TEATROCINEMA
by Ryan Belock
Texas Performing Arts, Integrated Media for Live Performance build relationship with TEATROCINEMA, a hybrid theatre company based in Santiago, Chile
TEATROCINEMA brings innovative live cinema to the stage. They are developing new ways of looking at live performance and how to capture several moments, cuts, and perspectives of film in one moment on stage — an impossible dream that is just now taking wing as the Chilean production company opens their 3rd breakthrough performance at Teatro UC.
“Downtown Santiago looks like L.A. — heavy smog blurs the skyline with the Andes mountains.” — Ryan Belock
I’m grateful for my Summer 2013 opportunity made possible in large part to Joe Randel, director of ArtesAméricas at Texas Performing Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Inspired by the work of TEATROCINEMA and their touring production of Sin Sangre in March 2013, we have begun writing the blueprint for a new exchange program for students in the Integrated Media for Live Performance graduate program in the Department of Theatre and Dance. I participated in the workshops and discussions with members of the company when they began preliminary visits in Fall 2012 and later in March 2013, when they brought Sin Sangre (Without Blood) to the McCullough theatre. Immediately after experiencing the provocative, kinetic, brilliant performance, I wanted to immediately follow-up with them to see if there was some kind of internship program we could establish. Since our field is still relatively new, I figured the best way to learn more about this advanced projection design that was so interactive with movement of the actors was to get up close and see for myself how the process works.
The crucial first step was affording a week to simply observe. Shadowing with my still and video cameras allowed me to remember the ways in which the theatre practitioners in TEATROCINEMA compare and contrast to the patterns experienced by practitioners in the United States.
Investing in research with this production company is fundamental to students exploring the different methods of production and rehearsal practices, as well as the specific movement training required by the actors, designers, and directors. For example, each member of the acting ensemble takes on at least another role or two off stage, just as the designers are also director or production manager or business associate. As a smaller production company whose members take on multiple duties as both live theatrical and cinematic crews, the jobs multiply…very fast.
Director, actor, and composer Zagal discusses storyboard and animation with media content manager Montse. 2013 Ryan Belock.
Mathias, the sound designer, works in the basement level. He has a complete surround sound set up and keyboard and monitor. One day he showed me what was recorded and mixed so far on Act II. He told me how some sound cues that are paired with the video do not work when the visual cues need to wait on the actors (different entrances, exits, or specific movements). It ruins the flow of sound, breaks it up. Therefore, many sound and music cues need to be separated from the video footage. Mathias noted to me what a challenge it is. So sound is both built into video cues AND cues separately (with the widely used program QLab).
“Provocative, kinetic, brilliant.” — Ryan Belock
“We are Americans, too,” she tells me. “You are North American and we are South American.”
As the sole ambassador for UT — and the United States — I was the only one to document all the goings on of the company. I bounced between the lighting booth, the basement sound suite, the backstage animation suite, and the left and right stage wings to take still photography while my video footage rendered and uploaded from the previous days’ work. Having a week’s worth of footage makes viewing and editing that video content a tall order.
