Project #4 Unconventional Theatre

1) Dan Dunn's Paintjam

* Dan Dunn is a man who paints a whole picture while jamming to fun groovy music. He is a traveling performer who does venues for all types of shows such as halftime shows, private parties and special appearances. It only consists of one man and his traveling team.

http://www.crookedbrains.net/2007/08/paintjam-dan-dunn-its-magic-with-paint.html

* This very unusual performance theater. This guy starts out all the time in the audience and then starts playing loud music all of a sudden. He then jumps on stage and starts painting. At first it looks like he is just painting abstract art, but when he is all done, he turns the picture upside down, and it is actually a picture of a famous person or animal.

2) Strange Fruit
a Melbourne, Australia-based performing arts company, they travel all over the world performing acrobatic dances while incorporating theater, and circus, all while on 13 foot stilts. Laura Colby is the director of the North America Troupe.

http://www.virginmedia.com/take5/pictures/pics-of-the-week.php?ssid=9

This is strange to me because, well, they are freaking 13 feet in the air just doing acrobatic movements and making it out to a story, like theatre. I would definately consider this theatre.

3) Orphans of Delirium

"Haunted by the deaths of his friends and loved ones, an actor drifts throughthe reveries of an absinthe binge that erupts in a bevy of strange ritualisticdreams from which he periodically awakens and lapses back into." http://www.paratheatrical.com/pages/plays/orphans.html

First of all, this is definately theatre because there are actors and they are telling a story theough planned out story telling. Second, this is strange to me because there is almost no words in the 75 min "play". They tell the story through dance, and strange rythmatic movements. It is about a man's dreams and the weird things that happen in them. We all have dreams where unexplainable events happen. I think they get the term "paratheatre" from the world "paranormal"-meaning not so normal.

4) Rhythem, 0

"To test the limits of the relationship between performer and audience, Marina Abramović developed one of her most challenging (and best-known) performances. She assigned a passive role to herself, with the public being the force which would act on her."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marina_Abramovi%C4%87

This woman had people do things to her for the sake of art, to see how the barrier of audience and performer could be crossed. First, there were only a few things that happened to her such as a massager on her neck, but later things got hostile. People began to take scissors and cut her clothes, leaving her top naked. Then at one point, a someone took the gun with a bullet and pointed it at her head, while suddendly another person quickly took the gun out of the persons hand.

This sparks to me as highly unconventional theatre. For an artist to put herself in danger like that, she must have had a universal reason for doing that.

5) Kim Jones' "Mud Man"

A man named Kim Jones went to art school in California and decided to make his art by covering himself with mud, then attaching large heavy sticks to his back and walking around town. He did this in response to the Vietnam War in which he fought in.

This is unconventional to me because this is a man who put his life in danger for political reasons, however, kept his artistic psych together for the sake of performance and kept going on.