Produced by Gemini CollisionWorks
Nominated for: Outstanding Performance Art Production
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Photo by Mark Veltman |
About the Production
A paranoid rant? A schizophrenic’s tragic delusion? An internet troll’s computer-generated word salad? An underground history of the battle between pop culture and the military-industrial complex? All of the above? Nord Hausen Fly Robot is an investigation by Gemini CollisionWorks into a 55-page anonymous online comment left on a political website that first seems nothing more than an incomprehensible tirade, but on repeated examination suggests a poetic summary of US History post-WWII from a marginalized voice.
Artistic Director Ian W. Hill talks about tackling this stream-of-consciousness offering and finding the beauty in it.
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What attracted you to this project?
Ian: I was obsessed with the original anonymous text found online, and I believed that the time and place were right for it to be shared with the world in this form.
What was your favorite part of this production?
Ian: The close collaboration with an exceptional group of actors who were willing to trust in a very singular and often inexplicable vision for the piece, and not afraid to work very hard to polish a rough stone into multifaceted, gleaming clarity.
What was the most challenging aspect of this production?
Ian: Delving into the words of a mentally-ill person, and pulling from their beauty and pain a pure theatrical experience.
What is the strangest thing that happened during this production?
Ian: There are almost too many strange things to mention -- the cast and crew still speak to each other in a shorthand of phrases from the text that will have no meaning to anyone who didn't spend months working on it. Our own in-joke patois.
What did you want the audience to walk away with after watching Nord Hausen...?
Ian: A combined sense of despair and hope at the past present and future of our country -- a sense that things have gone horribly wrong, but there is still beauty, and ideals, and people who care, even in the midst of madness.
What was it like working with this company of artists?
Ian: We made a remarkable piece of theater out of a madman's beautiful but difficult online rant, and continued our quest to make theater that is both basically indefinable/indescribable except by the production itself, and deeply satisfying to audiences of all kinds.
You can follow Gemini Collision Works on Twitter - @geminicollision
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