A NEW CHANNEL ON YOUTUBE FOR THEATER

Papo Colo/Trickster Theater create the Trickster Theater channel on YouTube to present theater produced exclusively for the web

Written and Directed by Papo Colo

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http://www.youtube.com/trickstertheater

NEW YORK – Trickster Theater, a New York-based theater company, announces the launch of Digitheater, a project dedicated to presenting and producing theatrical works exclusively for the web. Digitheater is theater not for a live audience, but for an international Internet community, using YouTube as a medium to create original theater. Trickster Theater on YouTube has already produced approximately ninety short dramatic segments, or cantos, each running approximately one to five minutes. New cantos can be accessed through the Trickster Theater channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/trickstertheater

In this online format, the camera focuses tightly on the actors’ face — their essential expressive tool — to give the actor immediacy as they interpret, often bilingually, the director’s narratives. Rather than using the web as a site solely for documentation, these online theater performances investigate the nature of the computer frame as a theatrical proscenium. This new approach rewrites formal conventions and, because of the accessibility of the Internet, creates a new cross-cultural platform for actors.

Digitheater uses a diverse cast of actors from around the world, each one bringing a unique cultural perspective and collectively representing the many voices of the modern city. The multi-lingual texts of the Trickster Theater incorporate Urdu, French, Spanish, Hebrew, Swedish, Greek and Japanese, among other languages. The actors explore the words as sounds and reference an internal Trickster notation system, which cues gesture and intonation. The inflection of the actor’s speech, the musicality of foreign accents, and the immersion into the sounds of other languages explore the rich possibilities of what can be heard when many different cultural bodies are brought together.

Since its inception, one of the most important aspects of the Trickster Theater is its role as a multilingual and multinational theater, creating a theater as global as its audience. The Trickster Theater has a history of bilingual productions, tackling the issue of translation in dramatic arts and reflecting the multi-lingual community of the Americas. Trickster Theater’s website contains a repository of select past performance works. Since 2002, Trickster Theater has been innovating online productions such as M Play, a bilingual web series telling the story of three women reflecting on life in the modern metropolis.

Digitheater videos utilize intimate compositions and a striking minimal aesthetic in order to evoke a wide variety of moods in the viewer. All texts will ultimately become part of live performance works, recombined each night in a different order, creating different meanings and contexts for ever-changing plays.

Digitheater currently encompasses three different projects – Venus Erotica, The Adventures of ZigZag and Change of Skin – and is expected to continue growing. The Venus Erotica series juxtaposes the erotic relationship between words and gestures. The Adventures of ZigZag introduces the viewer to the characters and actors of Zigzag and exists as an independent companion piece to the theatrical production. Videos establish the universe of ZigZag, creating a distinct mythology around the show prior to its live production. Change of Skin and I Want To Be A Painting will be the first of Trickster Theater’s live performances beginning in Winter 2010 and will explore the differences of race, gender, and language. These videos feature a diverse range of actors and languages spanning different cultures and continents.

Digitheater is an ongoing project. New series will be added over time, creating a diverse theater experience viewable from home on the internet. This virtual theater exists solely online, as theater produced for the individual, creating a web presence.

As Papo Colo says, “Every room is the center of the world.”

Trickster Theater founded and directed by Papo Colo.


CURRENT DIGITHEATER PERFORMERS
Carmel Amit, Rena Anakwe, Zoe Anastassiou, Mia Anderson, Amanda Broomel, Oni Brown, Jenn Dees, Pascal Escriout, Aizzah Fatima, Ellie Foumbi, Manuel Fihman, Rebecca Hirota, Barbara Klaaysen, Arooj Majid, Ashley Martinsen, Ampora McLean, Miriam Mintz, Soleil Nikki, Saoko Okano, Belen Oyola-Rebez,
Martina Potratz, Jorge Rubio, Eugene "Mikey" Santiago, David Speer, Laryn Stout, Malin Tybahl

HISTORY
Trickster Theater was founded in 1998 by Papo Colo. An artist who has always worked in multiple mediums, Colo has been involved in theater since 1991 when he founded the First World Theater which presented Zygmunt and Stolen Kisses at The Cultural Space in 1992. In 1995 Colo produced Imaginary Beings, combining a theatrical and visual art exhibition about invented characters from Jorge Luis Borges’ text of the same name. In 1996 he produced Resonances, a play of simultaneous texts and overlapping narratives that took place on two stages concurrently and could be viewed from different perspectives. Since moving to its current location in Hell’s Kitchen, the Trickster Theater has produced a diverse range of shows such as Praying Project, Water Project, Wild Nights, Tropical Area, Cannon Dialogues, Confessions of the Face, Somehow, and Still Life available as DVDs on the Exit Art and Trickster Theater websites.

Since 1984, Colo has been the Co-founder and Artistic Director of Exit Art, a multi-disciplinary cultural space located in Hell’s Kitchen. At Exit Art he integrated performance and theater with the visual arts in projects such as Terra Bomba (1997) and Let the Artist Live (1995). The theater, performance and visual arts awards he has received are: Franklin Furnace Fund Award for Performance Art (1987); Guggenheim Award in Painting (1991), Bessie Award (1995) for his innovative conception of the Exit Art project Let the Artist Live; an Individual Artist Grant in Theater from the New York State Council on the Arts (2001); awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in the Visual Arts (1981, 1983); and a New York Foundation for the Arts award in Painting (1991), among others.

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