familiar and unfamiliar, holistic and fractured.