A new piece of theater is coming to ASU’s mainstage, combining the ASU School of Film, Dance and Theatre's production of Six Stories Tall is a collaborative multimedia experience that uses elements of hip-hop to explore how young people claim space in an adult world.
PHX Stages had the chance to speak with the creative minds behind, Six Stories Tall before it’s Arizona Debut.
“Each story centers around young people working through difficult issues in unique ways.” says Co-Creative Director Chris Weise, “There is a rap battle with the devil, a baseball stadium painted purple, and a horrible monster lurking on the Light Rail”
Wiese, spoke to the collaborative, and creative process that went into making Six Stories possible. Expressing that one of the most important aspects of this multi-discipline process has been finding a common ground for both the theatre and dance cultures.
“We cultivated this through transparent communication,” says Weise, “Utilizing similarity in warm-up practices and improv games, emphasizing the term "performer" instead of "actor/dancer," and our cast in a way that pushed the performer's boundaries.
All kinds of artistic boundaries will be pushed for audience members seeing six-stories, as the show features a lot of multi media influence. During a pivotal and expressement moment in the show, a brilliant 3D map projecting colors, and backgrounds onto a revolving platform. The likes of which can only be compared to a vibrant rock show, or Las Vegas experience. That is just one of the many new-media elements coming out of Six Stories Tall.
With this dance, theater, and multimedia infusion, audiences should expect a show that’s, according to Weiss, technically heavy, with complex lights, media, sound, costuming, and a rotating turntable with a set reaching fourteen feet in height.
In fact one of the most surprising, and also crowd pleasing elements of the show is the musical and creative decision to have a DJ, (DJ Panic) curating sound for the show live on stage.
The collaboration between the theater, and dance program at ASU has been a long time coming for the ASU stage program, but will frutifully bring a more well rounded theatrical and educational experience, and for Maria Idalis Harris a Sophomore Theater major, might also have brought her new friends outside of the usual drama school classes, “One of the favorite things about the process of working on Six Stories was that there was never any hierarchy or cliques between the dance majors and the theatre majors.”
This foundation in theater offers students the opportunity to see fellow students as artistic collaborations instead of artistic competition, a resourceful and cleaver move on behalf of ASU School of Film, Dance and Theatre'
Harris isn't alone in this opinion, cohort Alexus Purnell a third year undergraduate, double major
in dance and justice studies, found the process of working with combined artistic fields to be an honor to her craft, and the learning process.
“The show is very diverse in the ways it incorporates the elements of theatre and dance, says Purnell, It is exhilarating and the stories are relatable, creative, and filled with the unimaginable.
Harris expressed how, in the end the goal was always to creative art, “We may come from similar yet very different artistic fields, but we are all artists who just came together to tell coming-of-age stories and well,” says Harris, make art”
CLICK HERE for more information on Six Stories Tall, written by Marco Ramirez, With Co-creative directors Chris Weise and Melissa Britt and which runs February 18th
No comments:
Post a Comment
In order to avoid spam, comments will be moderated. Anonymous comments no longer will be allowed. If your comment is from an actual person it will be approved and posted in a timely manner.