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Escape
3 performers, 4 video projectors, 6 cameras, ± 384 objects and a screen of 3 x 4 meters ensured a hallucinating visual performance.
TAMTAM has been touring around the world for 33 years with small visual shows for small audiences.
In this show decided to blow up the size of their object art by means of video.
But they would not be TAMTAM if they hadn’t thought of a radical and ingenious solution.
All the audience gets to see is a projection screen of 3 x 4 meters.
Behind that screen the performers run around between inventive miniature sets and video-cameras and use low-tech effects to amaze the audience.
They perform a live movie accompanied by a hypnotizing soundtrack that drags the spectators into the universe of TAMTAM’s broad imagination and subtle but absurd humor.
The story
Escape told the story of a man who suffers from Compulsive Hoarding Disorder: the obsessive gathering of things, objectomania.
He is the superconsumer, the incarnated purchasing power.
His life consist of buying all kind of handy objects and throwing nothing away.His house get so full of stuff, junk and things that he almost cannot move any more.
We get to see inside his cluttered home, but can also look inside his head, his dreams and his memories by means of live object-animations. we witness feverish hallucinations caused by his increasing objectomania.
Can he escape from this hopeless situation or is he victim of some higher plan?
No visible players
It may seem strange that Escape is a performance in which the actors are not visible.But actually this is nothing special in traditional puppetry Until the 60s puppeteers were hidden behind their theatre and you had to guess how everything worked behind. That was part of what made it exciting and surprising. TAMTAM also made a number of visual performances where the players could not be seen. The best known are Obstacles and No Problem or the secret life of objects.
But in Escape they deliberately push it to the limit in a radical way: there is a large projection screen between actors and audience. And now it has become a part of the content of the performance.
Screens
Nowadays the world comes to us through screens. They are filters through which we see reality often without even noticing. This is one of the reasons of choosing the large screen as a main element in the performance. But Unlike movies, video or computer the audience in the theatre will get curious about how the performers make the images and now and then small hints are given by vague shadows through the semitransparent screen and by carefully dosed peeks at the backstage set-up in the video.
Just like traditional puppeteers the players feel the energy of the room and their responses and timing will be affected. After the show, viewers get tour behind the scenes as an encore by a rear camera that goes around with one of the players explaining in front of the screen.
Before and after the performance, viewers were given a behind-the-scenes tour as they were led into the venue via the stage.
Idea and scenario and performing: Gérard Schiphorst en Marije van der Sande
Cameraman and performing assistant: Seppe Ovink >
Technical concept and video: Gérard Schiphorst
Props and scenes: Marije van der Sande
Set construction and trics: Gérard Schiphorst, Jeroen Diepenmaat >
Soundtrack and compositions: Gérard Schiphorst
Programming Isadora and technical advice: Neal Lewis
Intern Artez: Josje Eijkenboom >
Workshop assistant: Huub Mars