[-empyre-] FW: 1001 nights cast [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

["Meziane, Tracey" <Tracey.Meziane@environment.gov.au>]

Welcome Barbara and thanks for your introduction,

It would be great if some of your 1001 nights cast writers came forward
in this discussion :-)

Could you tell me how you get the writers contributions? Do they all
come via the web site or do you have some people who write for this
project regularly/irregularly.

As yet, I haven't had the opportunity to see the live performance - only
view the archives, so I will make sure I am online for the one today.
Just to confirm the time difference - the Oz east coast is 10 hours
ahead of Madrid - does that mean that the next performance will be at
7.41am 6 June Australian EST time. 

Have empyreans seen this work and would like to comment?

Also, I am interested in the notion of surrendering individual identity
as a performer in this work and the connection of 'virtual' space and
performance. There are threads of this linking through all of the guests
work in one way or another, particularly in relation to the 'framing' of
identity through the screen. 



-----Original Message-----
From: empyre-bounces@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
[mailto:empyre-bounces@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au] On Behalf Of Barbara
Campbell
Sent: Monday, 4 June 2007 7:59 PM
To: empyre@gamera.cofa.unsw.edu.au
Subject: [-empyre-] Introducing myself

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

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