WINNIPEG — From Wednesday, November 11 to Saturday, November 14, 2009, UWinnipeg’s Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film will come alive with a unique and exciting presentation, Chromotope: an evening of solo performances. This series of one-person vignettes is conceived, developed, and performed by members of the fourth-year Honours Devised Theatre class and is directed by Claire Borody. Performances are free and open to the public, with reservations recommended.
Chromotope comes from chromatography, a scientific term described by the Oxford Dictionary as “the separation of the components of a mixture by slow passage through or over a material which absorbs them differently.” In essence, the title of this show describes the divergence that occurred in the process used by each of the performers to create their solo works.
From a foundation of concrete material – images, music, props, selected texts, and scored actions – each performer has created a unique and original solo performance piece. Each piece is a visual, aural, and textual collage influenced and inspired by various art-forms such as dance, literature, film, music, and visual and plastic arts, as well as by popular culture and journalism. All performances have been created in a laboratory setting in which ideas (hypotheses) were constantly tested in concrete ways – via specific task and improvisation – in order to generate performance material.
Performers have not only explored themes and content of personal interest but they have tested the boundaries of theatrical form. During the process of construction performers have adapted for theatrical contexts various principles and elements drawn from each other in order to develop hybrid forms of expression uniquely suited to their own artistic needs. Each piece provides an audio-visual response to the performers’ encounter with his or her source material, and serves to generate specific questions about a particular issue or to offer alternative viewpoints for processing this information.
How to see the shows – free and open to the public
The solo performances are arranged as two separate series. Each features four 20-25 minute solos.
Series One performances run Wednesday, November 11 and Friday, November 13.
Series Two performances run Thursday, November 12 and Saturday, November 14.
Shows begin nightly at 8:00 pm at UWinnipeg’s Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film,
400 Colony Street (enter off Balmoral). Admission is free but reservations are recommended.
Please call our 24-hour Reservation and Information Line at 204.786.9152, or visit The University of Winnipeg’s Department of Theatre and Film
Patty Hawkins, Department of Theatre and Film
T: 204.786.9955
p.hawkins@uwinnipeg.ca
Claire Borody, Dept of Theatre and Film
T: 204.786.9385
c.borody@uwinnipeg.ca
