Facebook
Twitter
YoutubeSHADOW MEADOW / Jan Mocek
A dark-ambient performance on absence
performance length: 60 min
no language barrier
When you look into the darkness, the darkness begins to look at you. Shadow Meadow is a dark-ambient, highly visual performance on absence. When the lights go out, two performers appear in the empty theatrical space in order to discover all the (no)things that are not there: nothing behind the curtain, nothing among the audience, nothing hovering in the darkness, nothing waiting to be performed here…
WARNING: THE PERFORMANCE MAKES USE OF A STROBOSCOPE AND OTHER EXTREME EFFECTS (A LOT OF SMOKE INCLUDED). IT IS THUS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN, PREGNANT WOMEN AND PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY.
The performance, which combines elements of both theatre and visual arts, clusters around the theme of absence as a strange state, when the non-presence of objects or people creates an impression of their intense presence. Particularly, the concept of absence is in the 50 minutes long performance explored as a social-political strategy, as a subject-matter of geopolitics:
“There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.” Donald Rumsfeld (former US Secretary of Defense).
The performance moves on the very margins of visibility. Through the original use of LED lights, stroboscopes, and smoke, it creates an immersive environment that offers the audience an extreme theatre experience – vibrating space, physically perceived sounds, images on the retina, and an awareness of timelessness and other dimensions.
Concept, directed by: Jan Mocek
Dramaturgy: Táňa Švehlová
With: Jan Mocek, Irina Andreeva
Lighting: David Prokopič
Sound: Matthias Hesselbacher
Production: Táňa Švehlová, SixHouses z. s.
Website: sixhouses.net
Premiere: 21 Nov. 2017
With support from / acknowledgments: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague, Prague 7 Municipal District, State Fund for Culture, Život Umělce Foundation, Czech-German Future Fund, SixHouses z.s.
Jan Mocek’s projects exist on the boundary between theater and the visual arts. His performances have the character of audio and visual environments that offer viewers an interactive experience and the freedom of interpretation. He made a large impact with his performance Tanz im Quadrat, which was named Project of the Year at the …příští vlna/next wave… festival and a video of which was viewed 50 million times on YouTube. Since 2013, he and Táňa Švehlová have created numerous video walks on the theme of gamification. Working for the National Theatre, he created Play Maeterlinck (2016), an interactive video walk of the Estates Theatre on the life of Maurice Maeterlinck. A year earlier, the duo blocked traffic in the National Theatre’s underground parking garage with the video walk Play Underground (2015). Their projects are created by their own SixHouses production company.
WARNING: THE PERFORMANCE MAKES USE OF A STROBOSCOPE AND OTHER EXTREME EFFECTS (A LOT OF SMOKE INCLUDED). IT IS THUS NOT SUITABLE FOR CHILDREN, PREGNANT WOMEN AND PEOPLE WITH EPILEPSY.
The performance, which combines elements of both theatre and visual arts, clusters around the theme of absence as a strange state, when the non-presence of objects or people creates an impression of their intense presence. Particularly, the concept of absence is in the 50 minutes long performance explored as a social-political strategy, as a subject-matter of geopolitics:
“There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns – the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones.” Donald Rumsfeld (former US Secretary of Defense).
The performance moves on the very margins of visibility. Through the original use of LED lights, stroboscopes, and smoke, it creates an immersive environment that offers the audience an extreme theatre experience – vibrating space, physically perceived sounds, images on the retina, and an awareness of timelessness and other dimensions.
Concept, directed by: Jan Mocek
Dramaturgy: Táňa Švehlová
With: Jan Mocek, Irina Andreeva
Lighting: David Prokopič
Sound: Matthias Hesselbacher
Production: Táňa Švehlová, SixHouses z. s.
Website: sixhouses.net
Premiere: 21 Nov. 2017
With support from / acknowledgments: Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic, the City of Prague, Prague 7 Municipal District, State Fund for Culture, Život Umělce Foundation, Czech-German Future Fund, SixHouses z.s.
Jan Mocek’s projects exist on the boundary between theater and the visual arts. His performances have the character of audio and visual environments that offer viewers an interactive experience and the freedom of interpretation. He made a large impact with his performance Tanz im Quadrat, which was named Project of the Year at the …příští vlna/next wave… festival and a video of which was viewed 50 million times on YouTube. Since 2013, he and Táňa Švehlová have created numerous video walks on the theme of gamification. Working for the National Theatre, he created Play Maeterlinck (2016), an interactive video walk of the Estates Theatre on the life of Maurice Maeterlinck. A year earlier, the duo blocked traffic in the National Theatre’s underground parking garage with the video walk Play Underground (2015). Their projects are created by their own SixHouses production company.
