[-empyre-] Introducing myself

[Barbara Campbell <barbara@1001.net.au>]

Greetings empyricists

I'm going to frame my introduction by talking about the suppression of 
individual identity in the literary and visual frames of my current 
project 1001 nights cast (http://1001.net.au)

The video frame
For anyone who has been present (in my time but your space) at one of 
the live webstreamed performances that I do every sunset, you will have 
noticed the very tight frame of the mouth. The whole performance is 
generated there. First, the number of the performance is revealed 
through the tongue stud which has the number of the performance stamped 
into it, then the story is told. The full range of facial expression is 
denied. It is the classic Beckettian "not I" frame. In terms of 
"identity" - one of the themes of this discussion - I have deliberately 
taken measures to suppress the specifics of my own identity in order 
for others to exist through me. In this and many previous performances, 
I often think of myself as a medium of the live-channelling kind. In 
the course of performing the 713 stories to date, I've learnt to find 
different tones for each story, without actually building characters in 
the theatrical sense (I'm not a trained actress. I'm hopeless with 
accents and shudder when a writer gives me a story that calls for 
accented dialogue. Sometimes I feel up to it, sometimes I don't.),  
although I see how the line between medium and actor is thinning.

The story frame
The introduction to the project (http://1001.net.au/index.shtml) is 
written as a micro-story that fades in and out over three screens. It 
is written in the third person, again, in order to devolve the personal 
to the general. In the same way that Scheherazade's own story frames 
subsequent stories in 1001 nights, the progenerative compendium of 
Arabian tales, so too does the project's frame tale allow other 
subsequent tales to come into being.

Perhaps some of the 1001 nights cast writers will come forward in this 
discussion with their views on how their "voice" is 
carried/changed/ventriloquized/consumed/feminised/Australianised by 
mine?

cheers
Barbara

http://1001.net.au