Breaking Facade
Breaking Facade -
Spectated Participatory arts
Breaking Facade explores the format of “spectated participatory art”. Individual participants will come up on stage and meet two performers in front of a live audience.
The performance explores how the intimacy of immersive interactive performances could be combined with the performativity of a staged performance in front of a live audience.
You can engage in the performance either in the role of a participant on stage or as a spectator watching from the audience.
Structure -
Choose-your-own-Adventure
The performance is in the structure of a branching choose-your-own-adventure with several endings. The participants will be presented with different scenes by the two performers. Depending on how the participant’s body language and how they react to each scene, the performers will “read” their actions as “choices” to lead the performance down the different branching pathways.
When an ending has been reached the performance will reset to allow the participants to restart and make new “choices” to unfold into other pathways.
The piece contains more scenes than are physically possible to be presented in one performance. Each performance will be uniquely shaped by the participant’s choices. Sometimes their choices will lead the performance into similar scenes that will highlight the nuances of their actions. And sometimes the performance will find unusual and maybe even secret scenes. It all depends on the choices of the participants.
The scenes –
Body language and Choices
The scenes that the performers present are all invitations for the participant to join in without any previous knowledge of what they contain. They all allow for choices to be made. Inaction and rejection is as valid of a choice as any action.
The scenes are all constructed to explore at least one of five different questions:
- How do we read and use our body language?
- How do we relate and control our role and social status in a group dynamic?
- How can we stay in the action of listening to others?
- What deeper actions appear through repetition?
- How do we make choices in relation to the structures we’re confined in?
Liminal LIMBO -
THE SPIROGRAPHIC DRAMATURGY
The performance can be seen as sustaining itself in a liminal limbo. An uncertain place in-between the being and the becoming something new. A space which allows for self reflection through action and inaction.
The performance is in a loop that is constantly shifting, similarly to the pathway of a spirograph. This creates an unusual non-linear dramaturgy that allows the performance to unfold different petals of itself each time it is performed.
INSPIRATION -
façade the COMPUTER GAME
The idea for this project derives from the question:
Would it be possible to make a live interactive performance inspired by the computer game Façade (by Procedural Arts), but based upon choreographic structures?
From this playful inspiration the project have left the narrative of Façade and instead abstracted formats and structures from the computer game and explored how those could be used in a live performance setting. The performance plays with formats of video games while playing to the strengths of live performance which allows for creative failures, adaptations and interactive reactions.
Premieres at SITE SPECIFIC FESTIVAL 23 may 2025!
Friday May 23rd at 16.00-17.30.
To book as spectating audience that sit and watch the performance, please book here.
To book as participating audience that step onto the stage, please email your interest here: info@sitesweden.se
Friday May 23rd at 19.30-21.00.
To book as spectating audience that sit and watch the performance, please book here.
To book as participating audience that step onto the stage, please email your interest here: info@sitesweden.se
SITE SWEDEN - SITE Specific
To read more about the performance in swedish check at SITEs website here.
To read more about the festival SITE Specific check here.
Photograph of two people standing next to each in front of a gray background. Standing to the left is a man in gray t-shirt and off-white jeans. He has several tattoos on his arms. Standing to the right is a woman in black and dark red long sleeved t-shirts . She have her hair in a braid that is laying visible on her shoulder. Both of them are standing with some air space underneath their arms. The arm position makes them seem slightly stiff and awkward.
Several digitally drawn dimond shapes are floating around, behind and in front of them. The dimond shapes in the upper back area are white and in the lower front area are neon yellow.
CREDITS
Concept, text och choreography: Noah Hellwig
Performers: Lisen Ellard & Lucas Carlsson
Music & sound: Miranda Abrahamsson
Costume and Scenography: Dalija Acin Thelander & Noah Hellwig
Light: Maja Lindström & Noah Hellwig
Performers who contributed to the development of the project: Inga Gerner Nielsen & Victor Malmberg Vejle.
Administration: Smart Coop
Residency: Södertörn University & Huddinge Municipality, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee & Danscentrum Syd, SITE Sweden, Gula Villan and Bora Bora Theatre.
Supported by: Stockholm Municipality, The Swedish Arts Grants Committee and SITE Sweden.
BREAKING FACADE - a poem
A knock on a door.
You step into a room. There are two people waiting.
The two people seem to want you something, but you are unsure of what.
Do you ever know what anyone wants from you?
You make a choice and try to participate in what they want.
After a while it ends.
You leave the room thinking “Why did I do that?”.
A knock on a door.
You step into a room. There again are two people waiting for you.
Photos from Residency At DANSCENTRUM SYD in MALMÖ, 2023
Photos from Residency At Södertörn Högskola and Huddinge Municipality, 2022
