PLAY: The Film, PLAY/ THE FILM, PLAY THE FILM GODDAMMIT.

(Wrong from the start)

The following is neither a FILM nor a PLAY but the narrowest space in between the two media. A moment of interference. That which is stated is immediately renounced: we put forward a displaced GLANCE over two objects whose vision is blocked in order that their original form, now emptied of meaning, becomes nothing but material of the stage. The dramatic act un/builds the film and vice-versa. The film itself is indeed spared of no operation: it is cut, pasted, inverted and dubbed with no regard for the pruderies of cinephilia.
We operate through the transference of scenic or textual data from different disciplines and genres, some of which are already part of history, such as Vaudeville or the Hollywood musical; our focus is on THAT STUPENDOUS FIGURE OF BAD TASTE, THE VENTRILOQUIST.
(We offer no solutions, only the urge to sublimate on the stage the chaos that has settled on our heads).

Onstage there’s a film-screen where THE GREAT GABBO, by James Cruze (1929) is projected. The Great Gabbo tells the story of the rise and fall of Gabbo, a ventriloquist, and his dummy Otto; historically, the film stands in the threshold from the silent to the sound period, something which its use of the soundtrack makes clear.
The movie is projected as if it was being seen by a (virtual) full audience in the movie-theatre, the actual theatre audience being placed in the theoretical space behind the film-screen. Onstage the actors perform a live enactment of the movie’s whole soundtrack — the sound effects, the dialogues and the songs. The audience observes this process as it sits behind the actors. For the purpose of this show, the movie has been reedited and the dialogues adapted, namely by inserting bits of lyrics from pop songs. The show progresses playfully, intertwining theatre, cinema and music. During the sequence that depicts Eric von Stroheim’s Gabbo mental breakdown, the dancers from the burlesque act “Cais do Sodré Cabaret” perform live a dance number from the movie Singing in the Rain.