Managed the rare feat of offering a theatrical experience of a kind that I hadn't had before, while making the novelty - the use of immersive headphones throughout - an integral element rather than a gimmick.
Some of us are friends ... the face of time ...
Imagining the 1969 encounter between American photojournalist Loren McIntyre and the 'lost tribe' of Mayoruna people in the Amazon and McIntyre's experience of non-linguistic (telepathic) communication with their head man as part of a journey of return to a mysterious beginning which functions - on some level at least - as return to an earlier time, it weaves a 'surround-soundscape' in which the aural layers and lines (present and past, live and pre-recorded, organic and technologically-mediated, real and fictional or imagined, linearly narratival and circular) play out the concerns of the play as a whole, both as staging of McIntyre's story and as a wider playing out of questions about reality, consciousness and time. Mounted as a one man show (an impressive Richard Katz - McBurney's alternate in its NYC run), it was really very good.
(w/ Tamara and Meribah)
* * *
Also, google reveals that McBurney also directed the version of "All My Sons" that I saw on Broadway several years ago, and had this to say in an interview at the time (aptly):
The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real. ... But what is more fundamental is the notion that when everybody laughs together or, last night, when I heard people around me collectively sobbing, at that moment we are bound together not by our bodies sitting in the theater but by a collective imagination. At that moment we understand the lie that what we think is only our own, that our internal lives are only our own. At that point our collective imaginations become one imagination and my internal life becomes the same as your internal life, which is what Aristotle understood when he analyzed tragedy. It’s a collective act in which we collectively understand something about being a community together. The moment we understand that, feel it, we feel a kind of responsibility in which we must collectively help and take responsibility for each other. That is part of the definition of our humanity and, if you like, if it’s not a contradiction in terms, our animal humanity. Of course, that is part of what “All My Sons” is about.
[NYT]
Some of us are friends ... the face of time ...
Imagining the 1969 encounter between American photojournalist Loren McIntyre and the 'lost tribe' of Mayoruna people in the Amazon and McIntyre's experience of non-linguistic (telepathic) communication with their head man as part of a journey of return to a mysterious beginning which functions - on some level at least - as return to an earlier time, it weaves a 'surround-soundscape' in which the aural layers and lines (present and past, live and pre-recorded, organic and technologically-mediated, real and fictional or imagined, linearly narratival and circular) play out the concerns of the play as a whole, both as staging of McIntyre's story and as a wider playing out of questions about reality, consciousness and time. Mounted as a one man show (an impressive Richard Katz - McBurney's alternate in its NYC run), it was really very good.
(w/ Tamara and Meribah)
* * *
Also, google reveals that McBurney also directed the version of "All My Sons" that I saw on Broadway several years ago, and had this to say in an interview at the time (aptly):
The only reality of the theater exists in the mind of the audience. That audience looks collectively at what is going on on the stage and collectively imagines that this is real. ... But what is more fundamental is the notion that when everybody laughs together or, last night, when I heard people around me collectively sobbing, at that moment we are bound together not by our bodies sitting in the theater but by a collective imagination. At that moment we understand the lie that what we think is only our own, that our internal lives are only our own. At that point our collective imaginations become one imagination and my internal life becomes the same as your internal life, which is what Aristotle understood when he analyzed tragedy. It’s a collective act in which we collectively understand something about being a community together. The moment we understand that, feel it, we feel a kind of responsibility in which we must collectively help and take responsibility for each other. That is part of the definition of our humanity and, if you like, if it’s not a contradiction in terms, our animal humanity. Of course, that is part of what “All My Sons” is about.
[NYT]
