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Alladeen
- World Premiere Tour.
Production website www.alladeen.com
Conceived by - Keith Khan, Marianne Weems and Ali Zaidi.
Director - Marianne Weems.
Designer - Keith Khan & Ali Zaidi.
Lighting Designer - Jennifer Tipton.
Video Design - Christopher Kondek.
Sound Composition and Design - Dan Dobson.
Text (Part Two) - Martha Beer. All addition material created or
transcribed by the company.
Dramturg - Norman Frisch. Associate Charlotte Stoudt.
Original Music Samples - Shri.
3D Animation Design - James Gibb/dbox & Eric Schuldenfrei.
Video Systems Design - Peter Flaherty. Video Associate - Jeff Morey
Companies - motiroti & The Builders Association.
Cast - here .
Venue - Tramway Glasgow .www.tramway.org.
Box Office 0845 330 3501 (normal rates apply)
Dates - 6
- 8 Nov at 8pm
2003 Tour Dates and Times - here .
Seen to review at Tramway Glasgow.
Run Time - 1hours 10mins no Interval .
Reviewer - Thelma Good.
High tech multi-media feast?
Alladeen is a high tech multi-media feast, with video shot in Bangalore
of real call centre operatives or EROs (Electronic Relationships Officer),
gobsmacking animations in 3D and sumptuous lighting. It also has a live
cast including one whose facility with languages is used to telling effect
as she makes mobile calls from various parts of the globe, speaking in
a variety of languages from far flung places.
It is all presented in an immaculately delivered style. We hear simultaneously
words spoken on stage by live actors in a classroom, while on video the
Bangalore EROs are speaking the same words as they are being trained to
look, sound and think American. Tackling similar themes to David Grieg's
San Diego, seen at the 2003 International Festival, its technical mastery
on stage alone confirms why it's premiering by going on an international
tour to festivals across the globe.
It also has a website and a music video as part of the total project,
which involves many varied talents. What is physically touring could be
described as a fusion of live art, performance art and digital art, but
is it also theatre?
There are dramatic moments - the ERO who tries to get an advance having
bought literally on credit into the western consumer dream. The boss denies
his requests, but he surges on to talk the fifth person that month into
buying so he'll get to the US sales conference. A strange and dislocating
environment where all that effort, working 3am to noon, calling and calling
strangers in a land you don't know and just 5 contracts a month make you
a top salesman. But these dramatic moments come without us knowing quite
enough about the characters, like the real EROs we get a specially wrapped
package so we can guess a bit of their lives off the phone, but not enough
to feel or see their essence. And the Alladeen references are too loose
to pull the piece together.
In the last part, set in London, we catch up with the karaoke singing
high powered multi-lingual woman, and a man in a bar where you can sing
along to music. Both are displaced from their original cultural homes,
their anonymity underlined by their enjoyment of virtual singing as if
they were a star. But I was aware I was filling in too much detail from
my own knowledge, these EROs are graduates, highly able and there they
are, learning as if it were a stable body of knowledge the ins and outs
of TV sitcoms and eclectic facts.
Visually the set and video screens, virtual images and animations make
lasting images but there is a problem with extensive use of technology.
Watching a screen and listening to live actors amplified voices, (partially
justifiable when they're on a call, as you hear what they sound like down
a line) is a far more passive experience than bare board theatre. Looking
along the audience no one was leaning forward as audiences do when truly
engaged by a piece of theatre, so on this evidence alone I feel justified
in saying this is art more that theatre, visual more than emotional.
It also is exploitative of the very people we watch on the screen. Having
taken the stories from the Bangalore EROs, motiroti & The Builders
Association should already have arranged to let them see all the finished
work. A date in Bangalore has yet to be arranged and, in an expensive
production like this, it gives me a very uneasy feeling. On the other
hand it's hard to leave after seeing Alladeen and to not question, in
this bizarre and technical multi-national world, who is feasting and who
is losing nourishment - spiritual as well as actual.
© Thelma Good 6 November 2003. - Published on EdinburghGuide.com
Cast: Rizwan Mirza, Heaven Phillips, Tanya Selvaratnam,
Jasmine Simhalan, Jeff Webster (Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry) & David
Pence (Contact, Mancester & Tramway Glasgow)
2003/04 Tour Details of Alladeen .
Tour begins
2003
17 - 19 Oct Italy Rome Romaeuropa Festival.
23 - 25 Oct UK Coventry Warwick Arts Centre.
29 Oct - 1 Nov UK Mancester Contact Theatre.
6 - 8 Nov UK Glasgow Tramway.
2 - 6 Dec USA New York BAM:Next Wave Festival '03.
2004
3 - 7 Mar USA California Los Angeles REDCAT.
11 - 14 Mar USA Washington Seattle On The Boards.
26 - 30 Mar South America Columbia Bogota International Theater Festival.
9 - 10 Apr USA New Hampshire Hopkins Centre Dartmouth College.
26 - 28 May Norway Bergen International Theater Festival.
12 - 13 Jun Germany Bonn Biennale.
7 - 10 Oct Australia Melbourne International Arts Festival.
All dates notified in Nov 03 check website for more details.
Theatre Editor, Thelma Good's e-mail is
thelma@edinburghguide.com
Although every effort has been taken to ensure the accuracy of the
information presented in these pages, no responsibility can be accepted
for any errors or omissions.
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