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Méliès & me

the future ain’t what it used to be

M É L I È S & M E

2 the future ain’t what it used to be

by and with Michele Cremaschi

realtime programming, interactive design Andrea Cremaschi

scenes Silvio Motta

costumes Elisabetta Cosseddu

mìse en scene support Umberto Zanoletti

photoes Marco Riva

producted in Residenza Teatrale InItinere

supporting sponsorship Fondazione Cariplo - Bando Être, Consorzio del Parco dei Colli di Bergamo

other artistic residenciesInternational Street Theatre Festival “Feste in Costa”, Bergamo, april 2011;

LPM - Live Performers Meeting, Roma, may 2011;

International Street Theatre Festival “La luna nel pozzo”, Caorle, september 2011;

Residenza Teatrale InItinere, Bergamo, january-june 2012

Teatro Sociale, Bergamo, “Nuove tecnologie in scena”, march 2012.

“When cinema was a

young technology, Méliès

taught us its magic.

I always wanted to be like

him and now, finally, i’ll

try!

But, this time, it’ll be

LIVE”.

the ideaWhen Méliès first encountered the cinema, it was still a young technology that even its own inventors – the Lumière Brothers – didn’t give much chance of surviving. Méliès was the one who combined passion for technical experimentation with a vision of the future and laid down the “rules” of writing for the cinema and demonstrated all its potential.

Today’s technology lets us review the entire movie-making production process in the blink of an eye. Filming, montage, superimposure, editing, and projection can all be done and produced in real time, creating under the name “live cinema” an entirely new breed of live performance.

We like to imagine what Méliès would have done with these tools in his hands and how much they would have served his fervid imagination. Just look what he accomplished with the rudimentary cameras and implements of his day! We like to think he would have canonized the rules of movie writing and developed a new language. More than anything else, we like to think how all this would have offered a new way for him to bring his fanta-science dreams, his most disturbing nightmares, and perhaps even his utopian ideas of the 21st century to the silver screen.

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Méliès & me 3

from the origins of the cinemato the future of the cinemaGeorge Méliès

Maries-Georges-Jean Méliès è stato un regista e illusionista francese.

Maries-Georges-Jean Méliès was a French illusionist and movie director.

Known as the cinema’s second founding father after the Lumiere Brothers, Méliès introduced numerous technical and narrative developments. He is recognized as the inventor of fictitious cinema (the filming of worlds "other than real”) and film montage and editing, perhaps the new idiom’s most distinctive feature.

Méliès is also universally accepted as the father of special effects. Discovering the substitution stop trick quite by accident in 1896, he was one of the first directors to use the techniques of multiple exposure, dissolves and hand-painted color (directly onto his film).

Live cinema

“Live cinema” is a term coined recently to define a certain type of real-time audio-video performance. The typical creator of “live cinema” events is currently the so-called “VJ”, the younger brother of the more famous DJ wielding higher technology tools that in addition to generating soundscapes also permit the projection of pre-recorded images taken from “footage” tapped from video clip and sound effect archives. Many VJ have no training in the arts and do not create the video content they mix and project during their shows. This makes many “performances” little more than giant screensavers with a synthesized soundtrack. The exploration of technical possibilities often appears to prevail over artistic ends. The impression is often one of witnessing self-referential events geared to audiences accustomed to reading the underlying technological more than the telling of a real story, even if the means of expression adopted is the latest there is.

Rare examples are provided by shows in which the real-time nature of the audio-video work serves a more specific purpose, however explicit or concealed it may be; in cases like these, the installation’s “ingredients” rarely feature digital material that has not been carefully selected if not recorded ad hoc for the occasion or even live on the spot. These performances can nearly always be considered contemporary art or video-art.

Even more rare are live performances with some degree of expressive research in which video – a part of the theatrical stage set for years now – is anything more than just a playback of pre-recorded material that has little or nothing to do with the action on the stage. This is therefore not “live cinema” but rather a form of classic cinema matched with greater or lesser success to the presence and action of the actors in flesh and blood. The concept of “here and now” so tangible in live performance runs up against the inevitability of pre-ordered and unchangeable production time required by the audio or video track shown on stage.

As in even older times where music played live came to claim a space of its own on stage in symbiosis with the movement of the actor, now video can take the same step, creating itself and/or replaying itself at the whim of the actor on stage or as dictated in the script read by both.

This leads to the birth of a form of performance somewhere between theater and cinema in which the videos and sounds generated at the moment serve the purpose of drama and one in which the actor is no longer a slave to the time necessarily required by pre-composed multimedia editing but is himself the artificer requiring no other interface than his body alone, no other codes than that of movement

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In the theatrical experience that has brought us to this point, we have explored the relationship between movement and image in various forms, from those drawn or painted “live” using the simplest of tools to computerized animation. The possibility to spontaneously draw fantastic worlds appeared immediately tantalizing. The need to adapt stage movements to the rhythms and times required by the animator or the image processor imposed certain limits. The challenge lay in reclaiming our “right” as actors to tailor our actions to the feelings of the public, the mood of the evening or the flash of improvisation repressed until now. We wanted to return to center stage and reinforce the illusion of image-at-the-service of the story that could only be simulated before and now has become a possibility.

Our encounter with Méliès was electrifying. We identified completely with his early dabbling in the cinema as an extension of his art of illusion. We imagined how he would have tried to reproduce the disappearing acts that astounded audiences every evening on the Robert-Houdini stage, committing them to film thanks to a skilled and visionary use of dragging and dropping pre-recorded material. We absorbed the passion he brought as an actor in his own films when, with silent film mimicry, he announces his next trick,

the next illusion. We imagined how excited he would have been by the potential for multiplying his own image that the computer offered, far exceeding those he’d employed in “L’homme orchestre”.

This performance is a tribute to the cinema of Méliès and his relationship with technology, a thing that arouses the same curiosity in us, triggering the same thirst for experimentation that drives the current generation of technological “live performers”. Like Méliès, we’ve played with technology using irony and creativity, never seeking amazement as an end in itself through special effects as in the Hollywood product “Avatar”; on the contrary, borrowing from the repertory of the excellent illusionist that Méliès was, we revived and reprocessed selected vintage theater tricks using today’s technologies in witness of the testimony of the French master himself, who once remarked that “the simple tricks are loved by one and all; the more difficult ones are loved only by those who can sense the effort behind their production”.

In all this, we’ve tried to pay homage to an artist who, now that the trip to the moon has been made, would certainly prove capable of telling tales and spinning dreams that go even further.

Why Méliès?

“the simple tricks are loved by one and all; the more difficult ones are loved only by those who can sense the effort behind their production”

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Synopsis The future Méliès would have imagined

Scarcely over a hundred years ago, George Méliès performed the greatest magic trick of a long and distinguished career: the invention of a machine that would permit him to clone himself in the future in order to return and entertain his audience when the world would be ready to appreciate his genius. That future is here today. George Méliès will materialize on stage before your eyes, stepping out of one of his fortunately rediscovered films never seen before, to find himself face to face for a little chat with Ettore Cadamagnani, the illustrious professor and expert admirer who will be presenting an evening in his honor.

Owning to an unexpected malfunction of the illusion mechanism, however, the unsuspecting professor will soon find himself trapped in Méliès’ old films. In an exchange of roles, the French director conducts an evening in his own honor placing these marvelous new technological tools to the service of his own fantasy and his own ends, which were always slightly mad to begin with. Meanwhile,

the Professor finds himself in his dream-come-true: acting alongside the Master Illusionist himself on their own "A Trip to the Moon".

The result is a knuckle-scraping chase with one in hot pursuit of the other inside and outside the film where the Professor reveals a hidden knack for illusionism in his attempts to emulate his master that do not always provide the desired effect. Méliès, on the other hand, gets a taste of the potential of live cinema, and dedicates all his enthusiasm to the spontaneous creation of new works that blend magic and science fiction.

In the end, Méliès returns forever to the world of celluloid after freeing the Professor and allowing him to continue his amateur attempts at illusionism in vain, and after proving how – now as then - technique and special effects are only half of the task. Just as in the days of Méliès, what counts is the skill and imagination you bring to the telling of the tale, even one as preposterous as setting foot on the moon.

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bioAfter graduating obtaining a degree in Information Technology in 1997, Michele Cremaschi attended a European Social Fund Course in Theater at Cassina de Pecchi and received his diploma in 1999. He continued studying physical theatre under Pierre Byland, among others.

Michele Cremaschi has been writing for the theater and acting since 1999, participating at festivals the length and breadth of Europe, and in Russia, Africa, and China. These include:

The Santarcangelo International Festival , Italy, 2004,

The Harare International Festival of Arts (Zimbabwe, 2010),

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival (2006 e 2009)

The Macao International Festival (2012)

The National Art Festival (South Africa, 2012)

He founded the Slapsus comedy group, with which he appeared on Italian (Zelig) and Belgian television programs. He directed the Erbamil Cooperative from 2005 until 2008, and has served as Director and President of the Retroscena Association and InItinere Theater Residence Program since then. Currently organizes the “Nuove tecnologie in scena/New technologies on Stage” review in collaboration with Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo.

Prizes and awards received for his previous work include:

2003 Festival du Rire Rochefort – Prix de la presse;

2009 Edinburgh Fringe Festival – Long-listed for the Total Theatre Prize and Pick of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival;

2010 Winner of the Lalka też człowiek Festival (Warsaw-Poland);

2010 L’Altro Festival Lugano – Winner of the Younger Contestant Jury’s Pirze;

2011 KingFestival (Veliky Novgorod-Russia) – Winner of the prize for best Children’s Theatre Show, a prize awarded by the local tourism institute, with Honorable Mention from the Younger Critic’s Jury.

2011 E-Mix Quality Label – a show selected for insertion in the E-Mix visual theater festival network

For more information: www.michelecremaschi.it

Legal status, administration, contactsAssociazione Retroscena

Registered office: via lunga 50, 24125 Bergamo

Headquarters: via Papa Leone XXIII 27, 24124 Bergamo

info.retroscena@gmail.com

Administration: Lucia Guerini, tel +39 380 3775764

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Work in progress Augmented theatre - ologrammi animati per la scena teatraleThe project’s objective is the development of a control system for the virtual props, sets, and characters used on stage through the projection of 3D holograms through which the real performers will control their virtual characters and objects interactively. Augmented theatre can be offered with the use of flexible mapping techniques applied by the real and virtual actors with real-time system management.

The “pepper ghost” theatrical trick was used in the early 1900s to make performers appear and disappear as if by magic. Its revised and corrected version using avant-garde multimedia systems is perceived by the audience in the same way but the hidden technology is no longer mechanical and optical and instead based instead on sophisticated computer graphic animation techniques. The final effect is the materialization of objects, human bodies, and scenery on stage.Their digital nature enables complete control of their existence beyond the most elementary rules of physics. Objects disappear, actors morph into virtual avatars, and the rules of gravity are defied: everything comes into discussion without any apparent tricks.

Previous worksThe visual comedy/slapstick of Slapsus Quartet Michele Cremaschi founded the Slapsus Quartet in 1999 playing a key role in its non-verbal comic theatre until 2010. The result was two “Sketch shows” that bring the group national acclaim. In 2008, in fact, one of the sketches written and interpreted by the group “Synchronized swim” became an instant hit on Youtube and propelled the foursome to an appearance on Italian television’s top comedy show, “Zelig”. Two other works, Synphonia” and “FairPlay”, have been staged at various international festivals since 2006, including Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival.

Hand-drawn theaterThe production of “ManoLibera” in 2004 led to an artistic partnership with Anna Fascendini and Michele Eynard in a joint research at the edges of physical theater and drawing. The originality of the language marks the beginning of the worldwide circulation of the show, which in addition to nearly all Europe has gone to Russia, Africa, and China.

“Il Giorno Prima dell’Inizio del Mondo/The Day before the Start of the World” is a further development of this language that continues, channeling research in a more significant multimedia dimension, even if not yet interactive.

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Technical requisites:Stage dimensions: 5 m long, 7 m wide from wall to wall, 4 m deep, 4 m high. A video-projector must be placed 7 m from the back of the stage. Audience all ages, from 10 years old on up. Duration: 70 minutes, Italian version; 55 minutes, international version. Number of people on tour: two; three, if no onsite technician is available.Timelines: assembly: 6 hours; disassembly: 1 hour. Complete technical data sheet and lighting layout available on request. Economic terms quoted upon request.

contactsmichele.cremaschi@initinere.net+39 320 2992681

mediaVideoPromo video: http://vimeo.com/micrem/mempromoFull show video (password on request): http://vimeo.com/micrem/memfull

PhotoesScreenshots: http://michelecremaschi.it/meliesandmeHires Photoes for press: soon available

PostersPrint file: soon available

Webhttp://michelecremaschi.it/meliesandme