MMUle are a laptop ensemble exploring liveness, soundscape composition, song and improvisation through computer based sound manipulation. Recently they have been collaborating with Proto-type Theater on a music and sound based theatre piece based on Albert Camus' book The Stranger. The performance is directed by Peter Petralia and includes some incredible animations from Adam York Gregory and an extensive lighting set up by New York based lighting designer Rebecca Makus.
This Saturday 26th January there will be a special 'work in progress' performance of the show featuring a selection of chapters from the piece at The Tramway Theatre in Glasgow.
The performance is open to the public so anyone interested in going feel free to contact us here and we will point you in the right direction.
Proto-type Theater’s
The Good, the God, and the Guillotine
A response to Albert Camus’ L’Étranger in thirteen theatrical chapters
Written and directed by Peter S. Petralia
Performed and devised by Leentje Van de Cruys, Gillian Lees and Andrew Westerside
Music by MMUle (Martin Blain, Nick Donovan and Paul J. Rogers)
Lighting Design by Rebecca Makus
Animation by Adam York Gregory
Director’s note:
I first encountered Camus’ L’Étranger when I was a teenager living in suburban central Florida, a land of flat expanses, beaches, concrete architecture and, at the time, the space shuttle program (now defunct). My introduction to the book came via the Cure’s song Killing an Arab, which is based on the scene in the book when the protagonist kills an Arab on a beach for no real reason other than the oppressive heat of the sun and a sense of momentum out of his control. In my obsession with the Cure, I discovered the source text, read it and was baffled, being too young to really grasp the significance of the book. Later, in high school, I read it again as part of a literature class and, being full of teenage angst, found the particular approach to existentialism somehow in synch with my evolving world view. I’ve been obsessed with it ever since and have wanted to find a way to respond to it that was not merely mimetic.
L’Étranger (translated as The Outsider in the UK, and The Stranger in the US) is famous for its unravelling of the absurdist psyche and existential thought. Camus’ branch of existentialism, as represented in this story, depicts the world as meaningless but not hopeless; instead of meaning coming from a higher power (a God), meaning comes from the individual. Often misread as being a tragedy or depicting a hopeless world, L’Étranger is, I believe, an exploration of what it might be like to live life in the present, without ceding control over the meaning of one’s actions to a higher power. If the world has lost a central, unifying (religious) structure, we are both empowered to shape our own destinies and responsible for our behaviours as actions in and of themselves. In other words, perhaps things just happen...perhaps the world is simply chaotic.
Just as Camus sought to expose the fragility of the modern subject, its authenticity, ethics, and its very place in the world, so we are hoping that eventually The Good, the God and the Guillotine will reveal the potential that music offers for us, as a company, to respond to a changing world and our shifting aesthetic sensibilities. In approaching Camus’ text, we’ve decided to use almost none of the original writing and to instead create a new text. We’ve created eleven ‘chapters’ that respond to each chapter of the novel and prologue and epilogue chapters that capture larger thematic concerns.
What you will see tonight is our first draft of a selection of these chapters; a first attempt at putting all the elements together. Please share your thoughts with us about what we are doing in a generous and open spirit after the show during the post show discussion. We need your input to help us understand what we’ve made and how it reads to those not in the process. You can also talk to us in the bar afterwards or send your thoughts via email to admin@proto-type.org. We’d love to hear from you.
Peter Petralia Founding Artistic Director 26 January 2013
Contact us:
E: admin@proto-type.org
W: www.proto-type.org
B: blog.proto-type.org
T: twitter.com/proto_type
F: http://tinyurl.com/auhjepo
Proto-type would like to express our enormous gratitude to Tramway and especially Tim Nunn for the generous invitation, technical assistance and financial support that has allowed us to explore this material here in Glasgow. We are also very grateful to MMU Cheshire, National Lottery through Arts Council England, Kennesaw State University and Lincoln Performing Arts Centre for funding that has made this piece possible. We’d also like to thank Dr. Jane Turner, Kieran Murphy, Kitty Morley and Bentley Fletcher for their assistance in making the logistics of this week happen without hitch.
