Sunday, August 3, 2014

thoughts for Turning Test





Use Queen of the Night to guide the epic battle between the Brits and the Nazis using the light-up dudes as soldiers on each sides engaged in a strobing battle, staccato like machines and machine guns.
I should talk to my connection at BAM sooner rather than not...
Form the outline.  Call on my old buddies in Opera and maybe- just maybe Turing could be played by Dan Radcliffe.  He seems to like a good challenge as well as representing smarts.  hmmm.  I would like to have straight theater that pulls from philosophy, like Shakespeare, using character to display humanity, and what a juicy fucking story about gay rights, peace and technology.  What are the moral implications at the cross roads of politics, the advancements of human power and communication through technology, and the advancements of human rights.  Cover places where these subjects are still relevant, would be great to pull forwards and backwards through time, there could be a contemporary person who is trans and could get fired from their job, in some states this is still legal!  I think that gay rights have an upswing right now and the more power added to that flow the better.  I want to use the spectacle of technology to add joy to what will otherwise be a very depressing play.  I mean, just tragic.  A brit playing a brit.  Could work, Dan is better on camera than on stage so it would be amazing to pull my skills from D.G. and have live cameras to project his reactions and focus on stage back to larger than life.  Layer into the script the dual life of being gay or queer and not fitting into society with technological avatars, distance of technology, the confusion of propaganda, the psychological dream of the machine generated world- Society of the Spectacle has to be a part of this!!!!!  Ah!  Would it be dorky to Guy be one of the characters, or do we secretly desire to watch genius?  It would be cool to show the everydayness to, to have a whole part about the grace of averageness, to just watch something that is not motivating the story but gives us a portrait, like the world of the play hits a breath, (,) and we are watching, oh my god with the tight shot, like a Warhol moment, but the person is just shitting, or thinking or showering or doing all the dumb nothings, would be fucking great to have an inner monologue for this part, maybe even in the form of an aria, because thought is so illusive anyway, hmm, but an average situation where the mind wonders, where all the great breakthroughs of life happen while you are mindlessly doing something else, like driving.  Could be both an unusual activity for the stage and motivate the action if there is an internal monologue, plus the grace of a tight shot and minimal aesthetics- ugh how hot- to have a full blown show with all the fun carnival tricks but still use the pulse of the Lower East Side Theaters.  yum.  so yum.  We will get Anti-Oedipus in the background of the script, as well as Guy's philosophies. I would like the gay/trans rights thread to today to also give direct social tools in each area of performance for action.  I like activating audiences not only to gain new perspective, but also have real world tools for dynamic changes.  The tech aspect will bring attention to the show, and if we can get someone with a name.  But the meat, the real deep force is more than Emotiv Headsets creating a set, more than socialist models of man as machine, more than outfits drawn in light that will look stunning and contrasting the weight of theater and opera with the outrageous fun of light shows, it has to be the moral lessons that dig really fucking deep at the problems of today.  Not just a social critique but an examination, that layers in Banality of Evil, that layers in new ideas of my own, but touches arms races, technology for peace or for surveillance, the rights of citizens.  I will be dealing with a story in England- so world issues more than the ones that haunt specific countries would be of use.  The stories that seem to through-line through humanity, about difference, ideas of self, defense, death.  The terrible realities that we fall into and what they mean with tech.  Political rights vs. the rights of not the citizen but the human, that kind of shit.
The show should open with a Turning Test for the audience.  In some way that is actually monitored like an experiment, blur the lines of storytelling and reality.
I like that when we fight wars we are always doing it for the grace of nothing moments, for the simplicity of joy.  It would be cool to have this as an opening to the modern section too, some simple inner monologue (after we have seen the monologues of the past that have really advanced the world)- but now technology interrupts that tranquility.  How does technology help  and how does it hinder thought.

The Society of the Spectacle

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