“Deligiannis’ own re-, performed on the Saturday night, proved to be a real festival highlight. The audience was welcomed into a trashed cabaret space, complete with empty booze bottles and peanuts spilt across the tables. Into this stepped the composer himself, dragged up as a 1980s Greek nightclub singer accompanied by a mechanically operated drum kit, in a performance that evoked a Mediterranean Fawlty Towers reimagined by Jacques Tati and Robert Ashley.”
The Wire, Robert Barry, September 2018, Issue 417, on Gaudeamus Muziekweek.
Working closely with the I/O team and with the support of Gaudeamus, our artistic research took the form of a work-in-progress crossover performance under the title re-. In order to test a few performative ideas, which include automated music instruments, my presence on stage and a scenic environment that immerses our audience, we created two draft performances; re- (1st draft) & re- (2nd draft). The first draft was presented at the Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ in the context of atelier Spr!tzl and at TivoliVredenburg as part of the Gaudeamus Festival. The second draft was presented as a private event, in collaboration with SPRING Festival, Dutch Performing Arts and Gaudeamus.
re- draws its material from the subculture of “clarina” in the Greek 1980s. We were interested in studying this remote reality through found online material, using the documentation as a score on stage. The result of our creative process is a dream-like world; a concert that decomposes itself into a surreal interaction of elements: a body on stage, light, sound, scenography, text, robotics, audience.
There is a continuous effort of a man on stage to re-enact a memory; multiple versions of a female body that come out of the world of clarina. An amalgam of creatures, from that of a doric singer up to a confused non-binary dino, all existing in a rural nightclub environment where the audience can have their drink.
I/O
Thanasis Deligiannis | concept, direction & performance
Roelof Pothuis | set & light design
David Jonas | creative coding & robotics
Karlijne Opmeer | costume design
Marko Ivic | sound assistant
Danai Belosinof | assistant director & production assistant
Euripides Laskaridis | artistic collaboration
This project was possible with the support of Fonds Podiumkunsten via the Nieuwe Makers subsidy.