Directing
Post Modern
Devised Piece
Cryo-Chamber was an assignment of the Advance Directing class at Baylor University. We were given a word and asked to devise a 10-15 minute piece inspired by the word. It was required to have projections, lights and sound.
I was assigned the word FREEZE.
I research, cast, rehearsed for 4 weeks and teched for 3 days. As apart of the project we also had to do our own sound and projections.
Research
I first started with a mind map and word association with the word FREEZE.
I then had a meeting with my mentor Stan Denman to explore the multitude of meetings FREEZE has.
From there I started thinking about potential scenes and images that could be associated with the word FREEZE.
The first two rehearsals were spent collaborating with the cast on how they identified with the word FREEZE. This is some documentation from these meetings.
After word association, I started looking into images and sounds. Here are some provocative images that helped me think about visual framing systems.
Scene by Scene
The piece starts with the actors 'frozen' in various locations in the audience. As the audience enters they are offered a popsicle and must navigate the actors as they find their seat as the song Past Lives plays. One of the actors is frozen under a sheet center stage. Once everyone is seated Vois sur ton chemin- Techno Mix plays and in strobe lights the actors pop and lock their way on stage to circle the center actor.
The previous scene culminates in the sound of a glacier as the center actor reveals herself and the projector commands the audience to laugh. The actors then transform into mimes while the song The Entertainer plays. They engage in mime shananagins that end with one of the mimes inviting an actress that was planned in the audience (she does not have mime make up) to punch one of the mime. Once the non mime punches a mime, she is met with hateful stares and middle fingers.
The room shifts as the projector plays the Titanic door scene. The actors 'swim' on as the shadow cast to mimic the projector. The actor mimicking Jack is named Jackson, so every time Rose would say "Jack" in the video, the actors would finish the name by saying "son". A shark interrupts the scene by pausing the video and the shark tank theme song plays. 'Rose' pauses the music and shoes the shark off stage. They flip channels until they come back to tinaic and finish by "letting Jack(son) go".
The next flows into the next as the table and Jackson travel SR to become a desk with chair and laptop. An actress enters sneakly to watch 'explicit' videos and pleasure herself. She looks up mime erotica and a video of ice cream licking appears but the screen freezes. And another actor enters the space and catches her in the act. The Entertainer plays again as they fight over the computer.
As the non mime is taken away, Ice Ice Baby plays as another mime vapes and has a dance party to herself. A flower falls from the sky and a picnic ensues. In the picnic, one of the mimes tries to coheres the mime with the flower into being intimate by offering phallic foods. The scene intensifies as the perpetrator forces the popsicle into the mouth of the mime with a flower. Sail by AWOLNATION plays and the other actors enter with popsicles to overwhelm the mime with the flower. They engage in sycrohnize swimming inspired dance that ends with a blood capsle poping in the flower mime's mouth.
The non mime appears again. The projector instructs the audience to play the role of her mother. The audience tells the non mime she isn't good enough and must prove herself. She performs a slam poetry piece about panic attacks as the other mimes become a manifestation of the non mime's panic. The audience is instructed to laugh as the mimes wrap her up in the mic cord and wheel her away. The mic ghost light is the only thing that illuminates her.
The final scene was underscored by Laurie Anderson's Moon in the Water. Videos of the audience that were secretly taken before the performance play. One of the mimes is left on stage suddenly aware of the audience. This actor walks up and down the stage feeling left out. He becomes aware of the stage when the non mime actor pours a pitcher of ice water into a kiddy pool. She begins washing her face in the pool. The other mimes enter and and the non mime also invites them to wash themselves clean.
They move as a symbiotic unit but do not include the mime who had been wander the audience. The audience mime comes on stage when a ice bucket is set in the middle of the kiddy pool. The audience mime dumps the ice from the ice bucket on themselves but nothing changed. They implode on themselves and sink into the pool. The non mime covers them with a sheet in the lights go out.