Last month, Wellington hosted the International Festival of the Arts, a biennial collection of major acts brought in from overseas for a few weeks. A couple of years back I was organised into seeing a bunch of cool shows several months in advance, and had tickets a couple of months prior to anything starting. This year, while I had the booklet from late last year, I hadn't actually got around to booking any tickets due to Life Happening (tm).

I went to four events related to the International Festival, and from talking to other people I seemed to luck into some of the best events.

Apollo 13: Mission Control

A friend organised tickets to Apollo 13: Mission Control (review), an interactive theatre piece created in New Zealand around the events in NASA Mission Control during the Apollo 13 space ship issues. The audience is divided (by ticket bookings) between mission controllers, who get to sit behind control stations and assigned roles and "press gallery" members whose participation is limited to being able to add questions to a sheet for the actor playing Walter Chronkite to ask the main actors. Due to our late booking I had a "press gallery" ticket, while my friend had the last "mission controller" ticket available. But I managed to luck into an excellent seat in the very centre of the balcony and thus had an excellent view down onto the mission control area.

The plot of the play loosely follows the Apollo 13 events, especially those as depicted in the Apollo 13 movie by Ron Howard, but I got the sense substantial portions of the action were improvised each night based on what the interactive audience members did. (In addition to those with "mission controller" tickets, there was also one audience member picked each night to play one of the roles in the Apollo 13 capsule.)

The action took place on three sets: the main theatre (with the mission controllers), the Apollo 13 capsule, and the news studio for Walter Chronkite. The Apollo 13 capsule and news studio were regularly linked in via video (projected on large screens at the front of mission control), and all of the "press gallery" audience members had headsets that allowed them to listen to live audio from the Apollo 13 capsule all the time (even when they weren't on screen). I spent most of the play with the headset half on so I could listen to the audio from the capsule and follow the play -- it added a certain authenticity to the events, as action continued in the capsule even when they weren't "on". I think this "video linkup" combination worked well for a play that was really set in multiple locations.

Overall I think the directors and key actors did a good job of pulling together a coherent plot and keeping the action moving, while involving the audience regularly. Some of the things assigned to the mission controllers seemed to be "make work" to make them feel involved, but others were allowed to influence the plot a little. There are some points where the audience were forced to become more involved which a is a brave move, but the participatory nature of the play made it all work.

I understand that they plan to tour with the play and I think it should do very well. The mix of plot, audience participation, and improvisation comes across well.

Inside Out

Inside Out is a contemporary circus event from Sweden. I got my ticket very late for this event, booking it online, on the morning of the show and dealing with the hassles of Tickitek's electronic tickets, but ended up being very glad I'd made the effort. In addition to the circus performers, they also brought their own live music -- Irya's Playground -- who provided excellent backing music, that is well worth seeking out on its own.

While the performance was clearly circus derived, it manages to draw on the more interesting acrobatics, balancing, juggling and aerial acts and mix them with a stronger degree of plot that one normally sees in a circus. The result is some strong character performances particularly in the first half where a couple of the perfomers start in the audience and get dragged into events as they unfold. The second half had less strong plot, and a bit more focus on circus staples, but the backing music really helped to hold it all together.

It's very much a "grown up" circus, with an playful energy that leaves one feeling glad to have been part of the experience.

Neil Gaiman

As part of the Festival, there's also a Readers and Writers event which brings various authors into town to talk directly with their audience. I went to see Neil Gaiman (official website; wikipedia), because several people I know had pointed me at it. I've not actually read that much of Neil Gaiman's work -- mostly just Good Omens which he wrote with Terry Pratchett] -- so it was very interesting to hear the wide range of things that he's worked on, and what has emerged as common themes over the time he's been working.

Neil Gaiman observed that much of his best work comes out of projects he is given, with specific word limits and deadlines and suggested themes. The constraints give room for artistic freedom without the wide open unlimited blank page causing indecision about what to do. And these project requests have got him involved in comics, graphic novels, poetry, as well as a wide range of books (several of which have been made into movies -- including Stardust).

The event left me wanting to read more of his work. So once I make a proper dent in my reading backlog I'll track down a few more to read.

Good Morning, Mr Gershwin

My dance event for the Festival was Good Morning, Mr Gershwin a modern dance event set to the music of Gershwin.

The show illustrates the power of what can be done if you blend live action with a green screen. They used it both to set the scene with a variety of backdrops (including some amazingly fluid scenes clearly filmed under water), and to mix in additional views of live action (I'd wondered what the camera was doing at the back of the theatre, and it was clearly being used to pick up action to show on the screens). The combination works very well, turning a basically empty stage with a single stage element (that they made excellent use of) into a very wide variety of sets.

The show covered a very wide variety of scenes from glamour of the 1920s/1930s through later periods including a set of African (American) dance towards the end. Along the way it takes in break dancing, hip hop, an amazing underwater singing performance (performed live), and the best issolation of body parts I've ever seen from one of the male dancers. Everything ties together very well, for another show I was very glad I'd seen.

If there's any common theme through the events I saw, its the seamless blend of live action performance with other media -- the live music in Inside Out, and additional sets via video in Mission Control, and video performances in Good Morning, Mr Gershwin. There's definitely a lot of potential to blend modern technology into performance and create something very 21st century, without the artifical science fiction sterility.