End of July 2021

Connection by Todd Billeci

How to record this event?

Once the workshop day was over, we began to sift through the images and recordings we had gathered, choosing the most apt photos to represent our day. I began noting what had happened for this blog, from my perspective––the impressions that I had of the day.

The PlayActing Theatre team, Julia, Alyn and I, met with Todd to discuss how best we could show what we had created, how best to reflect the involvement of the actors, ourselves, and the creative processes stirred by the work.

Various elements became obvious:

  1. The individual performances of the actors in the spaces they had chosen / created. And Todd’s photos from this part of the work.
  2. Selfies and other photos the actors were invited to taken their phones during the day.
  3. The writing the actors did in response to their own performances.
  4. The audio of this writing plus other streams of consciousness, which poured out or were prompted by questions to the actors when taping.
  5. The large chalk ‘outlines’ image of the entire group, created on a sheet of paper, one over the other.
  6. The two groups formed on the day and Todd’s photos of them, plus minimal recording.

While we wished to present all of these elements, because of time-constraints and following curatorial discussions with Brian Lalor of the Blue house Gallery, we decided to include a selection of portrait photographs of the performance element of the Reflected workshop day, chosen by Todd.

Todd and Brian prepare… Photos by Karen Minihan

The Exhibition opened, 6th August 2021

StoryBoards for Amadeus and Amadeus: Reflected.

Todd’s photos from the 2019 production of Amadeus were positioned on three of the walls of the room, a selection below, and on the fourth wall were the portrait photos from the Reflected workshop day, mostly shown in the blog post The Moments and the Recording.

Suburban Opera
Mozart Bemoans
The Two Salieris
Emperor and Court

The Slideshow

The selfies and other photos, including the chalk image, and some taken by actors, made a slide show with edited audio over the images, created by Julia Zagar, and audio edited by Todd and called Reflect21. This was made available to the public through a QR code and can be accessed at https://vimeo.com/582842722.

Chalk outlines

Julia and artist, Terri.
Cate and artist, Terri.

It feels like this exhibition has not completed its course as yet. The energy of the workshop, the response to the exhibition and desire to show these photos again means we will seek ways to display the photographs in the future and perhaps use the content created on the entire project. The last blog post, Amadeus: Reflected––Photographs, will show a number of the other photos taken during the workshop day.